In the small village of Asgata,
Cyprus, is the Olive Oil Press and Flour Mill Museum. Cypriots literally
survived on ‘bread and olives.’
The Oil Press and Flour Mill was
operational from 1920 to 1986. The owner bought new or used machines from
Italy, where they were operated by hand or diesel until Asgata had electricity in
1968. The villagers began renovations to the press and mill in 2012 with 90% of
government funds and 10% of village funds. The Oil Press and Flour Mill Museum
was opened on 6 November 2016.
Although the museum was closed for winter, the president of the village opened the museum for me so that I could look around.
Cypriots have based their diet on
olive products for thousands of years. In the Old Testament the olive tree is
the tree of hope. In the Greek and Roman tradition the olive tree is the tree
of peace.
Olive oil, which the Greek poet Homer
called liquid gold, has been used for thousand of years for food, frying, cooking,
and medicinal purposes. The wood of the tree has been used to make furniture,
boxes and bowls. Olive oil and olive kernels have been widely used to produce
soaps and other natural beauty products for the skin and hair. It is still used
to light candilia, which are small hanging oil lamps in the churches of Cyprus.
Tea can be made with olive tree leaves
and is said to help mitigate high blood pressure.
The museum shows the olive oil
extraction methods of the past, such as the millstone and olive press.
Olives were taken to the mill in
baskets carried by donkeys, where the olives were weighed to set the cost for
the miller (the alestidji). The olives were then washed. The Asgata oil factory
had two granite millstones where the olives were smashed and turned to pulp.
The millstone was turned by a Ruston single piston engine made in England.
The olive pulp was transferred to
iron nets, called zempilia, which were originally made of goat hair, then of
nylon. These nets (or sacks) were stacked one on top of the other (four or five
of them) on a metal axis in the middle of the press. Using hydraulics and a
piston, the press would squeeze out the water and oil from the olive pulp. The
oil would float to the top of the water. The water went into a pipe that led to
the street – and olive-scented water would flow into the centre of the village
and into the river. The oil was funnelled into tin containers for sale.
From the 5th century BC
there is evidence proving the existence of bakeries selling bread. For breadmaking
the flour is made from wheat using a grinding process. The rotating hand mill
involved a pair of round, flat grinding stones. The wheat passed between the
grinding stones and was crushed or ground into flour. The movement of the flour
mill in Asgata was powered by a diesel engine through the function of gears and
a pulley system. In 1968 when the mill had electricity, a small modern milling
machine was bought which replaced the diesel engine. The engine was sold and
the funds were used to renovate the local church.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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