TWO FIELDS, ZAKROS
March 2025
Two Fields - Part One
How an olive oil project in Zakros has become far more than just groves and what it can teach us about modern agriculture
Sam and I often exchange a knowing nod when we’re on an adventure, simultaneously recognising just how sweet we have it. A goat wanders by, eyes us suspiciously and reclines under an olive tree. Trips like these used to be reserved for Sunday night watching. Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver or Anthony Bourdain (note how male dominated this genre was…) where they would go up into the mountains, eat the local food, drink the local plonk. Now that's us, just without the film crew, or fans…
Zakros is on the South-East of Crete, and is not a touristic area. A sparse island surrounded by the emerald blue mediterranean with the odd snaking ribbon of road. We’re here in November at the start of the olive harvesting in this region to meet Harry and Will Rolph of Two Fields Olive Oil.
Two Fields began officially in 2015, but its building blocks have been progressively laid for decades. The family has always had roots in Greece and called this elongated island home since 2013. It is then beautifully fitting that Harry married an Islander Eleni, a third generation olive farmer, and thus entered into the world of olives, becoming an apprentice to Eleni’s father Jiannis.
The region is home to thousands of acres of patch-worked olive groves, a part of the landscape existing amongst the mountains as naturally as the hares and rabbits, passed down through and exchanged via family lines.
However, this agricultural industry has been as susceptible to the nefarious powers of big chemical agriculture as the corn fields of Iowa. With the advent of pesticides and nitrogen fertilisers following the second world war, these formerly in-balance and robust ecosystems were forced into the “modern” way of farming. As with us all, the Greek olive growers were sold down the river, along with the fertility and disease resistance. Undergrowth was competition and disease that came was nuked with pesticides.
It is these practices that have left our land infertile, bleached by the sun, unable to retain water in drought and susceptible to disease without diversity and natural predatory balances. It is this damage that Will and Harry are reversing on their own land, reconnecting their olive craft to nature and influencing the region to fall into step with.
Their mission is fraught with the same resistance to change as much of the rest of the world. The two generations of farmers that precede us are reluctant to take the perceived risk and the “organic method” is viewed with an air of suspicion and scepticism, that it “cannot feed the world”. With this mindset, they’re probably right. So it’s up to people like Harry and Will to set the example and prove the future is bright, delicious and profitable.
The lads pick us up from Sita airport; a black scrape of tarmac on the north-east coast and we drive through winding mountain passes to visit the olive mill.
One of the many fascinating parts of our work is learning the nuances of different farming processes and supply chains. This often involves a third, expert, party that you outsource part of your process to, normally near the end of production. In grain it's the miller (and commonly a combine harvester), as a livestock farmer it's the abattoir and butcher and in olive oil, it's olives to the mill. The cooperative Harry and Will use is fondly nicknamed ‘Papa Johns’, and will differentiate between extractions for organic farmers, meaning you get back your own oil from your olives . It’s a state of the art , two phase, modern mill, despite being forty five minutes further away from their village. Harry tells me of the importance of dialing in every detail and using the very best equipment. The progress from a three phase Mill to a two phase Mill is a meaningful upgrade, the proof is in the end product - a better quality extra virgin olive oil from flavour to higher polyphenols and lower acidity starting in the fields at first thing and returning to the village at midnight due to the drive makes these long days, but the brothers believe everything starts and ends with quality and the mill is crucial.
Rumours of their local mill upgrading makes the brothers quietly excited - it’s no small feat, a two million euro EU funded project that would be a big moment for the village and they’re excited about the possibility to press locally in Zakros again.
LEFT: Will and Harry talking business…
MIDDLE: Warp Drive/Centrifugal oil mill…
RIGHT: Master Miller Manolis at Papa Johns.
We watch the Two Field olives cleaned of leaves and twigs on an automated conveyor belt where debris is sucked away, then the olives lightly washed and weighed before being belted into a contraption that mashes the olives into a pulp. We’re able to lift the observation hatch and take a whiff. The fragrance is sublime. Warm, grassy, spicy, oily.
From there it passes into a centrifugal extractor that I can only describe as looking like a warp drive from the Starship Enterprise. In spinning the pulp through grades of meshed drums the oil is separated from its solid state and watery parents. The resulting, pure oil is then extracted out into stainless steel drums. One can witness the oil flowing out of a pipe which is memorising due to its “laminar state”, Harry tells me. You know it’s flowing, but it looks perfectly static. Modern milling is a science, every variable controlled precisely to produce a beautiful high quality olive oil.
The oil is then tested for acidity, a metric to measure free fatty acid, (a quality indicator of olive oil), and yield. We’re given an opportunity to taste this freshly milled nectar and its warm, enveloping and spicy. This oil, like everything produced as part of the Two Fields collective, will then be sent off to a professional taster for lab and organoleptic testing, ensuring it meets their standards. We were told it will settle down slightly with a rest period called “racking” much like freshly roasted coffee beans do or a good steak. (Subsequently, Two Fields are exploring filtration at the press and then again at bottling which can speed up this process, allowing a “new season” oil to be ready for market much sooner.)
Zakros and the Brothers…
These kinds of experiences are, to Sam and I, reverent. How lucky we are to witness and be given the opportunity to partake in the rituals of a trade we are so disjointed from when we purchase a meaningless, storyless and unfamiliar oil off the shelf.
PART TWO
We started our journey in a somewhat Tarrentino-esque order of chronology, by beginning at the mill; but this we found valuable as you draw back to your experience of the end product all the time you are involved or discover a process. Each one, as important as the last, to produce this exquisite oil.
Harry and will harvesting olives. Photo Credit: Safia Shakarchi
After a solid rest at the lads' family house just outside Zakros, in Agrilia, we were off to our first day harvesting.
One thing we Shrub-lot are NOT, are agricultural tourists. When we come to your farm, we want to get our hands dirty and sing for our supper. It is only this exchange that can nurture a real understanding of someone's work not only by doing it, but unlocking someone's trust in you that you aren’t here for the instagram post and fridge magnet. Like coming to someone's home or indeed gaining any insight into their life, there is a vulnerability in exposing one's way of life or place of security. Therefore, it is paramount to tread lightly, observe, listen and partake.
Harry and Will’s Cretan family welcomed us to their beautiful groves with humble enthusiasm and extreme hospitality. This is an annual, festive event for them but a defining pilgrimage for us! We can only hope we were not overbearing in our glee.
Nikos, and Katerina, (Brother and mother-in-law) had already made a far earlier start than we had on the harvest, but it gave us a clear view of the system.
Large, durable nylon nets-come-sheets are systematically laid underneath intersecting trees to provide a seamless base for olives to cascade into. The olives are harvested using a “stick” (which in Katerina’s living history was literally the case) these days comprising of a seven foot aluminum pile, brush motor powered by a small petrol powered generator. At the business end, a twin of porcupine-like, soft plastic tines that oscillate at a rate similar to that of your electric toothbrush at home.
With this lengthy shaft you can reach an entire crown of an olive tree, and working in a team of three you section off your tri-area and buzz the branches until they release their oil-suffused fruit to gravity, falling to your feet, onto the nets. We’re advised to avoid stepping on the fruit. Any damage will cause oxidation which leads to bad oil.
We’re amazed by how oil rich the fruit is, crushing the fingertip size pearl between our thumb and forefinger and rubbing them together to reveal a glossy oily sensation.
The variety of olive grown in this region is the “Koroneki”. It's the predominant variety of oil producing olive in Greece and has been for 3000 years, for good reason. Valued for its high oil yield, exceptional quality, and resilience. With an oil content of up to 27%, it produces a low-acidity, polyphenol-rich extra virgin olive oil known for its balanced, fruity flavor.
Adapted to Greece’s hot, dry climate and rocky soils, Koroneiki trees are both hardy and highly productive, ensuring a reliable harvest over an extended season, maintaining their reputation for producing some of the finest oils in the world.
As the fruit falls onto the nets, they’re gathered up by hand, pulling up the corners, then picked through swiftly for excess foliage and small branches that have come down with them. Poured into crates, they’re then decanted into larger one ton boxes, favoured over hessian bags, to prevent field heat damaging the fruit, on the back of the hilux.
Harry, taking us through the groves. Notice despite the drought, their land is still green…
The aforementioned industrial agriculture movement stated that cover crops were competition for moisture and invited pests. Farmers were sold on the promise bumper yields with the use of nitrogen fertiliser. The inevitable pests that came to the land subsequently (that used to be managed out with natural resistance) were quashed with chemical pesticides.
If the above doesn’t say it all on its own, this kind of practice has very short term gains for a very long term loss. Think drinking endless cans of Monster Energy Vs a diet of natural Greek yoghurt, sauerkraut and sourdough bread. The industrial agriculture movement has scoured and scorched earth.
Water scarcity on the island is a real threat. Volatile climatic change results in volatile scarcity or over abundance. This phenomena is true in history, not solely as a result of human impact. But what a natural system does produce is its own resilience to these unpredictable changes if allowed.
Undergrowth, deep tapping plants with roots and tubers entangle, inhabit and ferment in the soil, locking in, extracting and breeding fertility whilst locking in moisture, under the soil, protected from wind and heat evaporation. Desecration of this life has endangered our food system and survival as a species. Two Fields are looking to the security of their future, with cover crops, composting, manure, an introduction of herbivores and encouraging others to do the same. To ensure standards are maintained, Two Fields only works with certified in-organic-conversion farms as a minimum. All farmers are audited by the organic board and must adhere to organic standards from day one, despite the conversion period.
While the in-conversion period takes four years, the brothers think this is a real barrier to change for small scale farmers. Making a huge commitment and change but not seeing any financial benefit for four years is a tough sell. Instead they offer the farming families in the collective above organic prices from year one of conversion. This is about helping people transition away from conventional to organic and then pushing beyond those standards - but we have to make change accessible, Will tells me. The project is rooted in sharing organic principles on the ground, helping local farming families make that conversion and ensuring they get fair, secure livelihoods in the process. This level of objectivity is unheard of and is widely commended.
A pilgrimage to the town water source is a key feature of our visit. The significance of this site is memorialised with the presence of a stunning and ancient Orthodox Church, a Holy and spiritual site no doubt long before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Evidence of well maintained passages for people to visit as well as other monuments in gratitude to this life-giving aquifer suggests it's a popular place for respite from the heat and a meeting place of families. Every year the village gathers for food and music to celebrate the water source, a village deeply connected to land and olives is almost defined by it. It’s shaded with large trees thanks to the water. The moving water assists a draw of cooling air movement.
There is evidence too of what would have been a far more vigorous flow. After two years of drought, the flow is down and the squeeze on water supply for growing olives is tight. This highlights the importance of robust ecological practices. Without good living cover crops and life in general, the sun and wind will sap away the moisture. Then when it rains, the hard remnants will cause it to wash like water off like ducks back, which in turn contributes to flash flooding and erosion. Almost sounds biblical in its own sense?!
Ironically enough, after a year of drought, we were herded into the tin roofed shack to shelter from a downpour, much to the delight of the family. With a few hours and half a dozen trees groomed we are graced with a bowl of deliciousness from Katerina. A cinnamon and nutmeg infused goats cheese and pasta-like bake.
The conversation of rain transcends borders. One we Brits can talk about until the cows come home. We talk to Nikos, Eleni’s brother. By day a police officer on another Greek Island, Leros, by olive season a stick swinging assassin. We learn that during the season, people will return to their family homes to help with the olive harvest. It’s a modest earner but mostly a family pastime and a way of keeping your own stocks filled. More importantly, it’s a return to cultural roots and holds a level of ancestral importance, Eleni and Nikos grew up in these olive groves, and now Harry and Eleni’s children, (little) Katerina and Lydia, will do the same..
With our bellies and souls nourished, it was back to work.
The next day we were brought to the modest Two Fields storage unit, a former lemonade factory with an extremely pleasing mid-century aesthetic to it. Thick concrete walls, tile lined with mere slits for windows keep the room cool. The building houses several stainless steel multi-ton capacity vats. Yet another attention to detail Two Fields adhere to is that their oil is never stored in plastic. It can impart bad flavours and doesn’t block out 100% of UV light. They take this so seriously, all farmers are all provided with steel tanks suitable for travel - this was a considerable expensive for their small project, but one they felt crucial. To make a truly great olive oil, every step matters.
Needless to say, some superb food was had in Zakros. Poached Lamb and “wedding rice” that's cooked in the stock of the lamb. Endless feta. A yellow lentil style dip and wee floured fried fish. We had the pleasure of sharing a few rakki’s with locals, farmers and friends. The clear and obvious sense of belonging the Rolphs have in this town is testament to their reputation here, and vice versa. They’re treated as Cretan as the oil they produce, because they’ve earned it and have skin in the game, and the future of this region.
As we return to the tarmac of Sita airport in the beaten up old workhorse of a Hilux, it feels like the last grasping moments of a dream. Even the light is magical. Farming in any country is an honest job, enriching and a fundamental need of the population. The returns are far from guaranteed and no surprise the vast majority of farmers are not in it for the money. How many occupations are there that one embarks on with such selflessness in this day and age?
This write up is almost as long as the trip was… But what makes Two Fields product and story special is all in the details. And we’ve barely scratched the surface with them.
Harry, Will, Eleni, Katerina, Nikos, Kostas, Lefteris, and Manolis… You showed us the most incredible hospitality. You educated us on the region, the historical sites and the story of the people and its place in the world. Sitting down under the trees eating a home made bean casserole or lamb stew with you all is a memory we’ll have forever.
You don’t only represent yourselves but so many families who are committed to a more ecologically holistic future too, and a way of life that has endless amounts of value within in and hope it remains for the next several millenniums…
Harry and Will Rolph. Photo Credit: Safia Shakarchi
