A tree that has stood a hundred years on this hillside has answered the only question that matters: drought, frost, wind and heat, year after year, and still standing.

That answer governs the planting. Indigenous species and old local varieties, selected because they carry a record on this hillside that began long before we arrived. A variety bred for yield has no such record.

Resilience is not a property of a single plant. Resilience comes from what surrounds the plant. Soil with structure and living matter, water that stays in the ground, roots working at different depths, and enough diversity that one hard season cannot take everything at once.

The grove is tended on a pruning cycle counted in generations, with the ground beneath left to flower.

The olives are the oldest evidence we have that this works. Everything planted since has been chosen the same way.