Do you dream of Italy?
I’d like to take a moment to share a new newsletter created by someone very special to me… my mom.
Several years ago, my parents made the bold decision to sell nearly everything they owned, board a plane, and begin a new life in Italy.
The journey came with plenty of challenges: learning a new language, choosing the perfect town, searching for a village home, navigating Italian bureaucracy, and more.
But over time, they found their dream house, renovated it, settled into village life, and even earned their Italian driver’s licenses (a true accomplishment—if you know, you know).
Now my wonderful mother has decided to share the story and bring readers along on her Italian adventure.
What’s it like to shop in an Italian grocery store? What do you do when a neighbor invites you over to help make wine (say yes, of course)? And how do you spend your weekends as a retiree when an entire country is waiting to be explored?
She has so many stories to tell—and as someone who visits her new home whenever I can, I can promise you’ll love following along.
Drive through the countryside of Puglia, and the landscape starts to feel strange.
The trees don’t look like trees. Not really.
They’re massive and knotted, their trunks split open and folded into themselves, like something that has been growing and regrowing for far too long. Some are hollow. Some look burned. Some barely look alive at all.
And yet, every year, they leaf out. Every year, they produce olives.
Many of them have been doing that for over a thousand years.
Some, likely much longer.
Older Than the Roads
Olive trees have been cultivated in southern Italy for at least 2,500 years. Greek settlers brought organized olive farming to the region long before Rome expanded south, and the Romans later built an entire economy around olive oil.
In parts of Puglia, especially around Ostuni and across the Salento peninsula, those early plantings never disappeared. They were pruned, grafted, and harvested across generations, but the root systems remained.
That’s why age is difficult to pin down.
Olive trees don’t age cleanly. They hollow out over time, losing the inner wood that would normally be used for ring dating. What’s left is a living outer shell that keeps growing, sometimes for millennia.
Researchers estimate many of these trees to be between 1,000 and 2,000 years old. A smaller number may be older, based on trunk size, growth patterns, and continuous cultivation records.
They are often referred to locally as ulivi millenari.
Millennial trees.
What Time Does to a Tree
Spend a few minutes walking through these groves, and you start to notice the shapes.
One tree coils in on itself, tight like a twisted rope. Another swells outward, then caves in, leaving a hollow you could almost step into. Some split low to the ground and grow upward in separate forms, like they changed their mind halfway through.
None of it is planned. It’s just what happens when something is cut back, battered by weather, and allowed to keep going for centuries.
In Sardinia, near Luras, there’s a tree known as S’Ozzastru. It’s often described as one of the oldest olive trees in Europe. Estimates vary, but it is unquestionably ancient… some say 3000 years.
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A Landscape Under Threat
For centuries, these trees endured drought, shifting borders, and the rise and fall of empires without much interruption.
The threat they face now is different.
Since 2013, a bacterium called Xylella fastidiosa has spread through parts of Puglia, attacking the trees from within. It blocks the flow of water through the plant, causing leaves to dry out, branches to die back, and in many cases, the entire tree to wither.
Millions of olive trees across southern Italy have already been affected.
The oldest among them are not easily replaced, not just because of their age, but because they define the landscape itself. In some areas, ancient groves are now protected as cultural heritage sites, with efforts focused on monitoring and preservation.
Even so, some of these trees that have stood for centuries are now disappearing within a single generation.
Still Here
And yet, many remain.
Stand beside one of these trees, and it doesn’t feel fragile. The trunk is solid, the roots deep, the branches still producing fruit as they have for generations.
They are part of everyday life, growing in working groves, shaped by the same cycles of pruning and harvest that have sustained them for centuries. And to this day, they produce some of the best-known olives in the world.
Until next time,
Emails From Afar Team
Join the Creature Craze!!
Back in September, the team behind both Letters From Afar and Emails From Afar launched a brand new venture… especially for kids.
Introducing:
Inspired by Pokémon, but with an educational twist, Creature Cards delivers a pack of animal trading cards to your door every month.
In every pack, learn about modern-day and extinct creatures from around the world. Discover their rarity, diets, habitats, size, and even where they fall on a danger meter!
Collect, trade, explore, and learn.
