Panic: The olive harvest came early this year, in fact it was about 3 weeks to a month earlier than what we expected. We usually pick in early to mid November, but our olives were ready and beginning to drop off the trees by the 1st October! Far too early.... and it made us panic as we were not ready to harvest.
 |
| our olives captured in nets |
Everyone who had olives, and it was/is a good year for most, needed to harvest immediately. The friend that helped us last year was overwhelmed with picking his own olives first and requests for help from others. So this year, Guido and I decided to pick our own, all by hand, the traditional way. We bought 2 nets to lay on the ground under the olive trees, 2 rastrelli (hand held rakes) and enough containers to hold the olives once picked and collected.
 |
| Olives, crates and nets |
Picking a day with good weather really helps, so in between giving cooking classes, culinary holidays, olive tours and winery tours, we picked the date and set about getting everything ready. The weather was perfect, sunny, some cloud, no rain and mild. Starting early we began by spreading the nets under one of our olive trees, and then got to work. Guido with a hand rake on a longer pole raking the olives higher up on the olive trees, and Sally with the hand held rake on the lower branches. |
| Sally with the hand held rake |
 |
| Guido with longer rake, nets on the ground |
We had a tough supervisor, Rocky our dog, that made sure everything was in order! |
| Rocky our 9 year old dog, supervising. He as exhausted at the end of the day! |
After moving from tree to tree, raking all the olives down onto the nets, we just needed to take out as many leaves as possible....before placing them into the crates.  |
| Guido sorting the leaves and twigs from the olives |
After gathering up the olives and placing them in the crates.......we loaded them into our van.
 |
Our olive crates! Look at those beautiful colours from green to black.
|
It was getting onto sunset and we needed to get our olives to the mill to be processed within 24 hours, to ensure the highest quality for our own organic extra virgin olive oil...... |
| Our olives being loaded into a larger crate to be weighed at the mill |
We are very proud of what we achieved. In 8 hours we harvested our olives from the olive trees on our land and got them to the olive mill to be pressed the same evening. |
| Look at all our olives! |
 |
| Sally, proud to get their olives to the mill after a full day's work harvesting |
 |
| Leaving our crate of olives at the mill at sunset, knowing it will be pressed the same evening |
The next day we collected our own organic extra virgin olive oil from the mill. It was a good yield this year and we are enjoying every drop of our EVVO (extra virgin olive oil). We hope to be able to share some with you, too!
No comments:
Post a Comment