It’s that time of the year again to persuade a certain type of tree to let go of its fruits. Yes we are talking olives here. We have a mixed bag of trees on the premises. Some very old ones, some more junior ones and basically everything in between. Picking always comes with a bit of stress since speed is essential. Once picked you can’t leave the olives sitting around for too long since it will severly diminish the quality of your oil. Picked olives start fermenting and oxydising. In general they say two to three days should be fine if you spread the olives out on the floor in a cool building and remove bruised fruits as much as possible.
It took us about 2 days to harvest the olives. Harvesting was done by 4 pairs of skilled hands. There are other ways of getting the olives of the trees. Beating with sticks or shaking the tree with a special machine. A third one is using what I call fingers. Attached to a long pole are a collection of fingers which are wobbling thanks to some pneumatic gods. I once read you can do 400 kg a day with those things, not bad but i guess it depends on the ripeness of the fruit and how your trees have been pruned. Also dragging the nets around on which the olives drop takes some time here since the olives are not all planted next to each other. Well off to bed now can’t wait till tomorrow to see how much we have done.
Two down 12 more to go.
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