The Olive Harvest

Unfortunately I wasn`t here for the olive harvest, we collected some early olives and put them in a brine solution at the end of October and some bigger ones in a sea water brine with lemon in November.
I went off to the UK at the end of November and the harvest started a couple of days later.
Huge tarpaulins are spread down the slopes and around the trees and long, thick bamboos are used to knock the olives out of the trees.
Mark only had a go at that once as it is apparently quite specialised and you damage the trees if it isn`t done correctly. It makes the branches dry and more pruning is required.
Mark did help with sorting the olives however, they were spread out on something that looks like a large wash board so the leaves and twigs can be removed.

They are then put in sacks and go off to the olive oil factory  to be pressed.



Mark at the olive table.




Getting the olives down

The landlord was very pleased with the quality of the oil and it is delicious. Mark collected reddish, black olives which also went into brine and we are now going to put them into oil with new fennel stems and garlic.
The first olives are very nice, the sea water ones are horrible, very bitter, I won`t bother with them again.
The best ones are the red ones, it is a good job Mark made a lot.

On the left are the first green olives. In the middle are the red olives and on the right the sea water olives that will probably end up in the bin, sadly.
The olive harvest on this land took about a month.