Olive picking

At the beginning of November we decided to pick our olives. Most of them had turned a lovely plum colour and some were starting to fall off the trees if there was a high wind.

We know that there were very few olives on the trees this year so we decided on a different strategy for picking them. Previously we had pruned the trees as we picked, but if we did that this year we might only have two sacks picked after three or four days. Not wanting them to lie around too long before being pressed, we just stripped the trees of the olives.

The weather was good for picking, dry and warm enough to work in t-shirts. In just two days we picked all of the trees, but this year we only had four and a half sacks of olives. Not too bad, and as we still had quite a lot of oil left from last year we didn’t want or need too much. That gave us about 41 litres of oil after the olive press had taken their percentage.

Then we spent a pleasant few days going back round the trees pruning them. This time there was no rush to get them finished so we could just enjoy being out in the sun. Now we must wait to see if next year proves to be a good year.