Picking

Well, after a bad start with a small shower, the rest of the day was mainly sunny and very warm. Sad to say the olive harvest this year is not as good.

By the time Lainie arrived back from language classes I had picked 6 trees. These were the poorest trees, the olives were small and not many on any of the trees. There were still some of the branches that I had cut from the trees to be stripped of their olives, but that's the job that Lainie prefers. By the end of the day we had finished 12 trees, but still had less than 2 sacks of olives. Last year we had just over 4 sacks for the same trees.

The weather forecast for today is warm and sunny, but Sunday and Monday are now showing possible rain.

Olive picking dilemmas

It’s time for olive picking again! This year we’re faced with a new set of problems.

• The olives are quite small due to the long, hot, dry summer.
• They’re mostly turned dark blue and are starting to fall from the trees.
• Some people who will leave for home in about 10 days want to take some of our oil.
• If we leave the olives for another month or two the oil content will improve.
  
• As our total harvest is quite small for a batch to be processed at the olive press, we like to pick everything in one go.
• If you leave picked sackfulls for more than 4-5 days the olives deteriorate quite rapidly.
• The weather is fine at the moment, but the forecast shows showers for today.
• Tomorrow is sunny, but then we have two days with rain.

Should I start picking? Lainie is at language classes this morning, so it’s up to me. What to do?

Let’s go for it!