We are now at the busiest and most important time of the year when we are harvesting our olives. Most groves seem to be harvesting earlier this year and this may be the way things are for the future. It would be interesting to see the varying techniques that are used for harvesting. On our small grove of 120 trees, we have 2 mechanical harvesters run off 12v batteries plus hand rakes. Our method is to call on friends and family each year, try to get about 15 of us and we pick madly for one day, always a Saturday. What we get is what we get and off to the press the next day. This year we are picking on the 17th of April and expect the harvest will be well down from last year, probably about 400kg. We try and make it a reasonably fun day and then when all done, showered and rested, we all have the harvest meal at night with a few bottles of wine. I will endeavour to put a video on the WhatsApp chat channel of our harvesting.

On that note, for those that are on the Oliveti chat channel, how about a short video of your harvest to show how you go about it and how well you went. What is the yield both in kg and oil % in your harvest? This will be good information and tips for all of us. We are all leaning.

Click here to read full newsletter Issue No.93 April 2021