Olive harvesting at home
November 17, 2020
Spoiler alert *** this is not a post about wire crochet ;)
My assumption is that if you are here it means wire crochet and handmade are topics close to your heart, following this logic I assume that you will be able to sympathise with the joy and satisfaction of anything to do with self sufficient life. still interests ? continue reading ...
After saying all the above I want to share with you last week excitement, the making of our own olive oil ! we have 7 very old olive trees, we don't know their exact age, but my hubby says they are for sure more than a 100 years old ! all except one are "syrian olives" , they are green and bitter and have a high percentage of oil in them, it's the most common olive species in Israel going back thousands of years.
The olives are generally ready to harvest around October-November, the exact time varies according what you plan to do with them, if you want to pickle them you have more freedom, and the time is normally earlier, especially if you don't want them to turn black but keep the bright green color. If you are making oil there is a popular perception that its best to wait for the first rain of the season. It will wash them on the outside and nourish them with some more liquidity from the inside.
Last week we finally had this year first rain so we decided it's finally time to harvest the olives, since we didn't have a lot of olives this year we had to find partners to go to press the olives with, there is a minimum quantity you should reach and our estimation was we won't reach it.
Since we estimated the quantities are not that high, we decided to harvest them on our own. In order to get a high quality of oil (low acidity level) you have to press the oil as closer to the harvest time as possible, around 24 hours is best, which creates a very pressing time frame.
We began at dawn on Monday with a nasty eastern dry wind blowing in our faces, just me and my hubby and mother earth... ha ah ! it wasn't easy physically and my arms are full of scratches, but it was an adventure :) as the day progressed we realized we may not finish by sunset, luckily so did our neighbours that we were planned to go press the olives with. So the next day began again at dawn harvesting the remaining olives, a few more hours and we were done, waiting for our neighbours so we can join the harvest with theirs and go press the oil.
Early afternoon we drove together to the oil presser, the olives were put in line and we had to wait a few hours for our turn. in case you were wondering you can't pre schedule , ha ha ... The place was full of families bringing in their harvest, coming in with their olives, leaving with jugs full of oil ! since this was our first time I don't know how it works in other places, but where we went we were able to follow our own olives through the whole journey, from when they are washed, mashed, stirred, separated from the water and eventually you get to fill in by yourself the jugs with the oil.
A small but fun tribute is a small table with bowls in which you can put your olive oil and deep in it fresh pita bread from the bakery across the street, our olive oil turned marvesoly green, spicy and stingy just the way we love it !
On the self sufficient side, we hope this oil will last for most of the year, fingers crossed ...
I know I said no wire crochet on this post, but going over the photos I couldn't resist putting together an "Olive harvest" wires combo listing ...
Love,
Yoola
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