This past Wednesday was our first olive harvest of the year. And what a day! The team of twelve harvesters got about 11.5 tons (23,000 pounds) of olives to press into olive oil.
How do we know when it’s time to harvest olives? We’re balancing flavor and yield to get a flavorful oil with a decent amount of oil per ton of olives harvested. Green, less ripe olives yield less oil but have a stronger flavor (more polyphenols). Mature, dark olives yield more oil but have a milder taste. On Wednesday, we picked Leccino olives and Picual. The Leccino were more ripe, the Picual were more green. Oil yield varies significantly between varieties, and is also influenced by ripeness, moisture, and extraction processed. We generally expect around 30 gallons of oil per ton.
We normally harvest olives by hand, using little rakes to comb the fruit off the trees. It’s an all hands on deck effort. You can see a video of it here. Last week, we did a modified machine harvest, which we trialed last year and found that it worked relatively well. We used the shaker that we use for almond and walnut harvesting to shake the trees, while a few folks whacked the trees with poles (another common olive harvest method). Fortunately, Andrew captured a video of the process!
When hand-harvesting, we can harvest about an acre per day. With the shaker, we did three acres with a third of the people, so nine times faster! Our ability to use the shaker depends on tree spacing. On some trees, we can only harvest by hand, but when we do have the ability to use the machine, it seems like a better option.
Time is crucial when making olive oil. The time between harvesting and pressing should be as short as possible, ideally within 12 hours. We’re very lucky to be only 10 miles up the road from the Séka Hills olive mill in Brooks. Right after harvesting, we drop off the olives at the mill, then come back in the morning to pick up our oil. Now we let it sit for the solids to settle, then it’s time to bottle up our extra virgin olio nuovo. We also need to keep harvesting olives. We have at least one, probably two, more days of harvesting.
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
Extra Reading
This week’s Real Organic Project newsletter and podcast celebrates the life of Joan Gussow, a powerful advocate for organic farming, called “the matriarch of the eat locally, think globally food movement” by The New York Times. If you haven’t heard of Joan, or even if you have, take this opportunity to learn more about her work and legacy. You can listen to (or watch) the podcast episode, featuring interviews with Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Waters, Karen Washington, and others here or read the newsletter here.
