Olive harvest 2020

In Tuscany, the tradition of harvesting olives begins in late October/early November and usually continues until mid-December, some people (although these days a minority) even holding out until January.

Although our olive trees are what you might call 'productively challenged' (of all the people we know our trees are the smallest, weakest, least productive), we were keen to do a harvest this year.

When we arrived here at our property 6 years ago our olive trees were all in a pretty sorry state and only three of them bore fruit. The story we have been told is that several (tens of) years ago, someone cut them all down for firewood, and since then the trees have slowly been re-growing (and are therefore very small and spindly compared with many others in the area). In addition to that, there was a very hard winter during the 1980s, which badly affected many of the olive trees in the region - so we guess that it may have been the combination of the hard winter in the 80s with the firewood-obsessed occupant that led our trees to the sorry state in which we found them. Over the last six years we have done our best to give the trees some TLC - clearing the grass and bramble from around them and giving them an annual pruning. We have watched them slowly start to gather strength year on year, and this year there were more trees bearing olives (although not necessarily more than a handful per tree) than ever before since we arrived.

Last year, there was no olive harvest at all - an olive fly problem caused the fruit to drop from the trees before harvesting could even get started. Very few people locally had a harvest and only the few that had used insecticides had any fruit to pick and press. The olive fly is a species of fruit fly that lays its eggs during the summer (when the olive has reached 7–8 mm in diameter), the female making a puncture in the skin of the olive, and depositing an egg inside. When they hatch, the larvae feed on the flesh of the olive. The population of olive fly (and thus the degree of damage caused) varies from year to year, with various environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, etc. impacting the numbers.

This year things looked promising - the olive trees were full of their delicate white flowers in the spring, which duly turned into fruits over the course of summer - and, having missed the harvest last year, we wanted to maximise our chances of having some form of harvest this year, so we experimented with spraying our olive trees with kaolin - a basic solution of clay mixed with water (which then dries on the tree) - to protect them from the olive fly. Supposedly the light coating of clay is enough to deter the fly from puncturing the olive to lay her eggs (at least that's the theory).

In previous years we have combined forces with our friends David & Sarah and done a joint harvest, but this year our calendars didn't quite match up and with our olive trees starting to show signs of dropping fruit, we were keen to get ours picked and pressed as soon as possible, even though it would mean having a very small yield. Stuart booked an appointment at the olive mill and was told that the minimum pressing weight was 250kg of olives. Well, we knew that would be impossible to reach, but we wanted to pick our olives to see how much we had, and we hoped we would be able to sneak in at the mill with a smaller volume that officially allowed.

So we started picking on 31 October, our friends Paul & Kathy coming along to help, but leaving Stuart on catering duties due to his injured elbow and hip. The three of us started from the very top of the terraces, carefully seeking out every single olive (and on some of the trees it really was a case of finding a single olive, or maybe 4 or 5 max). With such small yields we picked into upturned umbrellas or straight into the olive crate, there being no need to use nets, and before lunchtime we had reached more than halfway down the terraces towards the house. This was a bit worrying, but picking rate soon slowed down as we reached some of the larger trees that actually had a fairly decent crop, and we even needed to get the nets out.

It felt as if we were picking lots, so to end the day with just two full crates (~50kg) was a bit of a disappointment - but, reflecting on it later that evening we realised that the first time we picked our olives (back in 2017) we had harvested a total of 50kg, so to have got that amount from the poorer-producing trees, with the bigger yielding trees yet to be started, was actually not so bad after all.

The next morning we were joined by Paul, Kathy, Donatella, David and Sarah, and with an army of pickers we quickly stripped the remaining trees - including our star-producer on the lawn - before lunchtime, allowing us to enjoy a leisurely lunch (the catering department (Stuart) had made a delicious spicy pumpkin soup followed by rounds of pizza in the pizza oven).

By the end of the day we had a total of just under five full crates, which we calculated left us at around 120kg. I was a little disappointed, having hoped that we would at least reach 150kg, as we had done the last time we picked in 2018 (which was a bumper year for absolutely everybody, so likely that such a high yield two years ago was unrepresentative), but on reflection it was good to have picked all the trees and positive to have had olives on many more trees than previously.

All that the numero 182 olive trees could give.

We finished picking on 1st November, but our appointment at the mill wasn't until 3rd November and, having mulled things over the next day, and admitted that we were a little disappointed, we took up the kind offer of our friend Sue to go and pick some of her olives to top things up. So, after a morning in the office, we had an early lunch and headed over to Sue's in Pescia with our nets and rakes. After just three hours of two of us picking we had filled two crates (compare that with the first day of our harvest when it took a whole day with three of us picking to fill two crates and you get some idea of the yield on Sue's trees - it wasn't a case of Paul, Kathy and me picking slowly at ours but rather a reflection of how much more difficult and time consuming it is to pick when yields are low, whereas when the trees are literally dripping in olives they can be stripped off very quickly and efficiently). So, happy with the addition, we thanked Sue and took our extra olives home, calculating that we now would have around 175kg of olives.

The following day was (as forecast) wet - so we were glad we had gone to Sue's when we did. With our appointment at the olive mill at 5:15PM, we loaded the crates into the car, Stuart spent the afternoon washing out the oil canister, and then we set off, unsure but hopeful that they would press our paltry offering.

Ready for the off.

On arrival at the mill, the young lad who works there looked at our crates and said "is that it?". We ashamedly confirmed that we didn't have any more than that, and he duly took them off to be weighed. He came back to us with a weight of 165kg and explained that we would have to pay the same as for the minimum weight, which we readily agreed to, just relieved that he wasn't going to send us and our olives away.

We tipped our meagre load into the hopper and watched as they bounced off up the conveyor belt to be washed and then on to the masher.

The olive mill was quieter than in previous years, but we were allowed to wait while the olives were pressed, just being careful to stand a respectable distance away from other people, and when the oil was ready to be collected only one of us was allowed to go and stand by the tap to fill our container.

The olive mill was quieter than we've seen it before. (Sadly those are not our heap of olives in the almost-overflowing hopper.)

As we waited we watched other people come and go with sackloads of olives and I found myself feeling quite downhearted and somewhat embarrassed at our seven measly crateloads. Nevertheless, an hour and 20 minutes later we were leaving the mill with 18.6 litres of fully organic extra virgin olive oil, fresh off the press. The resa - the figure that everyone here is keen to compare (weight of oil produced as a percentage of the weight of olives that went in) - was 10.3%. Not great, but we had heard that it has been quite low across the board this year, so not too disappointing either. Besides which, unless you are mass-producing oil for sale, the resa really isn't terribly important (although that doesn't stop the locals asking and comparing figures). For us, the important thing is that we have 18.6 litres of our own olive oil to enjoy through the year, and that we like the taste of it. Of course, we rushed home to get the bread out and try it - still warm from the press - and I can confirm that it passed the taste test!

Liquid green/gold.