We’ve shared some bits of this story, but now that the harvest has been fully completed, thought we’d share the whole story with pictures and videos.

At a recent visit we had looked at some of the trees and it seemed they had more olives that we recalled on previous visits. We reached out to Oxana and Sergio, but they concluded it was about the same as previously. We met them for coffee and discussed the olives. Sergio estimated the trees were well over a hundred years old. He indicated they had not been maintained over the last 5 years, meaning they were not being pruned which is a vital part of the process for healthy trees. Without pruning they just grow big and produce less olives, ultimately could mean they just eventually die.

Sergio also shared that these trees are unique in that they are maintained without pesticides, in a quality area and so the olive oil will be considered organic, locally grown, high quality as it’s not a blend of olives from other regions or countries.

We asked Sergio to provide us with the numbers, in terms of the cost to harvest. After reviewing and discussing the trees we decided to move forward with the harvest this year, even though the output would likely be small for the number of trees. So we told them to move ahead with harvest and that we’d also be pruning the trees in spring, this first pruning would be pretty severe and would likely mean no output next fall as the trees would be recovering. Therefore, it would mean that in two seasons, we’d see what the trees could really do. Keep in mind that conditions like rain, heat, soil can all affect each season so we are subject to some annual variables.

Sergio’s estimate was that we’d get about 48 litres of oil from about 600kg of collected olives.

The process basically works like this:

Hire labor to rake the trees. 2-3 day process with a couple of workers.

Olives fall to the ground on blankets.

Olives are collected and placed in large bins.

Bins are collected and transported to the mill. The mill will take either a few litres or a small fee to process the olives. Sergio and Oxana are there the entire time watching the process.

Olives are poured in, separated from twigs and leaves.

Olives continue into the cold press process.

Oil is then poured into the cans for storage.

Cans are brought back to the house.

As it turned out, we got almost double the olives and ultimately the oil. You’ll see in the photos, we have a large 50 litre can, and 19 five-litre smaller cans. That’s 145 litres of high quality olive oil. This will surely allow us to last the two seasons and still have plenty for guests.

Below are many photos and videos from this season’s process, enjoy!!

From these larger cans we can move to smaller 1 or 2 litre cans for other uses.