It's olive picking time...

This year is going to be an exceptionally good olive year. In the 5 years we are here on Mallorca I have never seen so many olives on the trees. The past few days we have been picking our olives and today we will continue with it. I estimate that we will have around 175 kilos, of which about half will be wild olives and the other half cultivated olives. Wild olives are much smaller and the actual meat on the fruits is relatively far less compared with the cultivated ones. But they say that the olive oil of the wild olives is far superior to the cultivated ones. And I can understand why; all our wild olives are black, ripe, falling already from the trees.

How not to pick olives?
Picking by hand, one by one is not the way. Stupid enough I did it this way a few years back when I was determined to have our own olive oil. After 3 days picking the olives by hand, one by one I had a lousy 30 kilos while I needed the minimum of 100 kilos, otherwise the factory would not process the olives. I was able though to join a batch of someone else and we got 5 liters of a cloudy green oil. After storing it for a few months in a dark place it clears and the oil was very tasty - like freshly cut grass, so we used it solely for salads, not cooking.

So how should you pick olives?
Spread a large net under the olive tree and use a rake on a stick to brush out the olives. The net should be a bit larger than the actual drip line of the tree as the olive can be a bit jumpy. I guess there must be millions of olives on the wild trees we have and as soon as you start brushing the branches it rains olives.

Our own batch of olives
If you have over 200 kilos of olives you can get your own batch, not combined with the olives of others. In order to reach this quantity we need about 30 kilos more than we have from our own trees. 6 Kilos comes from 1 friend who has planted 16 young trees last year and the other 25+ or so will come from another friend.

Q&A
Q: Are there green and black olives?
A: Yes and no, green olives are not fully ripe yet. All olives will get black eventually

Q: How many kilos for 1 liter of olive oil?
A: You need about 6 kilos for 1 liter.

Q: Why is cold pressed olive oil better?
A: Heating it up will extract more oil from the olives, but it destroys the flavors and aromas.

Q: What means 'first cold pressed' or 'virgin' olive oil?
A: Virgin refers to the first round of pressing, after this a second round is normally done, heating it up to over 80 degrees Celsius.

It's now Saturday and on Monday we will go to the oil pressing company. Of course I will take some more photos and write a new blog post about it.