Olive Affair

I don't want to put fear into the heart of our leading olive producers but, be aware, I have decided to harvest and process my bounteous supply of olives. Well, maybe not bounteous - how about ample. Actually, even that could be disputed.

Anyway, when in the country and being the proud owner of 14 olive trees, it seems only right that you should do something with the fruit they bear. And, of course, I had been to Italy so that has to make me some kind of expert in olives - surely? I have a great friend in Australia who gave me his 'award winning' recipe for marinating olives. A good start but first things first - I had to harvest the little buggers. I nearly googled myself into extinction trying to find out when the right time was to harvest. I have four varieties of olives on my property - don't ask me the names - but all of them are small in size. By the time I figured out whether to pick them green or black or somewhere in between a few of the trees had passed their use-by date. The fruit was starting to wrinkle so I took the plunge and harvested what I had regardless of the colour.

Harvesting - ah yes!!! I had read lots of stories and spoken to a few people about how best to do this. Shake the trees with a large cloth underneath, rake the trees with a large cloth underneath, get a mechanical 'shaker' again with large cloth underneath. In the end it turned out to be "hand-raking" - a technique developed here by yours truly. For large cloth read old sheet. Being a cautious type I decided to limit myself to three largish trees. Truth be known I didn't get much fruit off the majority of the trees!

Got enough fruit for one bucket - by now some of the commercial growers amongst you will be breathing a sigh of relief. I'm all about quality not quantity I decided.

Okay - so the fruit is harvested, now onto the processing. It was back to the 'award' winning recipe. For two very boring hours I undertook quality control and slit each tiny graded olive from end to end and for seven days stright I had to change the water daily. That was a real task given my short term memory capability. Then it was into a brine solution. Off to Google again to find out how I make a brine solution of 25% salt and 75% water. One of them is a solid and the other liquid. Clearly the recipe was written by a man. Sorry to all my male followers out there. After a few days of science experiments I think I got the right equation and into the brine solution the fruit went for the next 10-12 weeks. Therein lies another challenge. Having something hanging around for that long. In this throw away society this was a new concept for me.

I have just finished bottling the babies according to the 'award winning' recipe. A taste test along the way didn't have gagging so I figured it was worthwhile going the next step. It's a further six weeks before they will, in theory, be ready for eating. If there are no further posts after October you'll know that the recipe failed dismally!!! In the meantime I am not sharing with friends or family because I don't have many of either left.

THE BEST......taking the photos of the harvest and the bottling. Perhaps I should stick to photography.

THE WORST.....scooping out the mould off the top of the bucket. According to the 'award winning' recipe this is normal. I think that's just to keep me going.

I'M LEARNING.....that I won't be a commercial threat after all - but, if this works, I may branch out into olive oil next season. Stayed tuned.