Olives

Has anyone got olive trees on their land? Anyone with any experience of the recogida, co-operativas, etc at all?

Am trying to find my copies of Chris Stewart's books but thought I would try here too.

Tony, Shiny on the forum, had an olive grove in his last place so hopefully he'll be along soon to help. If not you could PM him. We've just got 30 trees so I'd be interested in the answers too.

I have been told that if you pay others to help with the recogida you pay 2c/kg but this seems like a oitiful amount of money to pay someone for all that hard work. Maybe there is also a percentage of the oil paid out too as recompense?

I have now found out there is a mill in Freila where you take your olives. Also that you can't remove or relocate an olive tree without permission, from who I dunno yet, and that there is a register of olive trees!

Fascinating subject it would seem.

Almonds are big money here too - just recently they were selling for 2€ per kilo. The area around me has had thousands of new trees planted in the last year.

My nearest neighbour has a small plot of olive trees and generally pays people to look after them, with a bit of money and some oil (his olives are for oil only) he also pays a chap to come with a tractor with the big umbrella on, to shake the olives off the trees Dec - Jan time. This can cause some damage to the trees though.

Caroline

I have read up on mechanical "intervention" in la recogida and think I prefer the idea of pulling them off with huge plastic forks, for the tree's sake! Plus, it sounds like a lot of hard, manual work but fun, like haytiming used to be when I was a kid.

You have just reminded me about the hoedowns we had on the Farm when I was young. Fab fun after the hay bailing had been done, which as you say was such hard work!

Before the tractor/umbrella thingy was used here last year, they used to bash the olives off the trees onto big mats on the ground. It looked like great fun, but I noticed it was mainly the women in the village that did that!

There was a big discussion in a bar in Galera the night we were there about the price of almonds. 4 guys getting quite heated about it all! One guy was clearly doing everything wrong to capitalise on it as far as the rest were concerned!

I used the bashing with a stick with my almonds, i am so glad it was only 2 trees as i was in pain with both arms and back after, hope you are younger and fitter than i am.

I won't be younger afterwards but I will surely be fitter than now?! I'll try everything once. And then pay someone to do it the next time!

sounds fair.

Hiya, how are you all doing?
I had 300 olive trees in Castillejar in an area known as Las Presas. The value of the olives dropped every year we had them. Our last crop I believe fetched 32c a kilo! Although did it mainly for the Oil!
We used to do the harvest every year with rakes and nets with a great group of friends. It was a lot of fun and hard work. Certainly didn't do it for the money! Also managed to have a constant supply of fire wood!

Hello Shiny!

Out of interest, how much oil is it possible to get from 300 trees? And were yours all the same type of olive? Did you keep any for eating? So many questions to ask you!!! Thanks for dropping by.

the price for the almonds where this year high , because the harvest in California was very bad , creating higher prices.

I've helped harvest olives once, with sticks and plastic fork things to get those that hadn't fallen down on the nets. Good fun with friends in the January sunshine, keeps you fit and a great excuse to climb trees! Almonds have gone up in price because if disease elsewhere and poor harvests, but the same may happen to the price of olives soon because of disease in Italy.......

From what my neighbour says, his olives are for oil, you can't eat them!? Maybe someone else has more info.

Like everything the price seems to rise and fall for lots of different reasons. The olives I had were all for oil however the local do eat them too with a peg on their nose! LOL! Well they do a salt water brine solution and soak the olives for 14 days or more after piercing the skins, change the solution and rinse everyday and then jar them. If I'm am honest they are an acquired taste. They improve if taken with the neighbours homebrew!

Olives always have to be processed for eating, there's no variety that can be picked and eaten straight from the tree. The processing methods vary, and the final result depends very much on the method used. No doubt the olives found in tins on supermarket shelves have undergone a much more complicated process than the ones our neighbours use, and so most people are used to a smoother, less bitter taste. Mmmmm, I love olives!

Yeah, I love Olives too washed down with Vino tinto! Mmmm