Olive Harvest 2022

This year, we had lots of help harvesting our olives as family members traveled to Umbria from the US and Canada to give us a hand. It is good because we had a great year, with more olives than usual to pick. In addition, the weather couldn’t have been better for the harvest, with temperatures in the mid-seventies each day. It took us three days to pick all our olives, and although we had one foggy morning start, the other two days were perfect. After three days of hard work, we ended up with 2,000 pounds of olives, just under 100 liters after they were pressed at the mill. The oil was especially tasty this year, and our neighboring farms were also happy with the quantity and quality of this year’s olives.

Olive harvest starts at daybreak each day. The hardest part for me is the laying of the nets, especially on the slopes.

Joe shaking the olives from the trees.

Louie climbing into the trees to get every last olive!

Foggy start to the morning.

Our two supervisors, Zoe & Zachary.

This was just the olives picked on day one!

Mariola and Angie removing branches from the baskets.

Olive harvest lunch is always an important part of the day!

Zoe admiring our olives.

The olive mill.

A case full of gorgeous olives.

First step at the mill, weighing.

The olives are shaken to remove leaves and are washed.

Hard to believe you end up with gorgeous olive oil from this sludge!

First filter.

Waiting patiently for the process to finish.

The final product! 

 

Deborah Mele
October 2022