Around 8 weeks ago we FINALLY had our first ever olive harvest. Its been years and years in the making, so to say I was excited was an understatement. Not every single one of our trees are producing yet, only every 4th or so, so it wasn't a big day, only a few friends, my mum and dad, the pigs and few bottles of rose... we actually spent more time making up dance routines to "glorrrriiaaa" in the grove then physically picking, but it was a special afternoon none the less, and I will treasure it forever.
Eventually we hope to make olive oil with our harvest, but this year with only one big basket picked, it wasn't worth the trouble of getting it pressed, so instead we decided to bottle/preserve them.
Olives are a lot of work, anyone who thinks you just pick them off a tree and shove them in a jar is kidding themselves. They taste bitter and not very nice until they go through the long process of becoming jarred.
THE OLIVE PROCESS
1ST STEP
Once you've picked your olives you have to wash them throughly to get rid of any dirt or yucky things, once this is done, you have to submerge/soak them in fresh water, which has to be changed morning and night for 2 whole weeks... yes thats right, morning and night, everyday. To make this whole process easier and less of a pain in the ass, I bought some thin net laundry bags from BIGW and loaded all the olives into this, that way it was easier to lift them out everyday to change the water.
2ND STEP
Once your olives have soaked for 2 weeks, you then have to soak them for an additional 4 weeks, BUT, this time you only have to change the water once a week, and you need to add a lot of salt. Depending on how salty you want your olives to taste/the quantity you have will depend on how much salt you need to add, I went on the basis of 300g of salt per five litres of water.
3RD STEP
After your olives have soaked for 6 weeks, its time for jarring! Hooray!!
Before you start piling all your delicious little olives into their jars, you need to sterilise them. To do this, you wash them in hot hot soapy water, then rinse them thoroughly. Next you whack the jars and the lids into an oven at 160 degrees for around 20 minutes or so, or until completely dry. Take out the jars, and let them cool before adding your olives in. Be careful not to touch the insides of the jars again.
Olives can be pickled into jars will all sorts of things, you can either put them in with brine, or olive oil, along with a heap of different flavour options depending on your taste preference. We decided on olive oil, with a mix of goodies from our friends and our garden.
My friend Venessa came over during the week, and along with her delightful company she bought with her a big bag of lemons, and a big bunch of bay leaves from her garden. You best believe these made it into some of the jars. We also added in fresh garlic cloves and chilli, rosemary from our garden and some fennel seeds.
They say to leave your olives to soak for a few weeks to take in all the flavours... but I think by the end of this week ill be cracking open a jar to finally taste the fruits of our labour!
Heres hoping we will have lots of olives and oil to share with loved ones in coming years.
L xx
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