How to Harvest Olives for Olive Oil

Ready boys and girls? Get out your ladders, plastic rakes and fine mesh netting because it's the middle of fall and the olives shouldn't be allowed to get much riper.  You wouldn't want the olive oil to taste bitter, would you?

just VASGO presents:   How to Harvest Olives for Olive Oil

#1: Set up two very large, fine mesh nets under your olive trees.  Best to buy some large plastic clips to keep them secured together.  That last thing you want to do is let those savory fruits fall through and have to pick them up by hand.

#2: Make sure the olives have a place to gather if your trees are planted on a slope.  Remember, the purpose is to make sure you collect the olives, not just see how far they can roll down the hill.

#3: Grab a plastic rake and start pulling those olives down!  Be careful not to step on them though.  First of all, it makes the bottom of your shoes dirty.  Secondly, you do not want to press already-squished olives.  Once the meat on the small fruits is exposed to oxygen, flavors change and eventually things become bitter.  Or more simply stated, not good tasting.

#4: Get up in the tree or on your ladder and get every last one of those olives off the tree.

#5: Admire all of your hard work accomplished.

#6: Start from the top of the slope and begin pushing the olives down the hill for collection.

It never hurts to remove some of the leaves and branches while pushing them all together.

#7: Carefully pour the olives into bins.  When full, you will use these to transport them safely to the commercial olive pressing company.

#8: Load them up on your wagon to make transporting up the hill easier.

#9: Spill your olives that you worked so hard to gather carefully.

#10: Call everyone over and beg them for help to pick up all the olives you spilled.

#11: Ask this guy to stop making fun of you for spilling his olives.

#12: Wait a few days for the owners of the olive trees to let you know they had the olives pressed and the bottle of oil that was promised to you is waiting for pick up.

And that's it!  So easy!

Olive harvesting is good exercise, good family fun and relatively inexpensive depending on where you have to travel to reach the farm.  For example, my round trip train ticket to this plot of land in Umbria only cost me 10 Euro.  All you have to do is look online to see who needs your help!

And now, a short video of what it was like out there.