Olio Nuovo!

Well thank goodness we picked our olives last week. Since last Saturday the weather has been dreadful and windy and if we had waited a little longer we probably wouldnt have had any left to pick.

At Casa Colleverde we have an old olive grove which over the last two years we have given a good prune in the hope that we would get an improved crop.The trees had been left to their own devices for far too long with the result that though we have had few olives and have very tall trees we do have lots of wild flowers!

Last autumn we gave the trees a good prune and this year we gave them some organic fertiliser after which things looked good in May with lots of flowers and of these a lot seemed to set. But you shouldnt count your olives too early.

In June we had a week of very windy weather and then a hot dry summer - 3 months without rain.Come the end of October I had to put my glasses on to find the olives. We had about 7 trees with a good number on and the other 180 trees with hardly any. Oh well.

Here in our part of Liguria nets are tied under the trees to collect olives as they fall before picking starts in earnest. If only we could afford this luxury and investment in nets!

The weather was forecast good last week until Friday so we set to and picked them all - about six hours work for the two of us and Sam who watched. At the end we had 36kg of Olives and got 5 litres of green liquid gold extra virgin cold pressed olive oil. Yummy!