Olive Harvest 2017 Part 02

Puglia, Italy. Sunday 12-November-2017.

The second pass through our trees to pick the later ripening olives. Over the last few years various friends have come out from the UK to help with the harvest. This year it was a full set of friends plus one mum.

Planning session in the local Cisternino pub, Diaulicchie.

The harvest went much as Part 01 but yielded more per tree: 60 kg from four trees as opposed to 26 kg from five.

When we were done we went and harvested our nearest neighbours' trees and reaped another 20 kg. Olives of all different sizes and ripeness.

The happy pickers: Mark (me), Tony, Terri, Gavin, Tania, Kate, Christine, Nigel, Mary (photographer).

We delivered the olives round to our friend Mino in the nick of time just as his first batch was on its way to the press. That meant we were able to collect our own oil in time for the return drive to the UK. The yield from our batch was 14% so that's 11 litres. Excellent.

Harvest over, we took our friends for a trip to see some gnarly trees down on the coast. These are truly extraordinary, ancient looking trees.

Then a dip in the Adriatic has become a tradition with the hardier members of the party - which does not include me.

"It's lovely once you're in" they claim. I'll not put that to the test.

One final harvest before we set off: lemons from our tree on the apartment terrace. Still a little green but they may ripen some more off the tree.

That's it apart from close down of the properties and packing up ready for the long drive home and our return next year.

Olive Harvest 2017 Part 01

Puglia, Italy. Saturday 04-November-2017

This year was a unique two-part harvest. We have two types of trees: five smaller trees with large black olives which ripen early November and four larger trees with small green olives which start to turn black late November.

Previous years have always been a compromise. When we flew out for a weekend to harvest we either came early and picked a good crop of the black olives and smaller, lower yield, green olives or came later for a good crop of green/black olives but lost the early ripeners to windfall.

Now we are retired and able to spend more time in Puglia we were there over the full harvest period. Another contributing factor is having two neighbours with whom we could combine our olives for the press. The local press has a minimum batch of 220 kg, we are lucky to reach 100 kg. Our friends' neighbour was due to pick and press imminently so we harvested the first batch.

The crates, nets and rakes.

Spreading the nets in preparation.

Plum, juicy olives.

Raking out of the trees onto the nets.

As they fall.

Herded olives ready to pick out leaves and twigs.

Approx 26 kg ready to go to the press.

While at the local tyre shop we saw a large 220 kg crate as used by the press on the back of an Ape. No need for a jack with this, the owner simply held it up while the wheel was changed..

When our neighbour's oil came back from the press a few days later we received two 1 litre tins. Very happy with that. Murky, as it is unfiltered, also more than a little peppery on the back of the throat. Give it a month or two to settle and mellow and it will be ready to use.

Next up the "team" out for the main harvest...

Olive Harvest 2016

Puglia, Italy.

Another wet summer, another lost harvest. Because of the summer rains the olives had rotted and dropped, rather like 2014. Only those who harvested early got any reasonable crop but we understand that the acidity was poor and may have been too high to technically count as "extra virgin". Extra-virgin olive oil is required to have no more than 0.8% free acidity (Wikipedia).

Not a single olive to be harvested on our nine trees and we had three disappointed friends who came to help with the harvest.  Still not as bad as our friend Mino who has 150 trees and 11 friends over from the UK.

Nothing for it but to eat, drink and do the tourist thing. Over the week we went out for four excellent meals of very different styles:

• Arrosteria del Vicoletto (Cisternino). A fornello pronto - basically a butcher where you choose your meat, they cook it in an wood oven and serve with baked potato and salad and wine by the jug. A mixture of chops, sausage and bombette - meat balls available in a variety of meats, flavours and seasonings.
• Il Cortiletto (Speziale) - we visited this trattoria a couple of years ago with Nigel and he was keen to re-visit so we booked without telling him, as a surprise. The dining room is the size of someone's living room, there cannot be more that 20 covers. They have a chalk board menu of the day and it is freshly cooked and changing every day. A real gem.
• Osteria Sant'Anna (Cisternino) - the best restaurant in Cisternino and an obvious choice to celebrate our friends Tony and Terri's 39th anniversary. The food is excellent and the ambience is stylish without being too formal with lovely stone-vaulted ceilings. 
• Osteria del Porto (Savelletri) - on our way back to the airport we stopped in Savelletri and ate in this harbour-side restaurant. We had eaten there before so knew it was good and, despite it being 2:30, they were still able to serve us.

Pomodoro al filo

These air dried tomatoes on a string are an essential ingredient for a really authentic orecchiette con cime di rapa [recipe]. Seeing them in the local supermarket I snapped up a bunch and made the dish for supper the following day. Very tasty.

During the daytime we did visits to several of the lovely towns in the area.

Martina Franca. A beautiful city with lots of baroque architecture.

Ceglia Messapica. Our first visit to this town and it was a pleasant surprise. The area has a reputation for poverty and crime especially if you live out in the countryside where the risk of burglary is not inconsiderable. However there is a fair amount on money being invested in the area including public work in the town to improve facilities. Word is that it is up and coming.

Ceglia Messapica - The castle

Ceglia Messapica - The castle courtyard

Ceglia Massapica - Streets

What impressed me was the "suburbs". A typical arrangment for towns in the area is a historic centre on a hill top, full of characterful, winding, narrow lanes, surrounded by a ring of ugly, modern, concrete apartment blocks on the slopes. Here the streets surrounding the old city walls are, themselves, old and full of chararacter making for a more charming aspect.

Egnazia excavations and museum - over the years we have revisited this fascinating site many times. New areas are being uncovered including a very impressive set of public baths. The signage has improved as well with lots of explanatory boards, The museum has also been been given a makeover and now is less text heavy and more visual displays covering the evolution of the site.

Egnazia - forum

Alberobello - no pictures as we've been there so many times. It is a must see for first-timers to the area.

Polignano a Mare - a pretty port often featured in brochures for the area. Even in the dark it was worth breaking our journey to the aiport for an evening stroll.

Trullo Azzurro: beautifully restored trullo in delightful, secluded valley near Locorotondo, Puglia, Italy. Available to rent on a per week basis, sleeps 8-10. For more information visit http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/trulloazzurro

Olive Harvest 2015

Locorotondo, Puglia, Italy. Saturday 07-November-2015.

The best harvest ever both in terms of quantity and quality.  Previous years we have harvested in the middle of November. We have two sets of trees with black and green olives respectively. The black ones ripen earlier so generally many have fallen to the ground by harvest time and we pick mostly the green variety. This year we went for the first weekend of November and as a result harvested many more black olives which were looking in prime condition.

We persuaded six of our friends to take a long weekend and help us with the harvest, not that they took a lot of persuading.

We flew out on a Thursday; Friday it was pouring with rain so no harvest. Saturday was clear so a-harvesting we went.

With eight of us I was not expecting the harvest to take long, normally three hours is enough. This time it took most of the day, partly because of the bumper crop and partly because of a leisurely lunch.

We worked in pairs, two to a tree and were most meticulous harvesting every last olive. We have a multi-function ladder that can be configured as a platform so I did the upper branches while Nigel here did the lower branches - teamwork!

We only have four nets and four crates so we had to co-opt one of the under-bed storage crates to hold the overflow. We forgot to weigh the haul but it easily hit the 100kg mark.

The olives went off to one of our neighbours for pressing along with his harvest. We do not meet the 220kg minimum pressing quantity so we combine ours with his. Since it is a batch process we know that the oil we get back is made, at least in part, from our olives.

The work done we relaxed with a pizza party. We hired in a pizza chef who brings all the makings and fires up our oven.

Part of the fun is having a go at making your own pizza. Creating an even, circular base from a ball of dough is much harder than it looks. The dough is slow-risen for three days and is incredibly elastic, it keeps springing back.

We were joined by two sets of neighbours so it was quite the party. Mino appointed himself pizza judge awarding points for shape and thinness to much hilarity.

The weather was sunny enough that a trip to the coast for a seaside lunch required a pre-lunch dip for the hardier souls. Not me. Too darned cold in the water. Sod that for a game of soldiers.

Tony is a great real ale aficionado so on our previous visit we had tracked down a source of Puglian artisanal beers.

Good food, good wine, good company, great harvest. What more could one ask for?

Olive Harvest 2014

The final visit each year is closing up Trullo Azzurro for the winter and harvesting our olives. I had been hoping for a good harvest this year but the weather had other ideas.

Up till now the harvest has alternated between, typically, 35 kg and 90 kg. This was due to be a good year but the summer had been very wet and the olives were very poor quality - a combination of mushy fruits and damage caused by insects encouraged by damp conditions. We did not know this at the time and harvested as per Plan A.

We lay the nets down and raked the olives using fingers, hand rakes or rakes on poles.

We then 'herded' the olives into the crates picking out the leaves and lumps of clay.

We ended up with about 35 kg of olives. We then took them round to our friends to add to their harvest for pressing together and then learned the bad news; they were thinking of not even bothering to harvest as the quality was so poor.

We had already paid for hold luggage on RyanAir so we went round to the local olive press and bought 10 litres of this year's harvest to bring home as a consolation prize.

It was an opportunity to show our friends the presses at work - starting with the minimum 220 kg that you need to get olives pressed (which is why we need to put our smaller harvest in with our neighbours).

The traditional cold press process starts with grinding the olives, stones and all, into a gritty pulp; the millstones are just visible top left. The pulp is then layered between raffia-type, circular mats.

When sufficient matts are piled up the whole lot is put under a hydraulic press and the oil is slowly squeezed out.

The oil is then stored in stainless steel cans that look remarkably like milk churns.

The rest of the weekend went as planned - lots of vacu-sacs filled with linens and duvets keeping them dry for the winter and general tidying.

We also discovered an excellent new trattoria thanks to a recommendation from our friends Chris and John: Il Cortiletto a short drive away in Speziale near Fasano. We managed the full anti-pasti, primi, secondi and dessert and they were all excellent.

Thursday and Friday were very wet, Saturday morning stayed dry for the harvest and Sunday was lovely - we had breakfast and lunch outside. We were sorry to go home and the next trip is Easter to open up for the 2015 season.

Trullo Azzurro: beautifully restored trullo in delightful, secluded valley near Locorotondo, Puglia, Italy. Available to rent on a per week basis, sleeps 8-10. For more information visit http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/trulloazzurro

Olive Harvest 2013

This year we were joined by our friend Kate for the olive harvest. Last year was a bumper crop of 93 kg and, following the rule of alternating harvests, we were expecting a modest harvest this year. Mother nature ran true to form and delivered a meagre 29.5 kg - scarcely 3 litres of oil so no Christmas present olive oil for the family this year.

Kate harvesting

Mary harvesting

Kate and the final haul

As previously, we tipped our haul in with neighbour Mino's crop as we are below the minimum pressing quantity of 220 kg at the local cooperative olive press. Next spring we will collect our oil for cooking through 2014; organic, cold pressed extra virgin olive oil - apply liberally.

Trullo Azzurro: beautifully restored trullo in delightful, secluded valley near Locorotondo, Puglia, Italy. Available to rent on a per week basis, sleeps 8-10. For more information visit http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/trulloazzurro