Picking for 2017 starts on Tuesday 6th November

Harvesting of the olives for Stroud Green Olive Oil will start at Casa della Meridiana on Tuesday morning, weather permitting. The team of olive-pickers will be Mike and Bobbie accompanied this year by two of our Stroud Green friends and neighbours, Shelley and Hugh, who will be harvesting olives for the first time.

In our own orchard we have only 12 trees, so with a spell of dry weather we should be able to complete the picking comfortably in two days. However there is a lot more to harvesting than just picking the olives from the trees. It’s going to be a busy week. First we have to check and clean all our equipment, buy new rakes, and buy tins to store the oil in.

We’ll need to visit the oil mill early to book a slot for processing the olives. This has to be done as soon as possible after the olives are taken off the trees, so it will have to be on Wednesday or Thursday. If we leave it too late, or the olives get too wet, they’ll rot or be infested by insects, so everything has to be co-ordinated fast. We should be able to pick up the oil on Friday.

If there is demand, we will need to source additional oil from neighbours. Our next door neighbour Elvira, 85, has produced artisanal oil for years, and we have bought extra supplies from her in the past. There are hundreds of families making oil in the valley and most have been harvesting and making oil using traditional methods for generations. We will taste the oil and either buy harvested olives or pressed oil at local prices.

When we start picking the olives, we’ll use nets, ladders and hand rakes - I’ll be illustrating this as we go along. And at the end of the week, we’ll be celebrating a successful harvest with a slap up meal and lashings of red wine with Italian friends at a local trattoria. Watch this space for some harvesting pictures and some excellent menu tips!