"Les Norton" wrote in message
...
"col" wrote in message
...

"Les Norton" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I recently moved into a home with a huge Olive tree in the back
garden.

When/how should I pick the olives ?
And how do I process them for table olives or olive oil ?

Any help much appreciated.

Cheers,
Les.



Les,

Unless you are really keen and have an olive press etc, give up on the
oil
idea, but if you feel the need let the fruit ripen till fully black then
pick them. Press the fruit in your new olive press and run the juice
into
containers, the oil will separate and float to the top then you decant
it
off into bottles. It takes many kilos of fruit to get a bottle of oil
so
keep pressing. You will start to realise why good olive oil costs so
much -
but oh the taste.
Dry bread dipped in fresh oil, a glass of wine and Dean Martin on the CD
player - don't forget the invite.

Pick your olives for table use either when they have changed to light
yellow
/ green or any of the ripening stages through to fully purple / black.
It's
a personal taste thing although the riper ( is riper a word?) they are
the
less bitter they start out thus the quicker the process.
Pick the fruit by hand to avoid brusing and soak the fruit in fresh
water
for 14 days changing the water every day ( 20L plastic buckets with lids
are
good for this). Then make a brine solution with enough salt desolved in
it
to make a raw egg float ( I think it is about 100g per litre but the egg
thing is a traditional indicator). Soak the olives in this for 2 weeks
then
change the brine. (The timing isn't real important providing you leave
them
long enough to leach out the bitterness). Do this a couple of times then
start tasting them. Once they taste good to you you tranfer them to
jars
with oil and flavorings (lemon peel, garlic, cardoman etc) or leave them
in
a bulk container of brine with several cloves of garlic and a handfull
of
bay leaves etc. If leaving them in brine you float some olive oil ontop
to
prevent mould developing and just scoop out as many as you need at a
time.

There are heaps of variations on this but all of the safe methods
involve
soaking out the bitterness and preserving in brine. Avoid the methods
using
caustic soda unless you know what you are doing and are in a real hurry.

Oh, I nearly forgot.. Then you send me a jar and I tell everyone what a
great job you did with those olives.

Cheers
Col


Col,

Thanks for the great advice, I'll give it a try.
The olives have been the same green colour since I moved in 4 months ago.
Some of the ones that fall on the ground start going purple/black in
colour.
Will the ones on the tree start changing colour, or only after I pick them
?
Is there a particular month that I should start picking them ?

Cheers,
Les.



Les,

If some of them are starting to fall then go ahead and pick them all now, it
is about the right time anyway.
It may be that your particular variety doesn't go evenly black so you could
pick half of the crop now and wait a bit longer to see what happens.
Personally I would just leave a branch unpicked to seewhat happens but
harvest the rest so that you don't lose them all in a storm or some other
event.

I am not sure if they will ripen more when picked, I don't think so but then
I have been wrong before.
I have been blessed with a flock of cockatoos that saved me the dilemma of
when to pick my two trees, they ate every single one. I sure hope they were
good.

Happy pickling Les

Col