Olive Picking In Willunga
We had a great opportunity to pick Kalamata olives from Mark Webb's property in Willunga. He had too much on this year, no time to harvest and preserve himself, so he offered these olives to Ecovillagers.
A tree laden with ripe Kalamata olives
It was hot work but a lot of fun, very satisfying picking those fat juicy purple/black olives by hand. I perfected a two handed technique. We filled two buckets to the brim in about an hour, maybe less. We stripped about 4-5 trees in that time, so it was not bad, but made me ponder how many trees I would need to access to keep my family in olives (not to mention olive oil) for the year?
Our little helper, Mark's beautiful chirpy son Luca was happy to help us collect the olives, chatting away to us as we worked, so cute, we promised him a jar of olives for his labor.
Beautiful black fleshy olives. We combined the two bucket loads when we returned home in a clean plastic rubbish bin with a lid. we covered the olives with rainwater, and placed a heavy plate ontop to weigh them down, and prevent floaters, ensuring all of the olives remain in the water. Change water daily for 10 days, then put olives into saline solution, in jars with a top up of olive oil to the brim, and airtight lids. I am keen to try preserving with sea water, but Michael is less keen on the idea. I also want to try salt preserving ie. no washing. I will try a few different batches. For a variety of different methods see below.
http://www.cookeryonline.com/olives/Olive%20Pickling.html
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