We live next door to a 12-year old Olive grove. Converted from an old sheep property, Kirwin is the home of Green Mountain Olives (named for Mt. Carcalgong, aka Green Mountain, which sits to the south of the farm). Because of this connection, we've become quite fascinated with Olives, and have been learning all we can about growing, picking, pickling and pressing them. We are also supplied by our inlaws next door with a steady stream of delicious farm-fresh olive oil, which goes on and into everything we eat. Extra-virgin, cold pressed, grassy as a field, with notes of pepper at the back of the taste. Mmmmmmmm.
Olives are, in two words, incredibly cool. Native to coastal bits of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa, the Olive has provided sustenance for everyone from the Chalcolithic Period (that being about 4 millenium BC) onward. All the bestsellers of the ancient world mention them - Homer's Odyessy, the Bible, the Qur'an, and good ol' Pliny the elder. In Greece particularly, there are multiple examples of Olive trees which are over one thousand years old, which still provide around 30kg of fruit per year. Because aside from being incredibly cool and also rather tasty, Olives are also incredibly tough little buggers, and will survive when prettymuch everything (and everyone) else falls off its perch due to drought, war, famine or whatever else fate dishes up.
This year, olive harvest was around May-ish.. late autumn. All other farmwork at Kirwin ground to a halt and everyone in the family (including us) was picking, picking, picking olives. It's hard work, and usually everyone from far and wide gets roped into helping. Sometimes relatives even get offered a weekend in the country and find themselves suddenly given a bucket and a hat, and plunked out in the field, in charge of a row of Manzanillos. The olives are hand-picked from the tree (or jiggled off with a giant tickling machine - true) and sent to Rylestone olive press to be squished into oil. Or, if they're to be pickled/fermented to eat whole (called 'table olives' in the industry), then they are hand-picked to avoid bruising and fermented in brine. We are still learning the basics of how to make a really, really good pickled olive, but i think we've got the basics right. Last autumn, Nick made a little video on how to pickle olives, which covers the basic why and how of the olive pickling process. And we've also written a How to pickle olives article with some basic recipes and techniques.
Olives are a truly multi-purpose tree, and a very good sustainable food source. Coming as they do from craggy, windswept seasides with lots of salt in the air, they are very forgiving of conditions involving little water, lots of sun and little attention. They are also prettymuch frost-proof - although if they get an unseasonable bit of frost when flowering they might not fruit so well that year. A couple of Olive varieties, most notably Kalamatas (which we have a grove of next door), can be eaten right off the tree if the fruit is left to fully ripen and ferment on its own (which takes about a year, I think). At this point you can pick them and eat them like grapes. Looking forward to trying that.
So I'm currently collecting all the resources i can find on how to pickle, prepare and otherwise use olives and olive oil, with the intention of making a little 'olive specific' archive on this here site. I've been having visions of olives making their way into every corner of Milkwood cuisine, however the sweet end of things is something I am a bit cautious of. Maybe if they were dipped in super-dark, bitter chocolate. Maybe.... If anyone's got any trusted recipies or techniques that they'd like to share, come hither! i say....
Thanks for the olive lesson. I just got home from the day job and seeing all that open land in the intro mellowed me out. My love of olives kept me intrigued.
