Sunday, May 15, 2011

I must say Gravatar is the nearest thing to blogger in the 'not running well stakes' Blogger is not a well site and I may be forced to use something else unless Google does some fixing fast.

Barbs and I helped to pick olives for Jude and Mary-Anne -- who have set up an olive oil press up at Killikrankie. We spent about 2 and a half hours at it probably picked about 15-20kg (I'm really not sure) of olives each and neither of us are slouches at getting stuck in... it's just an olive weighs 5 grammes and they're only picking purple and up, it's a lot olives and a lot of manual labour. The scary part is the yeild - 10-12%, and the press is not huge and can't deal with too many kg an hour (I forget but I think 25kg an hour?). It also takes several hours to clean - so even starting it for less than 50Kg is not worth the effort.. This comes under olive oil for love, because you really can't afford to do it commercially -- not without harvesting a lot faster per person, because you simply can't afford to pay the labour, and compete with the big operators. Anyway, I am curious enough to volunteer my labour in exchange I hope for some oil, and they're nice folk and working damned hard at it themselves. I suspect it will be too good to use for anything but neat where you really can taste the oil - good salad dressing etc.

Anyway - Blogger is driving me insane (slow...) and I have a sore throat and bit of a temp... so good night

4 comments:

  1. ...and I have a sore throat and bit of a temp...

    If anyone hasn't discovered it already, there is a public health epidemiology survey about the prevalence of flu in Australia. Once you register they will send you reminder emails so it's no real work on your part.

    http://www.flutracking.net/invite.html

    And Dave, get well!

    [I now have the habit of saving copies of any Blogger comments I make, because I'm finding it swallows 96% of the first comments I make. So in other words, it's driving me sane.]

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  2. I'm kind of curious about the reasoning for this pick only purple olives idea. It does seem like a heck of a lot more work that the usual pick everything and let God sort them out.

    Lets face it olive oil is a labour of love for most people. I reckon I pick about 15-20kg a day when I'm harvesting mine and I usually give up after about 3-4 days because 60kg of olives == 10L oil == 1 years supply and then some

    (and no I don't usually pick the olives continuously on those days, its more like an hour or 3 before deciding that I've got something better to do)

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  3. The annoying thing is that I seem to be hovering between sickness and health - not really going either way. And Blogger is is being a right royal PITA.

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  4. Francis, two factors (and I think neither will last past this season...) They picked their first load for their little press - 50kg minimum, 'all' getting quite a lot of green olives. They got 1)Very 'peppery'oil - not to a lot of Australian tastes 2)Lower yeild than they expected. So they've focussed their efforts (seeing as everything is being hand-picked, by themselves or volunteer-friends) on purple to black - their yeild is up about 2% and the flavor is better. This is a very little press and the yeild is way under your 10 litres per 60kg (would be more like 6 litres if they picked clean, and a bit extra if theyr're ripe) and it allows them to harvest and process steadily for weeks (by returning for a second picking) rather than getting bogged down with the crop off ten trees. I suspect, in future as volunteers get sparser and some of the glamour goes - they'll go back to picking clean with combs and nets.

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