Events. Night harvesting or collecting is standard practice in the production of green or early-harvest olives.
When should olives be harvested?
Most olives are ready to harvest when the juice turns cloudy, at the “green ripe” stage in late September. They ripen to an uneven reddish-brown through November, finally darkening to the “naturally black ripe” stage by early December.
What time of year are olives harvested in Italy?
In Tuscany, the tradition of harvesting olives begins in late October/early November and usually continues until mid-December, depending on the climatic conditions in order to harvest the fruit at the optimal time.
What time of year are olives harvested in Greece?
Greece during olive season: Travellers looking for an interactive holiday and a true taste of rural living must visit Greece during the harvest season from October to December to enjoy a unique immersive experience. Greece has a long history of harvesting olives and is an olive producing country par excellence.
Can you pick olives when they are black?
The key to the olive flavor, color, and texture is the moment of harvest. Fruit can be harvested when it is green and unripe, fully ripened to black, or any stage in between. Older olive fruit can be salt-cured or dry cured to produce a salty, wrinkled product.
Can you eat olives straight from the tree?
1. Olives are inedible before they are cured. Many people don’t know that olives are actually inedible when they are first picked. Raw olives straight from the tree contain oleuropein, an extremely bitter compound that makes olives completely unpalatable.
Can you pick olives off the tree and eat them?
Olives are delicious fruit that can be collected from trees or bushes. Typically harvested in the late summer, freshly picked olives have a bitter taste at first. Traditionally, olives are cured in a brine, or a solution of salt and water, to remove their bitterness.
How do they harvest olives in Italy?
How the Olive Harvest Works. Unlike many fruits, olives are removed from the tree by shaking rather than picking. Since they’re due to be flattened in the press anyway, it’s not important to take care not to bruise them. And they’re very hardy anyway.
Are olives hand picked?
Pickers will harvest the olives by hand. Usually batting all they can to the ground, then they hand pick some bunches and use ladders to get to those they cannot reach from the ground.
How do they harvest olives?
Special machines are used to shake the olive trees and make the fruit fall. Machine harvesting: in super-intensive cultivation, the most common practice is to use machinery used in vine cultivation. These machines have vibrating arms, which comb and shake the trees at the same time.
Which Greek Island has the most olive trees?
There is, however, one green Greek island, Corfu. It is said to have 2 million olive trees. We once were fascinated by the Greek island of Corfu, way up top left on the map of Greece, almost in Albania.
How are olives harvested in Crete?
But most olives in Crete are harvested by hand, using the hand rakes to free them from the branches to fall onto the nets. From here, they are gathered and placed in bins. While gathering the olives, the harvesters try to filter out as many leaves and bits of stem as possible.
How do they pick olives in Greece?
They use the traditional method, in which nets are laid around trees to catch the falling olives. Long sticks are then used to strike the branches and knock off any stubborn olives. Guests are invited to ask questions and learn about the olive harvesting process.
What do you do with olives after you pick them?
Olives need to be pickled following their harvest. Pick the olives when they nearly ripe, when they have begun to change colour from green to pinkish purple but are not fully black.
What do you do with olives once picked?
Green olives, which are young, immature olives, can be cured in water, which removes the bitter taste of the raw fruit. They will have a fresh, nutty flavor and firm texture. After a week or so of water curing, they are stored in a pickling brine, which adds a salty flavor.
Do you pit olives before curing?
You can choose now to slit your olives, or leave them whole. Slitting each olive will allow the water and salt to penetrate it faster and remove the bitterness. If you leave them whole, they’ll need to sit in a brine a lot longer.
Why are black olives in cans?
The end product is raw, cured and crisp, olives. The short of it is — black olives are “always” in a can because the canning process is what creates the desired sweetness; and green olives are “always” in a jar because the final product is expected to be a crispy raw olive, not a cooked one.
Why are fresh olives bitter?
A luscious-looking olive, ripe off the sun-warmed tree, is horrible. The substance that renders it essentially inedible is oleuropein, a phenolic compound bitter enough to shrivel your teeth. The bitterness is a protective mechanism for olives, useful for fending off invasive microorganisms and seed-crunching mammals.
What happens if you eat raw olives?
When eaten raw, olives are extremely bitter and, for all intents and purposes, completely inedible. Not only is the texture completely different from what you’ll find after they’ve been processed (they’re more mealy and mushy), they also contain a substance called oleuropein that makes them bitter.
How long will olives last after picking?
You must utilize the olives within three days of harvest. If they sit any longer, the olives will oxidize and “sour.” So, if you have a lot of olives, you may want to enlist some olive picking friends and allot a whole day.
How do you prepare olives after picking from a tree?
How To Cure Olives At Home
- Place your picked olives in a food grade container.
- Pour your brine over the olives to cover.
- Loosely seal a lid over the container and place in your pantry.
- Leave the olives for 3 weeks to ferment and then tighten the lid.
- After 2-3 months your olives will be ready to eat.