Making Olive Oil

We have 4 olive trees, I don't eat olives, so what do we do with all the fruit?



A number of years ago we decided to pick our olives and take them to a friends farm for pressing into olive oil.  We have not bought olive oil since and the best thing is we know exactly what has gone into our oil and where it has come from.


It is a laborious job picking the olives, but time passes quickly when you pick with friends.  We now have a small community who we pick with and then pool our olives into one big batch for pressing.




I bought this wonderful apron a few years ago from a market and it has made picking the olives a lot easier.  I have both hands free for picking and can just load the apron up to be emptied into our picking crates.


After pressing we decant our oil into upcycled bottles (my husband eagerly helps with emptying the wine bottles :))

We use our oil for almost all our cooking and it is delicious as a dip with some bread and dukkah.


My helper
4