A key appeal of moving into Villa Tramontalba was to change our lifestyle, live the Tuscan dream and also take the opportunity to become olive farmers – albeit on a relatively small scale. The idea of a producing and consuming our own olive oil is so exciting.
First things first we had to prune the olives, and get them back in shape for the future. Most had overgrown meaning they were too difficult to harvest (too tall), and as such too much energy is also spent by the tree to nourish excess branches and leaves rather than grow olives. A heavy prune was due . . . little did we know how much work this involved.
Luca, the local olive pruner (and Bill Clinton lookalike) set to work and did an amazing job at giving the olives the ‘vase-like’ shape they need. Apparently a bird should be able to freely fly through between the olive branches, meaning enough sunlight can hit all of the branches which have been left. That left me and Monika with a lot of cut branches to dispose of. We were advised to burn them (quickest and easiest option) but it seemed like such a waste of really useful ‘material’. So instead we bought a wood chipper and spent a good couple of weeks, long after Luca had left, collecting and chipping all of the olives branches which he had pruned. They made a wonderful mulch which we used on the garden borders and also at the base of the olive trees themselves as fertiliser for the year to come.
Pruning done, now we had to wait for the harvest.
Having asked everyone and anyone when and if we need to spray the olives to protect them from any flies or other disease and always having been told ’no’, by August most of the local olive trees including our own had been struck by a fly attack (later some of the same people telling me not to spray were asking me why I didn’t). Anyway, we lost around 75% of the olives, but some trees were remarkably untouched. Always ones to look on the bright side, this was quite fortuitous for us as it left us with around 30 trees which we could harvest ourselves – not too big a job that would have been too daunting for the inexperienced. 150-180 would have been way too many for our first time.
And we did it. We bought an olive harvester (like a motorised pitch fork which knocks the olives off the branches), nets to catch the falling olives in and crates to transport them to the local olive oil press in. My brother, his wife and son flew over and we all spent a lovely day in the Tuscan sun harvesting olives, drinking wine and relaxing (it was actually a bit harder than it sounds here, but great memories none the less).
The next morning we took the olives to the press and that same evening had our very own olive oil at home. Never has olive oil tasted so good. Our first harvest was complete.
p.s. My brother and family have already booked to come over again next harvest to do the same again. Maybe you want to join us?
REJUVENATING THE OLIVE GROVE: OUR FIRST OLIVE HARVEST
A key appeal of moving into Villa Tramontalba was to change our lifestyle, live the Tuscan dream and also take the opportunity to become olive