June in the Olive Grove

Monitor your fruit for colour change in the skin but also remember to check the maturity inside. Use the colour maturity index included in the last two newsletters (both saved on the website under News) to assess ripeness. This year seems to have been particularly difficult for ripening some varieties with a lot of green fruit hanging on trees. The lack of sunshine hours this year has undoubtedly delayed ripening. Maybe a week of sunny weather will change things.

Do not despair though, whatever colour your fruit is at harvest you will get a return of oil. Green fruit will return less oil but it will have a lovely bitter bite to it so this year we may have to just embrace the seasonal difference. Ideally a mix of one third green, one third black and one third purple will give you a good balanced flavour.
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The Olive Press is in full swing now and bookings for the first 2 weeks of June are very tight.  Read the Supplier Responsibilities then get the Supplier Declaration which you can download from here, into the Booking Co-ordinator at [email protected] with your anticipated date, and estimated volume.  She will then negotiate a delivery time.  Remember, if you harvest less than 300kg you will need to go into a Small Grower mix and that also needs to be co-ordinated.

All fruit is inspected at delivery.  It will be weighed, checked for debris and fruit quality.  If there is too much leaf/twig it will have to be leaf blown at extra cost to you. Too much coarse material slows down the processing and causes blockages and blow outs which disrupt our tight processing schedule.  If your fruit is in poor condition, squashed, decomposing, containing other debris, we reserve the right to refuse processing.  The Press operates in a food safe environment and we cannot risk contamination of our processing systems.

When you deliver your fruit please remember your Supplier Delivery/Collection Declaration form which you can download here,  as well as your clearly labelled and clean receptacles for oil.  Food grade plastic and stainless steel are acceptable, glass is completely NO GO.  The delivery area is busy so stay within the designated zones and obey the signage.  Wait until someone is there to receive your fruit.

Picking up your oil is best done at designated times as we are not there 24 hours a day and we don’t want to impose on the landlords. When you do pick up your oil you will be given a Pressing Receipt which is your record of the processing including weight, fruit quality, oil percentage extraction and volume.  All those things we love to know!!  You will be invoiced later.

We look forward to seeing your fruit come through during June but remember that the last day for delivery of fruit will be 2 July so, ripe or not, it needs to be through by then.

Here’s hoping for some fine, dry days and happy harvesting.