The start of the Olive Harvest

April 21, 20242 Comments

It’s that time of year again here on the farm. Time to harvest the olives.

Every year, starting around the end of February, we begin planning, worrying, and preparing for the olive harvest. You’d think, given that we do it every year, we’d be relaxed about the whole thing. No.

Every year is different. Not only do we tweak how we do the harvest by trying to maintain what worked well the year before while trying to fix what didn’t work well, but how many olives we harvest varies wildly from year to year, as does start date. It’s all one big complicated, constantly changing plan. Which we are putting together and trying to implement while simultaneously keeping the rest of the farm running.

Due to weather, some risky decisions we made last year, and pure chance, we started the harvest this past week with the farm in the best shape it has ever been. The grass in the plantation is cut, the files are clear of weeds, we have all the livestock rotated out, the front fields have been planted with fall crops, the garden is stable, we already harvested the chickens; we are in fabulous shape.

We are also only harvesting the Picual this year. There are no – I repeat no – olives in the Arbequina. None. We are not unique in this, the spring weather was bad for fruit set and many olive plantations have very little or no olives to harvest.

So, after a rainy start to last week, we started to harvest on Wednesday. The shortest trees on farm are in the lower part of the Picual orchard, so we harvested those we could by hand. For the rest, we are once again using drop cloths.

With such a light harvest we are, for the first time ever, not hiring additional labor to help harvest. Ruben has also, very generously, volunteered to drive the olives to the processing plant twice a week. Last year we harvest over 140,000 kilos of olives. This year we might harvest 6,000 kilos. We’re not even sure how long it will take. Who knows, I could be sharing the start of the harvest today and by the end of the week saying we’re all done!

El inicio de la cosecha de las Aceitunas

Es esa época del año otra vez aquí en el campo. Época de cosechar las aceitunas.

Cada año, a partir de finales de febrero, comenzamos a planificar, preocuparnos y prepararnos para la cosecha de aceitunas. Uno pensaría que, dado que lo hacemos todos los años, estaríamos relajados con todo el asunto. No.

Cada año es diferente. No solo modificamos la forma en que hacemos la cosecha tratando de mantener lo que funcionó bien el año anterior mientras tratamos de arreglar lo que no funcionó bien, sino que la cantidad de aceitunas que cosechamos varía enormemente de un año a otro, al igual que la fecha de inicio. Todo es un plan grande, complicado y en constante cambio. Que estamos armando y tratando de implementar al mismo tiempo que mantenemos el resto de la granja en funcionamiento.

Debido al clima, algunas decisiones arriesgadas que tomamos el año pasado y pura casualidad, comenzamos la cosecha la semana pasada con el campo en la mejor forma posible. El pasto de la plantación está cortado, las filas están libres de malezas, tenemos todo el ganado rotado, los campos delanteros se han plantado con cultivos de otoño, la quinta es estable, ya hemos cosechado las gallinas; Estamos en una forma fabulosa.

Además, este año solo estamos cosechando el Picual. No hay aceitunas en la Arbequina. Ninguno. No somos los únicos en esto, el clima primaveral fue malo para el cuajado de frutos y muchas plantaciones de olivos tienen muy pocas o ninguna aceituna para cosechar.

Así que, después de un comienzo lluvioso de la semana pasada, comenzamos a cosechar el miércoles. Los árboles más bajos de la finca se encuentran en la parte baja de Picual, por lo que cosechamos los que pudimos a mano. Por lo demás, volvemos a utilizar las lonas.

Con una cosecha tan ligera, por primera vez en la historia, no estamos contratando mano de obra adicional para ayudar a cosechar. Rubén también, muy generosamente, se ha ofrecido como voluntario para llevar las aceitunas a la planta de procesamiento dos veces por semana. El año pasado cosechamos más de 140.000 kilos de aceitunas. Este año podríamos cosechar 6.000 kilos. Ni siquiera estamos seguros de cuánto tiempo tomará. Quién sabe, podría estar compartiendo el comienzo de la cosecha hoy y al final de la semana diciendo que hemos terminado.

Looking back

April 9, 2024March 27, 20241 Comment

The technology hiccups of the last few weeks has me sorting through nearly a thousand pictures cleared off my older camera. Some images are of things I remember well, others have me wondering what, exactly, we were doing, or when that picture was taken. Some of the photos are from the very beginning of our farming adventure, 12 years ago. Oh, how the farm has changed. It’s easy to remember there were no buildings. But pictures of the early olive orchard always make me stop and realize, oh, yeah, we have come a long way.

Our arbequina orchard in May 2012. If you took the photo from farther away you couldn’t tell there were trees.

Jon, February 2024, looking towards the arbequina orchard.

It’s amazing what time and effort can do.

Echando la vista atrás

Los contratiempos tecnológicos de las últimas semanas me han hecho revisar casi mil fotos borradas de mi vieja cámara. Algunas imágenes son de cosas que recuerdo bien, otras me hacen preguntarme qué estábamos haciendo exactamente, o cuándo se tomó esa foto. Algunas de las fotos son del comienzo de nuestra aventura agrícola, hace 12 años. Oh, cómo ha cambiado el campo. Es fácil recordar que no había edificios. Pero las fotos de la plantacion de olivos tempranos siempre me hacen detenerme y darme cuenta, oh, sí, hemos recorrido un largo camino.

Nuestro plantacion de arbequina en mayo de 2012. Si tomabas la foto desde más lejos, no podías decir que había árboles.

Jon, febrero de 2024, mirando hacia la plantacion de arbequina.

Es increíble lo que el tiempo y el esfuerzo pueden hacer.

Lambs!

June 26, 20233 Comments

We try and lamb in May every year. It’s a good temperature, there’s usually good grass, and lambs are nice and large when it’s time to separate the flock for summer pasture management. Sadly, we are usually harvesting olives in May so the really cute stage of very young lambs is long past. The best I can offer right now is pictures of lamb toddlers. The cute brown and white one above is a ram lamb we hope will be a future breeding ram for the flock.

Ewes and youngest lambs are in the Picual portion of the olive orchards. We are working on managing sheep in the orchards to help keep pasture and weeds managed. They do some damage to the trees by eating the lowest levels of leaves and tender branch growth. At some times of the year they do eat the bark, which is more damaging to the trees. When that happens we rotate the sheep out of the orchards.

We find the damage to be easier to manage than the weed pressure that develops if we don’t graze the sheep in the plantation. One upside to sheep in the olives is that all of the trees have a very clear understory! The sheep can only graze as high as they can reach.

¡Corderos!

Cada año probamos a tener las ovejas, parir en mayo. Mayo tiene un clima lindo, normalmente estamos con pasto, y los corderos esteran lindos y grandes cuando necesitamos separar las ovejas por el verano. Lamentablemente, estamos cosechando aceitunas en mayo y no tengo fotos de los corderos cuando están más cariños. Lo mejor que puedo ofrecerte son fotos de corderos de medio tamaño. El cordero blanco y marrón es uno muy lindo que esperemos estaré el carnero en el futuro.

Ovejas con los corderos más jóvenes están en la plantación entre los Picuales. Tratamos de manejar las ovejas en la plantación para controlar el crecimiento de las malezas y el pasto. Hacen un poco de daño a los árboles. Las ovejas comen las hojas y las ramitas más tiernas. Algunos puntos del año comen la cáscara del árbol y hacen mucho más daño a los árboles. Cuando pasa eso sacamos las ovejas de la plantación.

Preferimos controlar el daño a los árboles a un nivel mínimo que tener un crecimiento de malezas y pasto más rápido que podemos manejar. ¡Un beneficio de tener las ovejas en los olivos y todos los árboles tiene un sotobosque muy limpio! Las ovejas solamente puede comer a tan alto pueden alcanzar.

Olive Harvest 2023

June 12, 20232 Comments

Just last week we finished harvesting the olives. We were lucky this year. No major delays due to rain. No mechanical problems at the processing plant. No tractor repairs. Not to say that the harvest was without issues. It wouldn’t be agriculture if there wasn’t something to deal with.

This years’ issue was climate related. Like much of Uruguay, we had unusual weather. Spring came late and abruptly, the same for fall. This weather pattern heavily affected olive maturation. As in years past, we started harvesting olives at the beginning of April. We typically start while fruit is still a bit green as by the time we manage to touch the more than 5,000 trees we are racing to not harvest over-ripe fruit. This year? This year the full harvest took 9 weeks. Much of the fruit was the same light green at the end as it was when we started. The Arbequina olives were stuck to the trees, making harvesting those trees more time consuming than usual. To make sure we didn’t lose the Picual olives to rot, as they drop very easily, we harvested them in the middle of the harvest instead of waiting until the end. Surprisingly, the Picual were no more ripe than the Arbequina.

All told, we harvest 145,000 kilos of olives. Our largest harvest yet. The plantation is now around 15 years old and the trees are considered mature. Olive trees do continue to grow and are very long lived, but in terms of production, the trees are now considered to be in full production. We should see alternating years of production with one year moderately lower and the next similar to this year. That is if sun, rain, and soil conditions cooperate!

Cosecha de aceitunas 2023

La semana pasada terminamos la cosecha de aceitunas. Tuvimos mucha suerte este año. No demoramos por la lluvia. Sin dificultad a la almazara. El tractor quedo bien. No te digo que la cosecha paso sin complicaciones. ¿No sería la agrícola, sino abia algo, la verdad?

Este año el clima complico todo. Como mucho de Uruguay, tuvimos un tiempo medio raro. La primavera llego tarde y sin noticia, lo mismo por el otoño, y complico mucho la maduración de la fruta. Como en años pasados, empezamos la cosecha el primer parte de abril. Normalmente, empezamos con la fruta un poco verde. La cosecha lleva tiempo suficiente que al fin estamos muy apurados a terminar cosechar los 5,000 árboles antes que las aceitunas están podridos.

¿Este año? Este año la cosecha llevo nueve semanas enteras. Y mucha de la fruta quedo el verde mismo cuando empezamos. Los arbequinos fueron bien pegados a los árboles y llevo mucho más tiempo a cosechar que fue normal. Para no perder el picual, como esta variedad calle muy fácilmente, hicimos una pausa con la cosecha de las arbequinas y cosechamos todo el picual. Normalmente, esperamos a cosechar el picual al fin de la cosecha. Nos sorprendió, la fruta del picual fue no más maduro que los de la arbequina. Toda la fruta quedo bien verde.

En total, cosechamos 145,000 kilos de aceitunas. La cosecha más grande todavía. La plantación tiene alrededor 15 años y los árboles están contados maduros. Olivos siguen a crecer y viven muchos años, pero por el tema de producción, están considerados maduros. En los años que viene debemos tener producción normal en años alternos. Entre los años normales, serían una cosecha más baja. ¡Pero, como siempre, tendremos una cosecha solamente si el sol, la lluvia, y el suelo nos permitan!

Almost Harvest Time

April 3, 2016Deja un comentario

As you have heard us say over and over again, the drought has affected everything on the farm. Our olive harvest has taken place the first week in April for the last two years, but this year it will be about the middle of April. We are the last olive planation in our area to harvest, our olives just are not ready to be picked any earlier.

The trees look good and are full of olives.

We drove into Montevideo and purchased more olive crates in anticipation of a larger harvest than last year.

We purchased more harvest baskets since last year we only had two, and they were a big hit with our crew.

Now I just have to get the menu settled and pre prep all the meals I can in order to daily feed the harvest crew a hearty lunch.

Olive Trees

November 26, 2015Deja un comentario

Once again we needed to fertilize the olive trees. We fertilize about three times a year. I say about because really we fertilize the olives whenever our expert consultant, Marcelo, tells us to fertilize the olives. Which is usually four times a year. Fertilizing the olives involves sprinkling a fixed amount of chemical fertilizer around the base of every tree. Over the years we have, thankfully, graduated from two types of fertilizer to one – the first year everyone had to carry two buckets – one for each type. This year we ran into the snag of not having quite enough fertilizer. So we are nearly done – but not quite. 20 bags of fertilizer took three people to apply and only one day of work. The weather was sunny but not hot, and it rained the next day, so the fertilizer was able to be absorbed into the soil. Yea for us! I don’t know if you remember, but past fertilizer applications have taken longer and more people, so the improvement in speed and man power is a big thing for us!

It’s the first time that when you walk the olive plantation it feels like a plantation. Some of the young trees are gaining ground and the older ones now look like trees. This year Jon has been able to stay on schedule with olive care and it really shows. The grove looks healthy and strong. Marcelo, our expert consultant is very, very pleased with the progress. In fact he can’t believe the progress we’ve made in three years. Hopefully within the week we can count the Spring/Early Summer fertilizer as done – the last four bags have been acquired and will be applied soon – with luck before the next forecast rain.

Pruning Olive Trees

June 11, 2015Deja un comentario

It is again that time of year to prune the olive trees. Jon has spent every afternoon pruning trees, and he has just finished with the arbequina. That means he has finished 2/3rds of the planation. Yes, he does each tree by hand himself. He cuts off any lower limbs and then opens up the center of the tree for air and light to get in, (trims the branches to a tulip shape).

It is actually looking like a grove of trees. Here are some trees with actual tree trunks!

Soon they will no longer need stakes to stay upright. We can only hope.

Second Olive Harvest

April 21, 20153 Comments

Harvest Celebration!

We are the crazy people who not only have a variety of livestock that needs daily care, but we also have about 20 hectares of olives that we also tend and worry about. Last year we had not planned on harvesting and it took us by surprise. This year we knew and thought we had it under control. You’ve all heard that before, right?

First we had to pick the manzanilla olives. We have a few trees of this type of olive scattered amongst the picual and the arbiquina. They are there to help with pollination. If the manzanilla olives are collected with the others and sent together for processing, we are told the olive oil will taste like woody oak. Ok for some alcohol drinks but not for olive oil. So after spending a Thursday and Friday picking olives from just these trees, we spent Saturday and Sunday sorting the olives. The ripe ones went into crates with salt to be salt cured and the green ones went into a pickling crock and a salt brine. Both should turn out to be table olives. Another experiment for us. All pickers and several neighbors, if the experiments are successful, are eagerly awaiting the results. (The yucky olives we tried feeding to the pigs and chickens and we had no takers.)

Then we began the harvest in earnest. Our three guys with three more and Jon spent nine days picking olives off the five thousand trees in the hot sun. We have 3800 kilos at the processing plant, which will turn into approximately 600 liters of oil. To see the processing plant you can visit last years pictures: olives to olive oil. Megan drove several loads of olive crates to the processing plant in Minas, a three hour one-way drive pulling a trailer behind the pick-up truck. The olives have to be processed within 48 hours of being picked. The team made about 40 crates every two days. They were working hard.

I did not make it back to the trees to take pictures until the end. So use your imagination here. Tthese are two trees on the small and thin side with olives hanging on their branches.

Here are some pictures of our trees in general. I would like them to be all the same size, uniformed. No, they grow their way.

small

medium

large

Now think of them full of olives, and each tree has to be plucked by hand into a bucket and them poured into a crate and put in the back of the pickup. It was slow work, but the team did a great job. We all were impressed by the volume of olives and by the percentage of oil we were able to get. Our technical advisor thought we’d produce about 3000 kilos this year. It was unexpected, and nice, to beat expectation! We were told that because it has been such a dry season, the moisture content is mostly oil. Normally it is 11% oil, but we averaged 18% oil! Yeah for us.

More pruning

November 5, 2014Deja un comentario

It is a good thing that Jon likes to prune trees, he finds it relaxing. Besides pruning olive trees we have fruit trees and pecan trees to be trimmed along with our wind break trees. These trees are still short and pencil thin, but they are alive. So much for being told they were fast growing and would provide shade for the cows and sheep within a year. We will be pleased if they do their job in five years.

This is one of the 300 original trees we planted along the huerta fence.

If you look closely, you can seem them in a row between the sheep and the cows. The cows are outside the huerta and the sheep are inside the huerta. Both sets of animals are doing their job happily eating the pasture.

Olive update

November 3, 2014Deja un comentario

There is always something to be done with the olives it seems, but we are almost caught up and on schedule. Jon has now finished pruning all the olive trees. He pruned for olive production this year which means the center was trimmed so the tree opens up like a tulip. Last year the pruning was to cut off all the branches on the tree trunk that were lower than his hip in order to shape the “bush” into a “tree”. So this pruning completion is a big deal.

Now we are working on getting the disk plowing done. This means having the plow push dirt towards the trunk of the tree. It helps stabilize the roots and keeps the olive tree roots dry. We have had to wait to do this step until we got the area around the tree trunks cleaned. So the guys began with collecting all and any of the old stakes that had been left in the orchard, which turned out to be more than expected. Buy, hey, they are all picked up now.

Here is Dario working away. This blue disk piece was a lot of trouble to find and has been rented from “a friend”. It has also broken a disk several times and had to be repaired at the cost of the renter.

The plantation is half finished, but the plow is broken again. So once again we are waiting to finish a chore.

After this is done, then we rent another part that will break up the dirt clods and move them closer to the tree roots. Thankfully these two items only need to be done once. And then maybe, just maybe, we will be in ‘maintenance mode’ for the olives. Maybe.

La Piccolina Farm

Adventures in wool and farming.

Category: Olives