Good olive year

This year's olive harvest was supposed to be record-breaking, but it remained simply in a good year. After such a catastrophic previous year (2017), this year looked very good and finally it was. The result of our 132 olive trees in production was 5,000kg (38kg/olive) with an average fatty performance of 17.1%. The performance has been quite low because our yield is usually over 21%, so this year we have not met expectations. We found another problem in the mill because the performance meter was new... so we don't want to rely on the meter badly calibrated that day, because even a friend got 14.9% with the variety Cornicabra olive, which seems almost impossible. The year has not been a record-breaking year because with regard to the quantity of olive trees, we have a mark in 6,000kg and with regard to the fatty performance it is 23.4%.

The two harvesting days were full of fun. The weather was sunny and there was no wind which is always a problem to work with canvas and also this year we had help. We hired a crew of four workers who helped us. The price was about 0.20€/kg of olive harvested. As you can see in the pictures, there were two people with two Sthil olive harvesters (a hook SP 451 olive harvester and a comb SP 90 olive harvester) and two others changing the canvases (working three rows of olives at the same time). One of us was in charge of removing the branches before downloading the olives in the frontloader of the tractor and another one of us was in charge of being with the tractor to put the olives into the trailer... A perfect teamwork!

Now it is time to do the post-harvest treatments and wait to rain so that the olive trees can have the reserves full again before the pruning that will be in March.

Versión en español.