Olive picking

 

We recently found out that our house has a name in the street for being "the house with the olive trees". We do indeed have six olive trees in the front garden - this year four of them flowered and produced olives.  After watching and wondering how big they should get and what colour they should be before we picked them we came to the conclusion that some of the trees were green olive trees (so we would be waiting for ever for them to change colour!) and some were black olive trees. Seeing as most of black olives had turned black we decided this weekend it was time to pick.

Of course you can't enjoy olives straight off the tree, you have to cure them.  After a little research we went with a 10% salt solution, to be changed every week for 5-6 weeks.  We've also put a little cut down the side of each olive to help the process along.

Two glass jars of olives in salt water are certainly looking handsome on my kitchen bench right now.  We are really hoping this works and we get some edible olives around the end of March.  I'll keep you posted.