The olive calendar
Olive trees can live for many hundreds of years and continue to produce olive oil. Growing olives for premium quality oil is an art steeped in mystery and every man with a pruning saw in his hand is an expert!
We cultivate the classic Umbrian varieties of moraiolo olives and leccino olives with over 90% of the olive grove put to moraiolo. They grow on a southwest facing slope 465 metres above sea level. With the nearest house over a kilometre away we are able to provide them with the five essentials for quality olive oil – stress, stones, silence, solitude and sun or in Italian siccita, sassi, silenzio, solitude, e sole.
January
January can be very cold so little is happening in the grove. Around the end of the month we apply organic fertiliser on the uphill side of the olive trees so that the spring rains wash it down to the roots.
February-April
At the end of February we begin pruning the olives. In principle the desired shape to prune an olive is a “wine glass” where the centre is free of growth. The fruit is encouraged to grow around the outside of the tree - exposing it to more sunlight and making it easier to pick.
May- June
Depending on the weather this is when olives flower. The olive flowers are tiny and are pale cream to yellowy green in colour. They form in clusters on the trees and, in a good year, change the colour of the landscape.
Late spring or early summer is also when we "clean" the land. That is to say the long grass, which has been rocketing skyward all spring, is cut. It’s a watching and waiting game judging when the rain has finished but it is not too blisteringly hot to do the work.
July-August
Any suckering growth, which has been thrown up from the base of the trees, is removed to focus the trees' energies on the fruit, which are by now clearly visible though still green.
September-mid October
We clear the base of the trees in preparation for picking the olives. This is a major or minor job depending on the level of rainfall over summer. The green olives have increased in size are starting to change to a reddish colour before they, ultimately, turn black
End of October – mid November
It’s olive harvest time. The majority of the olives are now black in colour. We start picking around the end of October and continue apace until the last fruit is picked. Large nets are placed under the trees and the fruit is picked by hand. The fruit is gathered in the nets and then transferred into crates. We take the crates in batches to the local olive mill to be cold pressed. As a general rule of thumb the earlier (within reason) the fruit is picked the higher the quality of the oil but the yeild is lower. We pick ours earlier rather than later in order to achieve a high quality oil.
December
We celebrate (or commiserate) with our neighbours comparing this year with previous years and then collapse in a heap.
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Casa Margherita - our olive trees produce the finest extra virgin olive oil available to buy online from Umbria Italy. Adopt an olive tree or buy our stunning olive oil