2009 @ Oregon Olives™

David Lawrence: David@OregonOlives.com

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Also, I have accepted an invitation to speak at the California Rare Fruit Grower’s “Year of the Olive” 2009 Festival of Fruit.  An amazing world we live in these days, just imagine, an Oregonian telling Californians how to grow olive trees [in cold places]!  The tentative title of my talk:

 

                          “Growing Olives on the Edge”

 

Jan 01, 2009

 

Introducing our new web sites: “Oregon Olive Oil” and “Oregon Olive Trees”!  You can access the sites via the links at the top of all our web pages.  Between the three sites, we will be better able to focus on table olives (this site), olive oil, and olive trees.  All three sites are focused on small scale boutique growing and processing of olives in Oregon, and that is what we do.  As in the past years, we will continue with a blog format for Oregon Olives, more intended than anything else to help other like-minded people with their home and boutique olive operations.  So if that’s you, we sincerely hope these sites will help you out!

Here is some product that shipped out in December, 2008; consisting of half gallon “bulk” containers, 8 oz paragon jars, and 4 oz hexagon jars; filled with Calabrese, Cypriot, and Greek style cracked green olives.  Here are the recipes for the latter two (the Calabrese recipe can be found on the 2008 Oregon Olives web page):

 

Cypriot Green Cracked Olives

 

 Follow the Mediterranean-style cracked olive recipe here:

 

Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling

 

At Step 7, add the following to the finish brine; for each kilogram of cracked green olives:

 

10 g dried garlic

5 g dried crushed oregano

5 g dried crushed coriander seeds

Lemon juice to taste

80 ml extra virgin olive oil

 

Marinate in a refrigerator for at least four days; these olives must be stored in a refrigerator and will last for up to one year.  One kilogram of olives nicely fills a half gallon Mason jar.

 

Greek Green Cracked Olives

 

 Follow the Mediterranean-style cracked olive recipe here:

 

Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling

 

At Step 7, add the following to the finish brine; for each kilogram of cracked green olives:

 

10 g dried garlic

5 g dried crushed rosemary

4 whole dried red chili peppers

1 lemon rind, cut into quarters

100 ml extra virgin olive oil

 

Marinate in a refrigerator for at least four days; these olives must be stored in a refrigerator and will last for up to one year.  One kilogram of olives nicely fills a half gallon Mason jar.

We had a real roller coaster ride in the olive groves for about two weeks in mid-December: cold, ice, snow, and more of the same.  The temperature went sub-freezing for four days starting Dec 13, with a low recorded here of 12 F on Dec. 16.  And then it started to snow.  Here is a picture of (from left to right) a Leccino, a Maurino, a Pendolino, and a Frantoio olive tree on the Reken Estate under pretty close to white-out conditions on Dec 22:

The temperature stayed sub-freezing for more than five straight days that spell!  But today, it is as if it all was just a dream… just a few broken branches and a few fallen leaves on our main Tuscan olive cultivars.  Of course, winter is just beginning, so we will see what the rest of winter has in store for our grove here on the edge!

Feb 26, 2009

 

Just came back from a business trip to California, to secure an early spring shipment of olive trees from Novavine (see Oregon Olive Trees for details) and to meet noted olive oil consultant Alexandra Devarenne (see Oregon Olive Oil for the details of her upcoming seminar in Oregon).  She took me to see “The Olive Press” (see photo below).  It was very interesting to see the Pieralsi mill, and the olive oil bar.  Sort of makes me realize how much On The Edge Of The World Oregon is!

 

April 3, 2009

 

The new shipment of olive trees has arrived from California!  After getting a call at 5:30 PM on the day before the shipment was to arrive that “my crew and I should be ready at noon to unload”, it got better from there (Crew?  What crew?  There is just me…).  After trying to back up the truck into the driveway, and getting the truck stuck in the ditch, we decided it was better to just unload from the street.  So, easier said than done, but it was done!

 

June 10, 2009

 

Olives in Bloom  Spring always seems to be the busiest time of the year, and the time when I am the most behind!  A total of four shipments of olive plant material has arrived, and needs taking care of; field work must needs get done (or the weeds will take over!); and as always Mother Nature sets the pace: slow misty dreaming time when the rains happen, fast marching time when the land is dry.  Time moves on, new acquaintances and friends are made, new groves sold and planted, and the olive trees are blooming; the start of yet another timeless cycle of work and growth.

 

Reken Estate, June 09, 2009: small potted Frantoio tree in bloom, background olive trees are Coratina, Pendolino and Frantoio (these three did especially well coming through the winter).

August 5th, 2009

 

California Rare Fruit Growers “Year of the Olive”  starts in less than a week.  My presentation “Growing Olives on the Edge” is almost done, with another week to go to polish it up.  It will be interesting to see how many Californians I can help convince to plant olive trees!

For the fun of it (and to try to increase my cloning success rate for material from the National Clonal Germplasm Repository!) I tried grafting olive trees for the first time.  We shall see how that does as the season progresses, too!

June 22, 2009

 

Summer!  And it looks to be a good one for olive trees!  Oregon Olive Trees has been updated with the latest climate data, and it looks like we are out of the recent cold El Nino conditions!  Also, I put some pictures of olive trees showing the result of the winter here, as well as more pictures and data on some of the cultivars (follow the cultivar links).

 

The Spanish-style fermented green olives turned out excellent!  Seasoned with Calabrese-style finishing's, our personal stash is going fast (the half gallon in the left foreground is the last one).  A comment on the University of California olive curing instructions: they are absolutely right - the longer one lets the olives cure, the better they are.  The instructions say to wait two to six months for the Spanish-style olives to cure: June 15th marks the full six months for us and they are definitely the best so far!  As far as the Greek-style black olives (the two half gallon jars to the right), the suggested two to three months hasn’t reduced the bitterness enough for us; the Sicilian-style green olives (left background) at four to six months suggested is also not enough, for us.  Ah well, something to look forward to next season!

As part of deciding what I want to say, I’ve been reviewing olives and olive plantings around the world.  This is one of the best photos I found: this is what it might be like for Oregon too!  Central Otago, South Island New Zealand, at slightly more than 45 degrees South latitude. 

 

“From left, Otago olive pickers Anna Clark, Dean Harker and Diana Harker demonstrate the hardiness of southern olive growers. We gave up shortly after the photo was taken as the snow was accumulating on the nets faster than the olives.”

 

And I think the dog’s name is “Lazy”, named after the Harker’s restaurant, the Lazy Dog Café and Cellar Door... or maybe the café is named after the dog!  Now there’s a thought!

September 15th, 2009

 

For our first “public appearance” in Oregon, we had a space at the new “The Market” in McMinnville, to sell olive trees.  Perfect weather for olives - hot hot hot!  So hot the Kalamata trees were starting to wilt (Kalamatas, interestingly enough, even though they are from Greece, dislike intensely hot weather).

 

David pitching olive trees to a couple of prospective clients:

September 30th, 2009

 

The 2009 Olive harvest has started!  Sad to say though, it wont be much of a harvest this year, after last winters storms.  But our loss, your gain, as any pictures you see here are of the better “adapted” varieties for Oregon (if you look back to 2008 and 2007 and see pictures of olives, but don’t see them here, it means they didn’t have any fruit this year…).

 

In previous years, we have let the olives hang on the trees as long as possible, just to see how ripe they would get.  This year we are picking at least some as early as possible (for use as green table olives).  The first to reach the “green ripe” phase is Itrana.

 

Kathy’s Grove, Sept 30 2009:

The Santa Caterina trees are still struggling, but they do have fruit.  Santa Caterina in Italy is picked when they still are “intensely green”; maybe we could have picked them even earlier?  Growing olives in Oregon is still a big learning curve for us!

 

Kathy’s Grove, Sept 30 2009:

Nov 25th, 2009

 

Oil olives on the trees...  It's getting time to pick olives for olive oil!  This has been a good year to mature olives, but the bad news is that there aren't many olives due to the damage to the small wood on the trees in the December 2008 storms.

 

In California, I have been told that Leccino is always the first to "color up"; by at least a month.  Here that isn't quite true, Pendolino colors ahead of Leccino:

Leccino is the next most mature this year:

As usual, Frantoio lags behind significantly:

And also as usual, Arbequina has colored the least (these are on a tree growing in a 12" clay pot; olives in pots usually color earlier than those in the ground is our experience):

Nov 29 - Dec 03, 2009

 

The olive harvest!  Well, it didn't really need to take all that time, but we did take a lot of pictures too.  This was a "light crop" year, with all trees still very young.  So, while it is too early to even begin to think about yields, let's do it anyway (taking a dose of salt big enough to choke an elephant, or preserve a half gallon of table olives).  While I am at it, let me say a little about how to decide what olives to plant in an olive oil grove.

 

Leccino is known as a high yielding, early maturing and precocious cultivar, and that's certainly true here.  Of course, all things are relative: an early maturing cultivar may be just what we need here in Oregon with our relatively short growing season, to produce a fresh fruity olive oil, blending with not so early maturing cultivars that add complexity and balance to the oil.  For just that very reason, Leccino comprises 50% of our olive oil grove.  This year our main harvest was on Nov 29, 2009:

As was true last year, Leccino was our best yielding cultivar.  Here are the olives off of the single best yielding tree, planted in 2007:

Frantoio was our second highest yielding cultivar, here are the olives off of the single best yielding Frantoio tree.  Frantoio comprises 25% of our olive oil grove, and is known as perhaps the finest olive oil type olive tree in the world.  But as you can see, it is not nearly as colored up as Leccino.  Frantoio has lots of fresh fruity flavor even when relatively green, but will add to the balance of the oil with pungency and bitterness:

Pendolino is used as a pollinator in almost all California olive oil groves (excepting the big mono-culture SHD groves), at a rate of about 10%.  Here in Oregon, for as many years as we have been growing it, it gets about the ripest of any cultivar we have, in fact these are so ripe they are beginning to lose water and shrivel. Adding in such ripe fruit to the oil making process will add to the complexity of the oil with some ripe flavor notes.  These Pendolino are off of the best yielding tree:

The remainder of Kathy's Grove consists of Maurino and Moraiolo.  I am not too happy with the Maurino (e.g. no fruit at all this year), and so have been replacing them with Moraiolo.  Which are consequently too young to have had any fruit this year.  Now, that's called progress, right?  Right?  Hmmm...

 

Arbequina is very popular in large acreage plantings, with farmers wanting to reduce costs with machine harvest.  Unfortunately, at least on my trees, yields here have never matched the Tuscan cultivars (Leccino, Frantoio and Pendolino).  Here are the olives off of the best yielding Arbequina tree, and actually the only Arbequina tree we had that had -any- olives this year (caveat: we only have five Arbequina in the ground):