Just some quick details on the process of turning our recent olive harvest into olive oil…
It turns out we picked over 400 kg of olives. We kept about 50 kg of the biggest and best for eating, and those are in the process of being repeatedly washed and salted and weighted down. There were seven sacks (323 kg) of normal-quality olives to be pressed into oil. And finally a small sack (38 kg) of poor-quality olives that we took from the ground beneath the trees.
Our local olive-oil factory.
We took our eight sacks just around the corner to the Yıldırım olive processing factory. We sold the one bag of lower-quality olives to the factory, and the money we got for that was enough to pay for processing all the rest. This seemed like a good deal.
Sacks of olives in the factory yard, waiting their turn to be pressed.
The olives are washed and any remaining leaves are filtered out before pressing.
Machines for crushing the olives and filtering the oil.
The guys at the factory are incredibly busy right now, as everyone brings in their olives around the same time. So we had to come back the next day to see the results.
A tough and slippery job. (Our batch was a little over one of these containers.)
The juice, the precious juice, was hidden in the vehicles.
Our 323 kg turned into 67 litres of beautiful cloudy green oil. We’re told it has good, low acidity levels. I would try to describe the taste but I don’t have the adjectives. I can tell you that it is very, very good for dipping fresh bread into.
Testing began immediately.
If I had only known about your olive oil problem… :-)
What problem? My olive oil usage is completely under control. I could stop any time I wanted to. Honest. :)
What happens to the lees, leaves, etc? Do they become animal food?
I wondered the same thing, Kaye. There was a big pile of the ground-up leavings out the back of the factory. Apparently they send it off to another place where it gets the moisture squeezed/dried out of it, and then it’s turned into combustible bricks that get burned in furnaces.
Jason,
Reference the taste of your olive oil. If I sent you over some of my home-made bread, could you dip it and send it back?
After all – isn’t that what friends are for?
Happy New Year to all present!!
C & D
That seems a perfectly fair arrangement, Cliff. I see no possible problems at all. :)
Happy new year to you and Diana as well. And say hi to Jo for us if you see her.
Yum! And Happy New Year :)
Cheers, Jane. Same to you!