When to start picking

We’ll be open for your olive deliveries on Mondays between 8am – 12noon. Please plan your pick around these days. We do this so you can co-ordinate picking help over the weekends. See our top tips below.   

• Check the weather in advance – don’t pick when your fruit is wet.   
• Gauge when about 60% of your fruit has yellowed in colour. A well pruned tree will give you a better consistency of ripe fruit.  
• Pick a couple and squeeze them. A red milky oily fluid should freely come out.  
• Each variety has its own level of skin colour ripeness. Some olives are quite ripe when they’re yellow and will be over ripe at black. Others can go black and still be nicely ripe.  
• Don’t leave your olives sitting in the hot sun, move them into the shade. Keeping the olives cool is critical to achieving good quality oil.  
• Don’t pick olives off the ground that have dropped from the tree.  
• Keep the depth of the olives in the container no greater than 30cm.  
• Aim to have the olives delivered for processing within 24 hours of picking.  
• Store olives in ventilated bins or cardboard boxes - not a bucket, as the olives will sweat, which will sour your oil.  

The leaf sorter and washer on our mill will remove detached leaves and smaller twigs. However, it’s important to get rid of larger twigs and branches, and to separate bunches of olives.  

If your olives don’t meet our standards of care, we may decline to process them. 

What you'll need

It’s good to have everything you need ready, before you harvest. Here’s what you’ll need.   

• An old clean sheet or tarp which you can lay under the tree. Army parachutes are great if you have access to one of those as well!  
• Small plastic hand rakes are handy but not necessary, some find it just as easy to use their hands.  
• If you have just a few small trees, a cloth pouch or a bag (a supermarket bag even) tied around your waist makes a good collection receptacle.