How does the olive harvest work?
Lesson learned: the olive harvest is both a traditional and modern process in which patience and technology go hand in hand. Simple tools and creative solutions help us to harvest the natural harvest efficiently.
In a nutshell, harvesting olives is all about shaking them off the tree (in some areas they wait until they fall off by themselves) and then picking the seeds from the ground.
The first step is to spread huge sheets resembling mosquito nets under the trees, each net can be up to 50 metres long in many cases. Next, we take a rake – exactly the kind that kindergarten children use in the sandpit – we buy it from a toy shop. With this little rake we start “combing” the branches, a bit like dads combing the hair of their pre-school girls. The rake’s teeth pick off the olives, but leave the leaves alone.
When we’ve done that, we lift one edge of the downed net; the olives roll into the opposite corner, as it were. One of these nets is not heavy; a man could easily move it – if he could get his arms around the two corners of the net, which are fifty yards away. Then all you have to do is lift the part of the net where the seeds have gathered into a plastic tray. The mesh is pulled out of the box and the mesh remains inside the box. A crate can hold about eighteen kilograms of crop. An average-sized tree will yield one and a half crates of olives, while the more prolific varieties will yield up to three.
A faster version of the process is to use an electric rake. This tool resembles a garden pitchfork with a cord hanging from the handle, which is attached to a backpack containing a battery. The electric version does not ‘comb’ the branches, but shakes them until all the fruit has fallen. The handle of the fork-like device contains a shaking motor that is pulled through the branches, touching each branch.
Then, as usual, the grains are rolled into one corner of the net. A side effect of the vigorous shaking is that some leaves fall off, which must be removed from the net.
In fact, only the smaller trees, up to a maximum of one box, are raked by hand. A tree can be harvested in about 20 minutes, whereas with a power tool, three crates can be harvested in the same time.
14 November 2024.
