I am relieved to see that we have juvenile olives forming following the flowering of the olive trees in November.
Heavy flowering, November 2025

Flowering was odd, in that a large area of the main paddock had zero flowers, while the rest of the grove flowered "normally". As normal as can be expected given the duress the trees have been under the last two years.
Juvenile olives formed December 2025

Olives are an on-off crop...one year on, one year off, but despite many experiments we've never been able to force the trees to stagger their on/off status. That is, it would be better if you could get half on this year, the other half next year. Anyway, despite us trying to trick the trees into doing that, they've gone an done it themselves.
Juvenile olives closer-up, December 2025

What that will mean, I guess, is that we will have a mediocre crop this season and another one next year. Assuming they maintain the on/off status they have shown this year.

Later it will be possible to guestimate the volume of the olives available for harvest. We use a pretty crude system of walking through with a clipboard and counting trees as zero, 5kg, 10kg, 20kg. At the end add it all up and its usually reasonably accurate.

That last time we had a bad previous season the next one was a bumper crop. High volume, high yields, high quality oil, so I am hopeful for the quality this season.

The trees that didn't blossom have been marked, with a paint dot. I can start pruning them now. Normally you wouldn't prune now as anything you cut iff might be bearing fruit, but no flowers means no fruit to lose, so I can prune away. ( That paint dot makes it easy to see which ones I should be pruning. Sometimes its hard to see the juvenile olives without very close inspection. That deliberate marking of trees takes the risk out of it.)