I think we are ready.

The last few days have been a rough ride. I don't have Covid, but I've collected something extra when I went to Melbourne to top up our stock of oil bottles. Its been working its way into my lungs, and I've been coughing and lethargic for a few days. Bad timing! Our harvest starts tomorrow.

All the hard stuff, the complicated work with heavy machinery, is done by skilled contractors. I'm the extra, bottom of the pecking order in terms of tasks. Once it all starts my job is to walk ahead of the harvester and guide the driver. I'll clear any last minute obstacles out of the way, point out wombat holes and difficulties, shake out any olives caught in the net, call up the tractor operator when its time to clear the harvester of its load. Its not hard, but its a long day and you need to stay focused. Having a blurry head and coughing up horrors isn't what you want.

Last year it rained most of the time we were outside, and I think i must have walked 12 km over the two days of the first harvest in driving rain. I went through three sets of clothes, which included proper waterproofed field jackets. Its rained for the last few days, and is predicted today and tomorrow. Its a wishy washy prediction....not much rain, not a high likelihood. So who knows? The Bureau's satellite online rain map has been in the blink for more than a week...it either shows a rain map with radial blanks centering on Yackandandah, or a tiny rain cloud perpetually centered on Bright.

To get ready I have mowed the olive paddocks. Easy work, but takes a bit of time. The harder job was then trimming around the trees, both long grass with a whipper-snipper, then blackberries with secateurs. A lot of the manicured, pruned olive trees put up epicormic shoots from the base of the trunk through the year. These can get in the way of the harvest gear. As the rubber jaws clamp the tree the epicormic shoots get caught in the grip and when the tree shaking starts the small shoots act as an abrasive and skin the main trunk of bark. It can be quite destructive. So someone, prior to harvest, needs to check every tree and prune off the extra shoots. Done.

There's always broken branches to pick up. A few weeks ago I collected five trailer loads of branches, prior to mowing. But there's always wear and tear, and the cattle are always good at ripping down yet one more branch. So, there will still be branches in the way tomorrow. I'll just chuck them out of the way, into a harvested lane.

An extra job this year was hand-picking for discard frost-bitten olives. The two frosts we had this year were more devastating than we are used to, and we sustained some frostbite damage. It was early enough that the affected olives have had time to whither and brown off, so its relatively easy to spot them. But I haven't learned much about what triggers the frostbite. Yes, it makes sense that the row facing my neighbor's empty paddock was exposed to open, cold air. And yes, I can see that all the trees in that low gully probably got all the cold air directed at them. But look at this tree....a heavy branch of olives, extended out of the canopy, exposed and low to the ground. Fine. Or this clump of huge, leafy, big trees in the middle of the paddock....almost no cold air would have made it into these trees, and yet they are all showing frost marks. Anyway, I have trudged up and down and manually picked them off. No doubt I have missed some, but I have been told they are only make a significant change to the oil when they get up past 10% of the crop. We are nothing like that.

The storage area has been cleaned out and tidied up. Its ready for the full barrels which will be coming back in a couple of days.

We use cardboard barrels with inner lining, (Think of a giant wine-cooler box). Our storage area is not that big, and has a ceiling, so we are restricted to liftable 200litre barrels. To transport them they are mounted on non-standard half-size pallets. I have to make the pallets. All done, barrels mounted and delivered to the crushing plant.

Its a bit of guesswork as to how many I need. Two years ago we obtained more than 2000 litres of oil. Last year 1400. I was expecting 1400 at least this year...its been a good growing year....so was thinking I would need to drop off that sort of capacity.

Oh dear. Its an off-year so far, according to Damian, who runs the plant. We won't need to drop off more than 1200 litres of storage. A good result this year is 10%....10 litres from 100kg of olives. Damian's seen a few 6% and 8% results. Only one grove, in Beechworth, which is higher and drier than us, has produced 14% so far this year. (Our numper year was 20%...most not-bad years its 14-16%)

So here's my predictions....

We have a two day harvest tomorrow, then in a few weeks we will do a second, mop up harvest. I am estimating we will take 11 and a half tons tomorrow and half a ton later. 12 tons. I am hoping we get 12%, but probably more likely to see 8-10%. So we might be looking at somewhere between 1000 and 1400 litres.

And the quality?

I have faith in our trees...they consistently produce good results. But we won't know until I get home, uncap a barrel and the lush, fresh smell of the new oil bursts out of the tank.

I can't wait!