2019 is passing at an alarming rate and it’s just over a month until Christmas! The drought over last summer meant that we didn’t have as many olives as we had anticipated. Fortunately the large amounts of sunshine resulted in higher yields of oil which helped compensate for the reduced crop.The pressing didn’t go quite as smoothly as I would have hoped as we had problems with a bearing in the centrifuge that caused a bit of stress. It was a new bearing and was overheating while it was bedding in. With patience and prayers it finally settled down and performed well, but I am a little grayer as a result!
The 2019 oils all passed their Olives NZ certification and were placed in the intense category. We consistently fall into this category though the 2018 oil dropped to the medium category for the first time. We are pleased we have returned to producing intense oils, which is what we are known for. From what I have heard on the grapevine, all the 2018 oils in our region dropped to a milder category than usual. For most groves in our region, it meant a drop from medium strength oils to mild strength oils. I presume they are back up to medium strength this year.
We are in the process of some major pruning at the moment. Some of the trees were too tall so we were no longer able to reach a lot of the fruit. I have chainsawed out some major limbs and am looking forward to seeing the new growth and resulting fruit, within reach, in a couple of years. We are also trying to minimise over-cropping. If this is allowed to happen, the tree goes into recovery mode the following year and we don’t get enough fruit to produce oil for our various outlets. It’s always a bit of a balancing act, trying to decide how much potential fruit to remove.
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