Post and pack, despatch, fulfilment

Call it what you want. After the harvest we are busy sending out 2 litres of extra virgin olive oil to all our olive tree adopters.

With Christmas fast approaching I would like to remind you what a great gift an olive tree adoption makes. There are more details at http://www.casa-margherita.com/adopt-a-tree/cat_6.html

Ancora picking

This is the olives that we are picking. They come from 3 different olive trees. From left to right leccino, moraiolo and frantoio.

The bulk of the grove (+95%) here at Casa Margherita is planted with moraiolo but they need pollinators and so historically they used leccino and frantoio. These are good pollinators but produce little fruit so newer groves tend to use pendolino which has been developed to also produce a lot of fruit.

Sunday night

It was about 6.00 o’clock when there was a gentle tap on the door.

It was an Italian couple searching for Casa Margherita. They had bought our oil the previous year and had just been in Trevi where they had tasted our olio nuovo. They agreed with the owner of the Enoteca that ours was the best in the area. He then mentioned there was a Festa in Manciano and that we were taking part.

They drove here to Manciano and, as it happens we attended Saturday, but had to return to picking on Sunday. Asking one of our neighbours where we lived they walked nearly a kilometre in the dark down to our house.

They wanted to buy 5 litres of our oil.

Can you imagine going to that effort to buy a food product. I am happy it is mine and that they like it so much.

Still picking?

We have now picked about a third of the grove here at Casa Margherita. We had a couple of friends over this afternoon to help for a couple of hours and it is always amazing the difference this makes to the amount of olives picked.

Myself and Rachel can normally manage about a 75 kilos a day. Today just in a couple of hours with a lot more chat than normal we got 50 kilos with the four of us.

The hills are alive...

with the sound of olives being picked. Either by hand or by machine. Lots of chat and gossip and a fire going for the sausages at lunchtime.

The traditional date for the start of picking is the day after all saints day - 2 Nov.

At the end of the day the roads are clogged with tractors, apes, cars and trailers all packed with picked olives on the way to the mill to be weighed and stored ready for milling.