We have waited in eager anticipation of the olive harvest, and this week the majority of the olives have reached the desired plumpness, color, and maturity. Olives are fun to pick, and many students enjoy climbing into the lower branches of the trees to harvest the firm, round fruits. The ripe olives are a beautiful, dark purple hue, with tiny whitish speckles.  One student described the color of the olive as looking “like stars in space.”

We were excited to find that many of the olives this year had not been hit by the olive fruit fly, a pest whose larvae has decimated our olives in the past. Since the beginning of the school year, 6th grade students have been monitoring the olive fruit fly traps which we have hanging from each tree–a yeast-based solution that attracts the flies and then drowns them. All their hard work paid off, and now we have a hefty quantity of olives that students will be able to eat.

Olives are extremely bitter when eaten raw, and there are numerous ways to cure the fruit, ranging from caustic chemical baths to packing the fruit in rock salt. We decided to go with a saltwater brine method to cure the fruit and to draw out the bitterness. We stirred vast quantities of non-iodized salt into a jar of water–enough salt to make a raw egg float! The olives were added to the saltwater and they will soak in the brine for many weeks before they’re ready to eat.

The olives curing in brine