The Olive Tree

Originally from the Mediterranean area, olive trees began to be cultivated about 5,000 years ago. People from that era discovered many uses for olive oil. Olive trees ( Olea europaea ) probably first appeared in California sometime during the 1700's. The tree needs a long, hot growing season to fully ripen the fruit. Sounds like a great tree for Borrego, doesn't it? The tree is listed as drought resistant, needs a deep watering only once a month and, best of all, is extremely picturesque! They make handsome accent trees and often have multi branched trunks. Old trees develop gnarled trunks, which give individual trees a lot of character. Fruiting and non-fruiting varieties are available at local nurseries. We have purchased all our trees locally to assure they have been adapted to the Borrego region.

We have two fruiting trees but only one produces large green olives. The other is a nuisance, with a prolific crop of tiny worthless fruit - so, be careful to investigate before you buy! We prune heavily to assure large fruit and to keep the height at about twenty feet. We have had no pest or disease problems, to date.

Make Your Own!
Olives for processing should be picked green as soon as they attain the proper size. We have tried several methods of processing olives, only one of which was successful. We tried making black Greek olives and that was a disaster! It took twenty-one days under a heavy layer of salt and the result was bitter olives and a hole eaten through a heavy stainless steel pot!

For many years now, we have been successfully processing green olives . The first time, however, was mind wracking, since the process involves the use of LYE! WE had never used lye before but - like the average person, thought it should only be used for plumbing purposes and was a substance that could eat through things! We certainly doubted that lye could be used to make anything palatable! We bought Red Devil Lye from Ace Hardware and Kosher salt from the Center Market, and used the recipe provided by a farmer who had been making olives for many years. Our process takes seven days. We measure all amounts carefully and time the "soaks" as prescribed. We use a five gallon white plastic bucket and make about two and one half gallons of olives in a batch.We store the olives in the refrigerator in large glass jars ,loosely capped and covered with saline solution. If the olives taste too salty, we wash them off before serving or, even soak them in fresh water overnight.

I'm not giving away my recipe, for obvious reasons but there are many recipes to be found on the web. If you want to try curing olives, you can find out everything you need by referring to the University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Publication 8267- Olives, Safe Methods for Pickling.

A Great Gift!

We always make more olives than we can possibly consume and have found they make wonderful and appreciated Holiday or Hostess gifts.