When to harvest olives for Extra Virgin Olive Oil?

Four factors need coordination and balancing in choosing when to harvest: 

• Olive maturity
• Pickers' availability
• Mill's schedule
• Weather

Obviously the primary factor is the maturity of the olives. Too early and it will taste underripe. Too late and, in our California climate (zone 7), our biggest risk is inclement weather. Freezing ruins the olives. Rain slows the picking. Still there's quite a long interval from ripe enough to overripe. If ripeness of the olives was the only factor, we could have picked the week of November 4th or November 11th.

This year 2024, we're at the tail of the current atmospheric river, hoping that we'll only have sprinkles and no showers until after Saturday. The pickers don't like to work in the rain, and we don't blame them. From various sources though, it appears that Friday and Saturday have higher chances of rain than previous days this week.

The contract labor supervisor dangled an earlier start date, Thursday, November 14. HIs goal was to keep the 20-person crew together and get a head start on picking before the bad weather. However, we weren't ready for them. We hadn't cleaned out the bins and barrels yet, which took the better part of two days. Plus I didn't want to renegotiate with the mill, who expected us on Monday, November 18.

We are fortunate to have an olive mill within 20 miles of our ranch. That makes it possible to move the olives in half-ton bins from our fields to our driveway (using the tractor with forks attached) onto a long-bed truck. Two or three bins go down the hill in one load. And typically that guarantees the olives will be milled within three or four hours after picking, easily aligning with the usual recommendation "within 24 hours of harvesting."

Coordinating everyone's schedules can be challenging. This year we chose the week of November 18. The mill is reserved. The olives are ripe. The crew showed up.

Yield?

Our guesstimate is that this year will yield slightly less volume of oil than last year's record-setting 567 gallons (from 12.336 tons of fruit). One measure of yield is how many gallons per ton (US 2000 lbs), where 40+ is a decent number. Check back when we have better numbers.

We'll take you along to the mill soon, to see the fruit becoming that stream of oil you (and we) like so much!