Homesteading Olive Oil Harvesting, Production, Storage and Usage

Howdy!

I didn't find any other suitable location to post this, so I decided 'Homesteading' would be best. My wife and I harvest olives every year and take them to be pressed into oil.

Since it's olive season now, I'll take you guys through the process over the next few weeks.

Here's a short clip of my Stihl Kombi KM131 with olive harvester attachment.

Sorry for the bad audio. My phone mic is really bad for some reason. Enjoy.

 

Welcome AlfA01 .. Did not know stihl had that for combi... Not that we grow any olives here..

 

Thanks. It's also for harvesting nuts like pistachios and almonds. I chose the Stihl because of this attachment.

 

Interesting. I too didn't know Stihl made that attachment. How does it work? Are you combing through the branches or is it just shaking the chit out of the branches?
Welcome to the forum.

 

Welcome Dan.

 

Welcome aboard, Dan.
That was interesting. Looks like a very large egg beater.

 

Tickles the tree till it drops the fruit.

 

It kind of does both. It shakes the branches and kind of swats the olives also.

The head of the attachment has a piston that articulates two arms as it moves up and down laterally in the shaft.

 

Thanks for the video, Dan! I love olives (and palindromes).

 

Welcome to the club, Dan!

 

Thanks for all the warm welcomes guys. Nice to be aboard. Pressing olives at the moment....

 

Here is a little video I've thrown together to show a little of what's going on from the field to the press.

I set it to music as my phone mic is so bad it's really annoying. Only does it with video.

Enjoy.

 

Hi Dan, Great to have you aboard! And from Greece of all places! Hence the olive oil. Very interesting video on the oil, thanks for sharing it. I'm sure you will have a unique perspective on firewood! Looking forward to your posts. I am looking at all your saws. Good Gravy, you would shame a fairly large tree service company! Again, Welcome!

 

Thanks. Yes, I sort of got out of hand with the chainsaw collection. Besides the ported saws, most are fixer uppers that had been straight gassed or needed a piston and cylinder.

The two Auto-Tune Husky's I built from the cases up from spare parts. I started repairing them with plans to flip them for cash and then discovered I like them too much.

I do Arborist work and land management on the side, that along with our olive farming so the saws see quite a bit of use.

A lot of my firewood comes from olive trees. I have a fireplace and a wood stove. I collect all sort of wood for both--mostly olive, holly oak and pine.

 

Very cool! Thanks for sharing. Love Olive Oil! Really neat to see the process in it's entirety.

How is Olive for firewood?

 

Welcome!
Olive is a wood I see being used for hand carved spoons and salad serving size forks. Have you ever used it for other things besides firewood?

 

It is really great for the fire. When seasoned properly olive burns clean and gives a pretty good amount of heat.

I don't have any problems with it in my little pot belly stove, which is good because I really get a lot of small sticks when harvesting olives.

 

Actually, yes I've started doing a little bit of carving in my off time and I'm hoping to start milling soon.

Most large olive trees are hollow, which makes it difficult to find one worthy of slabbing, but when you do, they are remarkable.

The grain and patterns of the burl are very pretty. I also want to see if someone does resin stabilizing. Could make some knife handle scales.