Ayca, my olive mentor, with my jar of olives – ready to be sorted into blacks and greens.

Lesson 1: separate green and black olives

 

Black olives in rock salt. Green olives in water.

Ayca’s instructions on how to process whole black olives

1. Mix chunky rock salt (not sea salt) with the black olives. (no water added)
2. The black olives do not need to be cut, pierced or smashed to accelerate the process.
3. Close the jar and shake.
4. Shake the jar every couple of days for at least a month.
5. Drain off any liquid that forms in the jar. It will be bitter.
6. Keep shaking and draining until the olives taste good to you.
7. If you like, just before eating, you can add a splash of olive oil or other flavourings – it is not necessary to steep in the oil.

Ayca’s instructions on how to process green olives

Ayca demonstrating how to process the green olives before putting into water.

1. Take each green olive and score the skin lengthwise (from end to end) 3 times with a sharp knife – 4 times if they are really big.
2. Place prepared olives in a jar and completely cover with fresh water
3. Change the water every 2-3 days when it becomes yellowy. Do this for 7-10 days until the taste is good for you (longer if they still taste too bitter).
4. Transfer olives into brine for 3 weeks. Ayca said she measured the salt:water ratio by the taste. She doesn’t need a measure, her tongue just knows. I’ll have to ask her tongue when I get to this stage. The key point here – it does need to be very salty. Someone else suggested enough to float an egg.
5. A delicious variation Ayca suggested was to place a few slices of lemon on the top of the jar of salted olives, just under the lid .
6. When the olives are ready, you can eat these straight from the jar, or you can soak them overnight in water to reduce the saltiness.
7. Similar to the black olives, just before eating you could add a dash of olive oil or other flavourings. Again it is not necessary to steep in the oil.

NB: Where I went wrong with the green olives … I didn’t slice the skin before soaking. They will take much long to lose their bitterness.

I also learnt that you need about 8-9 kg of green olives to make 1 litre of olive oil, and about 7kg of black olives to make oil. Ayca says she can get 50 kg off just one of her trees – that’s a lot of oil!

I asked Ayca about pruning too, because I had heard somewhere that olives needed to be pruned hard to produce. She does not prune her trees, only if there is some dead wood that needs to be removed and they produce abundantly. She feels it is better if the tree finds it’s own natural form.

I was curious too about making olive leaf extract – neither of us had an idea what to do but want to find out. This is my next olive quest.

While we were visiting our neighbour, who manages the Crystal Waters Ecopark (camping/van/cabin area) she took us for a walkabout to see her artistic additions to the landscape and shelters.

Over the past couple of months had noticed a few trees around these parts of Crystal Waters shedding their bark very strangely, so impossibly neatly. It was another of Ayca’s nature-art installations.

A gorgeous array of sewn leaf ornaments dance in the wind around the camp kitchen.

Ayca has created lovely double spiral to walk through next to the campsites and herb garden.

New herb garden for the visitors to use. Ayca tests Maia and Hugh’s knowledge of the plants. We were both impressed!

Maia loved Ayca’s ritual circle – a special meeting place made of found and natural materials with a fire pit in the centre (from an old washing machine tub). The arrows point to the North, South, East and West.

Later that day, at the community tree planting, I found Maia busy working away under a tree making her own little ritual circle. A leaf to the north, twigs to the south and grasses east and west.

Earlier in the day, we visited another neighbour who offered a cutting of her kangkong and a grand tour of her established food forest. Thanks Amber!  The kids learnt so much seeing another Amber’s garden – going on visits is a great way to explore design and see the various ways people implement permaculture systems. Thanks too to Ayca for a couple more snips.

Kang kong cuttings – soon to go in the sunken bath pond in my hugelkultur area.

Checking the new children’s native planting done last weekend and adding mulch and extra plants. Maia raised money for this project at her Owl’s Den cafe a couple of weeks ago.

The ground was much softer today after all the lovely rain. Hugh dug a lot of holes!