Hello, I joined the original forum, after purchasing two olive trees for my large suburban yard. Though I have no intention of being an commercial producer, I am interested in olives and oils on a hobby basis.

I hope to add two more trees at some future time. I also have peaches, pears, figs, pecans mustang grapes and blackberries. I'm slowly converting my small space (3/4 acre lot) into a permanent garden.

I planted the trees in early spring and they show signs of getting over their transplant shock. They are still small, only a few feet high. They haven't grown much since planting but they are throwing out some new leaves. I realize it will be years before I see any olives from them, but I am patient.

My trees are Mission and Lucca varieties.

As I'm interested in only very small scale production, any equipment I purchase will be hand operated. I'd also like to make it dual purpose so that I can use it for other fruits, vegetables, nuts etc... Can a fruit press be used effectively for small scale use?

I've purchased a cast iron, Enterprise 12 Quart Fruit Press that I will be picking up this weekend. It's first use will be for the 50-100lbs of mustang grapes I'm expecting this year. Will this be an effective tool for pressing olives?

Also, can grain mills be used for milling olives?

Again, I'm interested in low cost, low maintenance tools that can serve multiple duties.

Come winter, what precautions should I take for these young trees? Temps will spike down to -2C on occasion. But the worst thing for trees is that the temps may stay about 15C for weeks and suddenly freeze overnight. This last winter killed the top off a fig and orange trees that I have. that spike was just below freezing. They are growing back fine, but I'd rather avoid the panic of losing my olives to such a cold snap.

Can I simply pile leaves around them when the temps are expected to drop?

Jack Dingler
North Central Texas, USA

Welcome, and be warned, there are plenty of simple questions but the answers may be far from simple!!

From memory, Mission are a "dual purpose" cultivar, so you should be able to get reasonable oil from them early in the season, and brine the later fruit for eating. Not sure about Lucca.

I'll leave this to others to comment on as I have no knowledge of the beast you are getting. (12 quart?? That's an odd measure for a fruit press? )

Probably not. The mill I use in my Enorossi Mod80 press is a hammer mill that drops the fruit through a set of 4 rotating hammers. These smash the olives through a stainless seive which has holes (about 5mm diameter) in a ring of 5mm plate. It has to be that thick to withstand the ounding it gets from all the bits of fruit and pit.

I hope you get some assistance from others in the forum, and hope your trees survive the shocks of winter. Let us know how they get on, won't you!

Cheers
John Attwood
Tamworth NSW Au

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5mm is a pretty large hole. I can probably find a way to reproduce that degree of pulping.

We're still using the Imperial System in Texas, so 12 quarts is about 11.35 liters.

I'm attempting to attach a picture of it.

Attached Images

FruitPress.jpg (30.7 KB, 3 views)

Jack,

Welcome to the group.

I will try to address all your questions as best I can:

*It will probably be some five years before the trees start producing something;

*As John said Mission is a cultivar from California, and Lucca is a toscanian oil cultivar from the Lucca province;

*I do not believe you can adapt the fruit press, for olive oil extraction one needs very high pressures (400 Atm);

*The same thing applies for the grain mill, the olive nut is really hard and you will probably end up destroying it;

*| suggest you try one of the small scale solution from TEM (http://www.tem.it/) or from Pieralisi (http://www.pieralisi.com/) , I'm sure their sold in the US;

*The olive tree is hardier them oranges and figs, so you will probably will be ok;

Hope I've of been of some assistance.

Cheers,

João
Cascais - Portugal

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João Correia
Cascais - Portugal
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skype: JoaoJCorreia

Surely the ancient Romans and Greeks didn't use these products? Yet somehow without electricity or fossil fuels, they produced olive oil in large quantities.

I can't really justify these expensive products for production from just a few trees.

Does anyone here have any knowledge of how the Ancient Greeks processed olive oil on a small scale?

Thank you.

Jack Dingler

I apologise, I hadn’t realised that you only wished to produce a very small quantity of olive oil.

Olive oil extraction has always been a more or less industrial activity. The Romans used big millstones moved by ox, and the press was built with a complicated system of levers that would produce very high pressures. So I do not believe it would be easy to use their method.
You can follow the more primitive method of all, that is still used in some parts of North Africa for “home made” olive oil. This is a very simple method that will have very low yields, but if you keep everything clean it should produce OO with a decent quality.
The method consists in grinding the olives in a stone-mortar, until you obtained a paste. Then you mix the olive paste with water and by decantation separate the olive oil from the water. As I said this has a very low yield, so I cant say how many Kg of olivse you will need to get a litter of OO, but as an educated guess I would say around 15 – 20 Kg (33 to 45 pounds).

As for adapting your equipment I believe the press could easily be adapted (always producing low yields). On the other hand the grain mill works with a mechanism that probably wont work with the olives.

If you’re going to have a very small production you’ll probably be better of pickling your olives. If you want I can give you a Roman recipe .

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João Correia
Cascais - Portugal
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msn: jorgegranja@yahoo.co.uk

skype: JoaoJCorreia