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<pre>There does seem to be a great deal of confusion about the harvest date.
Perhaps it is is due to different management objectives. Growers have
different objectives and therefore different harvest periods. It is
necessary to be clear about your objectives first. As far as I can gather
from the messages on this list there are three objectives:-

1. To achieve a good percentage oil.

The Australian business plans seem to favour 20% oil. Why I don't
know. If your olives mature at 18% you will need to wait for the water to
evaporate. This may take some time in winter. Finally when you have
evaporated 10% of the fresh weight you will have your target of 20% but
while you are waiting the olives will be slowly and then not so slowly
falling on the ground. The cost of achieving 20% oil may be a 10% loss of
fruit or more.
Next year the same olives on the same patch may mature at 22% so
whiping them off at 20% will result is another loss of yield and you won't
even have the satisfaction of boasting down at the pub that you have the
highest % in the disrtict.

2. To achieve the maximum yield of oil per ha.

If this is your objective pick during the 2 or 3 weeks after the
point of maximum yield (PMY). Fruit loss will be low.

3. To achieve optimum quality.

If this is your objective pick during the 2 or 3 weeks before PMY.
Oil % will be 1 or 2% lower but flavour better.

If you take all three management objectives together it is possible to have
a "correct" harvest time that covers three months or more.

Cheers Brian Chatterton.
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<pre>Brian

The Oz business plans have been predicated upon unrealistic expectations
based upon unrealized knowledge and experience. The salutary lessons we are
currently learning are proof of same. Harsher lessons will be learnt over
the next 2-3 years. Really harsh ones!

With respect to your comments on harvest time, and earlier ones about
picking green, let me just say that here, if we pick green, we pick no
virtually no oil. If we go this way all we are picking is an ether of
polyphenol which is quite hard to market. This has held true over every
variety I have come across to date. Verdale, Mission, Paragon, Manzanillo
(Sevilla or other), Sevillano, Barouni, Nabatini or or or.

I have advised consistently to pick (and strip) a tree when it is 80%
coloured from green after withholding any added water for at least 6 weeks.
Whatever God gives us we have no control over but He should also be borne in
mind when harvesting time is determined. But of course there will be
exceptions and growers will ultimately come to know the idiosyncrasies of
their grove far better than any well intentioned advisor.

With respect to an earlier posting about my abysmal failure to extract oil
from Manzanillo I can advise that I did a further batch (of the same fruit)
about 4 weeks later. It was mouldy and shrivelled and I managed about 3%
extraction. That is, no more than what I had earlier.

And just one piece of news I must share. My offsider came across 2 trees of
great antiquity (for European Australians at least) possibly 120 years old.
One was harvested today and 300kgs was gleaned with a further 200 to get off
later. The second tree is equally well laden. 1 Tonne off 2 trees! We
shall crush the first batch tomorrow. The fruit is small but incredibly
greasy when crushed between the fingers. Heavens knows what the taste will
be. Shall keep you posted.

Regards
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<pre>Thank you Alan for your kind comments on our book.

You are quite right about latitudes. Adelaide is the equivalent of
Tunis more or less. One has to add to this the effect of altitude. We are
at 550 m not much less than Mt Lofty and certainly the equivalent of the
wine growing areas of the Adelaide Hills. It is of course more complicated
than straight latitude. The Adelaide - Tunis fit is very good with the
desert to one side and the sea to the other. The Med is of course much
smaller than the southern ocean so the cold air from the pole can sneak
over and give some snow but this is rare. Italy has the large land mass to
the north which provides a route for the cold air but is protected by the
alps. If one takes the latitude lines into the Balkans for example they are
much too cold in winter to grow olives.

What I have been trying to say in messages over last few weeks is
that olive colour is a poor guide to ripeness and time of harvest with the
possible exception that when the flesh or pulp is also colour the fruit are
over-ripe. On pages 61 to 63 we explain why colour is not used in Umbria to
determine harvest date and the blending of the old traditional harvest
dates with modern scientific research.

One problem which has not yet been examined in the Oz ans NZ
context as harvests are still small is the optimum time of harvest for
yield and flavour versus the optimum time for efficient machine picking. I
would recommend that Oz and NZ growers intending to machine pick buy the
small cheap "pull" meter used by Italian growers which measures the
attachment force of the olive. They can then collect figures/dates over a
few years and go into mechanical harvesting with more confidence. We
discuss this in our book on page 64 in more detail.

Cheers Brian Chatterton.
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