We had a good olive harvest last year. Usually olives follow a pattern of one year good one year bad (how Orwellian is that?). Today we went exploring and to my delight discovered that the trees are heavy with young fruit. Maybe not quite as much as last year, but it is still early days, we harvest in November or December.
We also started work on clearing a further line of trees. These trees once formed part of a traditional olive grove, planted with olive trees every six metres with lines of grape vines in between and guelder roses at the end of the lines. Ok so far?
Well all the plants survive but not in the correct places, so today began a great clear-up, cutting back rampant vines and creepers and pruning mountains of wild thorny roses. Yes and the olive trees looked in good shape and will be brought back into production with a good prune this winter giving us further supplies of our own olive oil for our kitchen.