Hi,
It is couple of months past the harvesting of the olives here in Israel, and we finally got our olive oil =).
We started buying olive oil directly from the farmer like 6 years ago. He only sells 16 liter jerrycans, so in the start the all office bought one of those and split it (each one got something like 1 litter). Now we use this oil for cooking almost everything (except deep frying) and use something like 11 liters of it. So in the past few years we bought a jerrycan we split with Atzva sister.
The “farmer” is an engineer that use to teach me – his family has an olive grove, and she produce oil. The all family gather in the grove, and start harvesting – usually they spread a plastic sheet under the tree and hit it to make the olives fall. They then take the olives to the olive press, a small factory where the olives are squeezed to take the oil out. The factory owner usually being paid in olive oil – each 16 jerrycan is worth 500 NIS (=140$).
Aba and Ima also have an olive tree in the garden. it doesn’t produce enough olives to make oil. So Ima decided to harvest the olives and make pickles out of them =)
Take Care
Gad
The olive oil jerrycan and the bottles we use to store the oil in. It is said that it is best to hold the oil in glass bottles and in dark place (or dark glass).
The olive tree in Ima and Aba garden
Aba harvesting the olives a month and a half ago
And some of the pickles jars Ima made