O is for Olives

A recipe for brine curing your own olives and a few tidbits for the curious

O is also for olives. A fruit that also I have, just not oh-so-much, or even enough…

As the car drives, we are a few hours north of where olives will grow easily. Despite that a number of years ago we planted 60 Arbequina olives. Arbequina is a hardy cultivar of olive that originated in the Spanish Catalonian village of Arbeca in the 17^th century. We had dreams of producing olive oil for ourselves. (Those years in my youth that in my mind we could produce nearly all our own calories here on this land that is forest not farm.)

Arbequina trees are smaller than the classic image of a gnarly ancient olive tree we hold in our heads. In the last two decades, this variety has been used to completely change production. Olives once grown in orchards with individual trees are now moving to densely planted in rows, often trellised like grapes, so that they can be machine harvested.

This variety withstands both hot dry summers and cooler winters. It can take temperatures as low 5° F/-15°C. They are fine in hardiness zones 8 to 11, our zone is mostly 8, but because we are in the mountains it can dip under this temperature every so often. Once established the trees are less susceptible to cold snaps and don’t need much water. It was enough possibility for us to jump in.

To be fair, we did do a tiny trial before fully diving. Several years before this large planting we planted two Arbequina trees in an alcove. We’d dug into the south-facing hill to create both a flat spot to plant and a knee-high wall behind. We lined the wall with rocks. We’d read about how alcoves have been used in the mountains of the Mediterranean regions to keep lemons a bit warmer. It worked. Those olives are still thriving.

We built a terrace not far from these test trees. It was east facing with a nod to the south. The hill is steep, and the hope was that the bank behind was tall enough to act as a bit of a thermal sink like the alcoves had. This hill is well-suited for planting because the frost flows down it and lands in the valley bottom below. In keeping with the Mediterranean theme at the outer edge of the terrace we planted 100 lavenders. I chose a cultivar that is grown for its essential oil production.  That is another story.

The second winter after planting most of the shoulder-height Arbequina trees succumbed to a bad combination of somewhat clueless olive farmers and a deep freeze followed by a wet winter. We heavily mulched the bases of the trees with piles of straw when we saw the forecast for temperatures in the edge of their tolerance. Our mistake was once the snap passed and winter turned wet, wet, wet, we didn’t remove the straw. In the spring we pulled back the straw and saw the soggy conditions we had created. We lost 95% of the trees.

That spring we watched as some came back from the roots. Trees that had been nearly as tall as me were now a handful of hand-high sprouts. Fast-forward to now. Dotted here and there along the terrace are five olive bushes. They produce. Under the best of circumstances, Arbequina olive are small, ours are mostly tiny.

The olives begin to ripen in November and don’t ripen all at once. We have never had enough ripen to squeeze out even a tiny amount of olive oil. The last few days I looked at some of the larger green ones and am thinking about lacto-ferment brine curing them. Just a jar or two.

Most people don’t realize you can cure olives without lye. It takes a bit longer this way but you can.