First up, how were we going to nurture the trees? We were very lucky to have bought land at the base of a mountain. There is little rain for 6 months from April to October which is great for our holiday guests but could be a problem for fruit-bearing olive trees. Not in our case. The locals call our area ‘Dorkes’ in Greek which means something like ‘bowl’ or ‘ditch’ where mountain water is held in the subsoil during the dry months. Our decades-old trees (some over 150 years) have put down deep roots so they can find this water during the hot dry summers.

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John models the lastest ‘must-have’ headgear this autumn. He discovered the hard way after getting thwacked in the eye by a rogue olive branch. More than ‘ouch’ and a lot of squinting, this required a visit to the local health centre.

Our trees seemed to be very productive, with each one spawning an average of 40 kilos of olives. So we had no need to start throwing handfuls of pesticide and fertilizer around to get a good crop. We realized we could be organic! This was an extremely important starting point for us. Nature would do the hard work of putting olives on the trees but how were we going to get them off?

We made an early decision that Marcus and I would do the harvest ourselves – this equates to only about 1½ ‘strapping lads’ and furthermore we were not yet experts, so we needed help. Desperately.

First choice was an affable local chap Giorgos (George) who owned an olive grove opposite us and is a dab hand at picking. He also spoke excellent English. Giorgos also happens to own a great restaurant in our local seaside village, Almryrida. In a classic case of village bartering and mutual back scratching (which crops up regularly in this venture) we agreed to promote his restaurant to our villa guests in return for a crash course in the art of olive picking.

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A typical mix of olives in various degree of ripeness. Lovely as they look, don’t be tempted to chew on a raw one. Even at harvest time they can be very bitter.

Day 1 was theory and we passed with flying colors. The following went into our notebooks:

1. buy a great big green net and spread it around the tree
2. use a big stick or your hands to knock the olives off the tree so they drop onto the big green net
3. rake the olives to remove any sticks or leaves
4. shovel the olives into cloth sacks
5. tie the sacks and load into a van.

If we put our backs into it, we should fill 20 sacks a day. Each sack would make about 10 litres of oil – so that’s 200 litres of oil a day. This was easy! A trip to the local farm shop to buy the above hardware and we were ready!

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All packed up and ready to go. All we need now is someone with a big truck. A Very Big Truck. …now who do we know…?

At about midday on Day 2 with one quarter bag filled (slight exaggeration but it was not going well) we realized we needed more muscle. Step up two strapping lads in the shape of expat locals Mark and Andy. Mark and Andy are a key reason why our villa rental business runs like clockwork. They look after the houses and guests throughout the year and our guest comment-book invariably alludes to how great they are. It would be wasteful to overlook their talents (especially as Mark is also a qualified tree-surgeon) so we would get them working in the fields with us in return for as much olive firewood they each needed over the winter. Hurrah! They agreed to join the harvesting team.

Another early decision was to control the process directly ourselves ‘from tree to the bottle’. In other words to be physically present at all times. We took this literally, which meant taking the bags of olives to the factory ourselves and ‘riding shotgun’ while the olives were pressed so we could be assured we really were producing single estate, unblended, unfiltered oil. We had chosen the factory with the best reputation for quality in our region so we knew we were going to get
great oil. We just wanted to make sure it was our great oil.

Andreas arrives. On time as well! And he has remembered to bring his Very Large Truck.

Next question was transport.

Once picked, the olives must be taken to the factory for processing as fast as possible, otherwise the natural enzymes present begin to ferment and heat up the olives from inside the bag.  To minimize this potentially disastrous deterioration, the huge piles of olives we had picked  were kept loose on groundsheets. A couple of days saw us collect about 1500 kg. We then bagged the olives in breathable cloth sacks and rushed to the factory. The 3 door hatchback we hired was not going to take kindly to that sort of weight, so we needed a lorry. We didn’t have one of course but the answer was obvious: call Andreas the swimming pool salesman. Andreas has a big white van used to deliver poolside equipment to local customers. Andreas loves olive oil, but has none. We have lots of olive oil but have no lorry. A little more village bartering (which also involved some pleading) and we were on the road to the mountain village where we would find one of the finest olive oil factories in Western Crete.

The factory owner ceremoniously removes the insides of the tomato and the lemon, before stirring into the fresh oil (5 minutes old!) . Yes, at this stage the oil does look like pondwater but that is because it needs several months to settle. However, the resulting taste is magnificent. It is everything we expected and more.

It is hard to describe the excitement of seeing your own olives loaded into hoppers and watching the fascinating process of turning raw olives into liquid green oil. First, fans blow the excess sticks and leaves away. The olives are cleaned and put through the pressing process at which point you can smell the rich aroma of your own olive oil from the trees you were harvesting that morning. The oil pours out as an opaque green liquid (looking not unlike pond water, it needs a few months to settle before it achieves that beautiful, deep clear green colour).

The factory owner himself made up a delicious marinade of fresh oil, freshly squeezed lemon, tomato and rock salt which he handed to me with a plate of crusty bread. Olives which had been hanging on a tree that very morning were now providing me with a heavenly taste I will remember forever.

Marcus and I sat back, downed a glass of Retsina and toasted the day we had met 30 years before. He stills owe me for that plate of chips and a night’s accommodation…

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You can buy John, Marcus, Kirsty and Tina’s extra virgin olive oil online from the UK. Visit their website, see photos from the olive harvest and perhaps join them next season in a unique olive picking activity holiday scheduled for November 2010.