Olive Farm Updates
Here you'll find the most recent updates of your olive trees progress and any other information regarding the Casa del Sole organic olive groves & farm.
A big welcome to the 2009 Casa del Sole Olive Tree Adoptors.
April 2009
This is the first instalment informing you of the progress of your tree.
To be honest, olive trees don’t do much until May when they flower but the weather leading up to this is vital. What you need is plenty of rain and sunshine to encourage the tree to think it can produce a lot of fruit this year. Certainly the conditions are right . So far, so good.
All the trees in need of pruning have been done.
The horses are doing sterling work fertilizing the trees in the most organic way known to man. Our only job currently is cutting the 'suckers' which grow from the base of the tree and sap vital energy and keeping the demon ivy at bay - not an easy task when you have 500 trees to work on.
In fact if you fancy a working holiday, with the chance to commune closely with your olive tree then let me know - I've got a spare set of secateurs and gardening gloves just waiting for you!
August 2009
This is the second instalment informing you of the progress of your tree.
May was perfect weather for olive blossom – mild and damp but with no major storms to knock the blossom from the trees. We were certainly starting to think that it might be a good year!
As summer progressed, August has turned into a real scorcher – 8 weeks of boiling temperatures and no rain. This is not so good for olives – they like a little moisture throughout the summer.
We always get storms at some point in the Autumn – the earlier the better. It is a disaster if they come in October because the olives are ripening and heavy and the wind and rain dislodge them). This year we are hoping that the rain arrives soon, otherwise there will be a detrimental effect on the oil yield and our stream will run dry, leaving us without water in the house and vegetable garden too.
The good news is that (after 4 years of trying) I have finally got small farmer status and a little financial help from the EU – this is being used to renovate existing cisterns and build a couple of new ones so that we can recycle all the rainwater off our driveway and house by using it to water the garden and irrigate the olive groves. Yay!
I would also like to thank all our wonderful ‘working guests’ so far this year. You have all helped enormously and we are very grateful.
The next update will be at the start of the olive harvest in November.