Olive harvest

[happyashellas]

I know that Greece has been hit with a very poor harvest this year, attributed to unrelenting strong winds during the spring. Is Symi suffering the same blight, or were the groves in Pedi more sheltered than other islands?

[Adriana]

I don't know about further down the valley but what olives we had were battered off the trees in heavy rains and strong winds in the course of October. The olive harvest is later on Symi than in Rhodes because we don't have the water to irrigate and the olives only really start swelling and ripening with the first rains. As there is no communal olive press on Symi olives are harvested purely for brining for domestic use, not commercially.

[Kon]

We just received our 20 ltr drum of oil from Crete ,must admit the oil is a bit peppery this time ,i think they picked the olives a little early maybe to avoid all the bad weather.

[happyashellas]

We were in the south of Crete in October and there wasn't an olive to be seen anywhere. All the blossoms had been blown off the trees in the spring and so there is no harvest this year. Just when they were probably thinking things couldn't get any worse....

[snoopy2]

[quote="happyashellas"]

I know that Greece has been hit with a very poor harvest this year, attributed to unrelenting strong winds during the spring. Is Symi suffering the same blight, or were the groves in Pedi more sheltered than other islands?
[/quote]
Flaming Nora - Greece isn't having its troubles to seek. I will make a point of buying Greek olive oil in the hope that small thing will find its way back to their economy. As they say in Scotland - every mickle mak's a muckle.

[JeanW]

20 ltrs of oil, Kon - wowsers!!!. I get my bottle of Greek olive oil from M and S. On a more serious note my friends and the locals who live on Crete are suffering as they normally work on the olive groves during the close season to earn a living but sadly there are no olives this year.

[snoopy2]

Jean W - that is awful - what will these people do? Home news is bad enough with N Power moving its workforce to abroad making redundant hundreds of workers here - and only a few weeks before Christmas - the world has gone mad!!!

[Kon]

Jean the orchid grows on my inlaws land so as part of the deal with the growers we get about 4 20ltrs cans delivered to Australia.