Ripening: olives show their true colours
We are sometimes asked whether we grow green or black olives, as if the colours represented two different varieties rather the maturity of the fruit: every olive will turn from […]
Tag Archives: Olive Grove
La raccolta: the olive harvest in Tuscany
We have been harvesting in our olive grove for three weeks now, although frequent rain has slowed our progress. The harvest, or raccolta, is a decidedly social affair. Ulivetti (olive groves) […]
Back in the grove: time for the olive harvest
After a long hot summer (and an equally long and inexcusable break from blogging) when there was little to do in the grove other than watch the olives grow, it’s […]
Olives are not the only fruit: fig trees in the olive grove
The hills of Montalbano, known as le colline di Leonardo (Leonardo’s hills), are prime olive-growing territory. From the top of the hill where we have our olive grove, a endless […]
Olive farming in summer: the waiting game
Summer is a quiet period for olive farmers, particularly the organic sort. The trees have been pruned and the grass mown, the fruit has set, so since we are not […]
Foraging for Mushroom Grass – Nepitella (wild calamint)
Now that the olive blossom has faded, the dominant scent in the olive grove is once again a strong, minty fragrance. Tracing the scent back to its source, I stumbled […]
Mowing the olive grove
Although I loved the long-grassed meadow look that our olive grove sported in spring, there are solid reasons for mowing the grass which are impossible to argue with. The tall […]
Meet our olive trees: twisted trunks
Split and scarred by winter cold, dried and hollowed out by the sun, and twisted by the wind, the trunks of our olive trees reveal their histories. While olive saplings grow […]
May wildflowers in the olive grove
All the wet weather we’ve been having has turned the olive grove into a jungle. With wildflowers growing waist-high, mowing (which we’ve just started) is an epic task, so there’s […]
Fifty shades of green: changing olive trees
One of the (many) reasons that I love olive trees is their evergreen nature. In winter, when the neighbouring grapevines are reduced to knobbly stumps, and the naked chestnut trees […]
Notes from a Tuscan Olive Grove 