The Shalumar olive harvest is done, and yes we did leave one tree behind…
The Choughs are having a fine time in the grove picking up off the ground, and swimming twice a day in the nearby water trough. (Choughs look like Crows, but when they fly you see a flash of white feathers on their otherwise black colouring)
In the end we picked 568kgs off probably 350 trees. The prior year was 2234kgs off around 400 trees.
A frustrating harvest with yield per tree under 2kgs, versus 6kgs plus the prior year. That means a lot of net moving from tree to tree for not many olives.
The 2026 crop is around 25% of the prior year 2025, but far better than the no crop in 2024!
Some reports farther up the valley have this year at 10% of last year.
The yield this year averaged 21.1%, very good, whilst last year it was a satisfactory 15.8%
In 2026 everything ripened very quickly, the small crop load and sunny weather allowed the trees to fatten the olives earlier and with more oil.
We had three generations picking: very special. The three year olds motto was quite clearly: no olive left behind!
The olive mill worked well, everything was processed within a few hours of picking. The oil is now settling in stainless steel tanks.
We will bottle mid-June.
Pricing in this fast moving world, will remain the same as 2025:
For our standard 500ml bottle with built in pourer:
1 bottle $25
2 bottles $50
4 bottles $90
8 bottles $180
The country is drying off quite rapidly, we will start irrigating soon. We suspect the next few years will be quite challenging with regard to weather. We only have our farm dams for water, unlike many in the Hunter on irrigation schemes. So we run out of irrigation water quite quickly in drier times.
Here’s to the future.
Alan and Jocelyn
0419255949