Category: Uncategorized

Dear All,

We have just bottled the last of our extra virgin olive oil of the 2026 harvest: down to the last 100 bottles: if you would like some order now!!

For our standard 500ml bottle with built in pourer:

1    bottle      $25

2    bottles    $50

4    bottles    $90

8    bottles   $180

 

Each year we have our oil laboratory tested, a key figure of interest is its polyphenol content: This year it is 466 mg/kg. This is the highest level we have produced at Shalumar over the last 15 years: definitely what they describe as a ‘robust’ oil. It’s the polyphenols that are the key to its health benefits.

The grove continues to look good, no obvious disease present, trees very healthy.

There is good sub soil moisture, although the pastures have been noticeably drying out through August.

We will start some irrigating of the olive grove in the last weeks of August.

Flowering is around mid-October, so we need reasonable moisture levels in September/October. We hope for a good crop as theoretically it is an ‘on year’ for the trees, which tend to bi-annual cropping.

On the wider farm front: calving has commenced. We now have 12 calves on the ground, waiting on the last 4 births. Of the 12, 10 are now sporting bright yellow ear tags: this is an exciting process for me, the calves and the mums!

Anthony has taken more bird pictures: he sighted a Kestrel hunting in our nature area. We have 3 areas put aside for the wildlife: the main creek, what we call the folly dam and a new area again involving a small creek. The main creek strip has been fenced off for 20 years and is quite luxuriant. Prior to fencing the cattle degraded the creek edges quite thoroughly.

Our new boundary fence is now completed and a thing of beauty. I am reminded of the reverie in the Colorbond TV advert when I stop by to admire it.

There is much talk of El Nino: the drying off of the pasture may be the start: who knows. Certainly the long term forecast for eastern NSW is slightly drier than normal.

So we take each week as it comes, and wait to see what unfolds.

 

 

Alan

0419255949

 

 

Dear All,

We commenced the bottling process on Tuesday, and have delivered our pre-orders in the last few days.

There is still more to be bottled: get your orders in.

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

Since harvest we have pruned the whole grove, some of the trees had grown too tall for our harvesting rakes. For these trees the technique is with a chainsaw to take out the tall branches on the north side, and leave, for the time being, the tall branches on the south side.  The theory is we will not put the trees off cropping this year if we are moderate in our pruning. Come November we will assess the crop and if all seems well: take some of the tall branches from the south side of the tree as well.

Post-harvest the trees got an antifungal Copper spray, with added Boron and Mineral oil. The Copper spray suppresses fungal activity, the Boron is quite an ephemeral element and a foliar spray is the best way to keep the trees topped up. Finally the mineral oil makes it harder for Olive Lace Bug critters to latch onto the leaves.

The grove is looking bonny, we final got some good rain in May.

The 2026 cycle should be an ‘on year’ so fingers crossed we will have a decent crop to harvest in April 2027.

The Choughs are still about the grove, Anthony, my son in law, has taken this

brilliant photo of a Chough in flight. On the ground, wings folded they are all black in colour like crows!

Whilst pruning and woodchipping, the Choughs slowly got used to me. Initially the twenty or so would head off to the nearest tree when I turned up. Later on we coexisted in quite close proximity.

Anthony has been documenting our birdlife: whilst it is a work in progress, we have loaded the 21 pictures of birds on Shalumar on the website. To come, hopefully, is a picture of the elusive black cockatoos, and probably 10 or so other birds. We until now did not realise the variety of birdlife on our farm, which includes visiting Pelicans and Swans on and off through the year. All our creeks are fenced off for the local wildlife, most of which was done 20 plus years ago. The only wildlife downside is feral deer: they make a terrible mess of any tree they do not like. Fortunately the olive grove and main house have a deer fence around them.

Current farm activity is replacing our 700m boundary fence with one of our neighbours. The fence is around 50 years old and starting to fail, Phil and I are hard at work, so far 250m completed. I do hate working with barb wire, very tough on the hands!

The Angus cows will be calving from July onwards; the mums are surprisingly skittish considering their advance condition!

Alan

0419255949

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

Happy New Year to one and all.

We know many of you may have received a bottle of our Shalumar extra virgin olive oil as a Christmas present.

We hope you are enjoying it, don’t keep it as special: use it.

Once opened olive oil slowly deteriorates!

We had a larger harvest in 2025, so we still have plenty of Shalumar oil available.

We can deliver up to about a 15km radius from Neutral Bay, within reason!

No delivery charge.

Either send an SMS or email to: shalumar01@gmail.com or asmith51@bighpond.net.au with what you need.

There is a choice of batch T4 or T5, check the label on your bottle on the bottom right to see what you have.

T4 has higher polyphenols and is classed as a robust oil, more bitey at the back of the mouth. It and its sister batch T3 won a Gold medal at the Hunter Olive Show, and a Bronze medal at the Australian International OIive Show.

T5 is still quite high in polyphenols, and is classed as a medium oil. It and its sister batch T2 also won Gold at the Hunter Olive Show.

At the recent artisans Market at the Coal Loader on balance people tasting both liked T5 better as it has a slightly smoother finish.

Both are gorgeous olive oils.

 

Alan and Jocelyn

0419255949

Christmas is looming! A number of you have ordered up for Christmas presents.

We still have bottles of the Gold award winning Batch T3. This is the robust batch.

For the medium strength extra virgin olive oil we have moved onto batch T5.

Shalumar is drying out rapidly, only one rain event in the last 6 weeks and quite a bit of drying winds.

The farm dam is visibly going lower, we pumped water onto the grove for 6 hours this last weekend.

Once the dam is down around a meter, we have to pull back on irrigating to keep the water for the cattle.

The summer forecast is for a La Nina, which should mean wetter conditions, but so far no signs of the lady.

Flowering seemed to go well, now trying to assess how fruit set has gone.

A few more weeks will tell the story more clearly, but it is probably going to be a medium sized crop.

Overall the trees look bonnie.

The fire risk is increasing, so doing lots of mowing and mulching.

We will have to mulch the grove soon to mitigate the this risk.

Best practice is to have a ‘wild’ grove, i.e. unmowed, but this has to be balance against fire risk.

But short of whipper snipping around the tree bases, it is hard to keep the grass under control around the trees themselves.

We just returned from the Australian Olive Association conference in Adelaide.

Lesson for us is our fertilising regime is spot on, but we do need to get back into regenerative pruning!

With trees about to turn 30 years of age, it is important to steadily take out the older limbs to encourage new wood.

The trees crop best on wood that is up to 10 to 12 years of age.

Pruning is easy, the hard part is picking up and putting the cuttings through the wood chipper!

So Christmas is coming, olive oil makes an excellent Christmas present, let me know if you need more.

Either email on shalumar01@gmail.com, or asmith51@bigpond.net.au

Let me know if any preference medium versus robust in flavour.

 

Regards      Alan and Jocelyn

We entered two olive shows this year.

First the local show run by the Hunter Olive Association, where we entered batches T2 and T3.

Batch T2 is a milder oil. We entered T2 in Class 2 Medium Extra Virgin Olive Oils.

Batch T2 won a GOLD medal.

Batch T3 is more robust in flavour. We entered T3 in Class 3 Robust Extra Virgin Olive Oils.

Batch T3 won a GOLD medal.

We also entered Batch T3 in the Australian International Olive Awards: a much more competitive olive show with entries from all over Australia, New Zealand , South America and Europe.

And we won a BRONZE in this show for Batch T3.

So great results for Shalumar, we are thrilled.

One of the keys to our success is we process on farm within 5 hours of harvesting the olives.

Everything to do with the product is done on farm.

Christmas is coming, our olive oil makes an excellent Christmas present, let me know if you need more.

Either email on shalumar01@gmail.com, or asmith51@bigpond.net.au

Also let me know if any preference medium versus robust in flavour.

The trees are just about to flower, we are hoping no hail or strong drying winds for the next few weeks for the period through to fruit set.

So far so good, as they say.

Like Sydney the Hunter Valley is drying off quickly in spring, after an excellent, for olives, wetter winter, so we are irrigating each week with our limited water resources.

We are off the Adelaide next week to attend the annual olive conference and to collect our Bronze certificate.

Regards

 

Alan and Jocelyn

Well the last 4 weeks has been ‘interesting’, a scary word!

Shalumar with the July rainfall was quite saturated, with water oozing out everywhere.

Then came 120mm of rain in about 24 hours at the beginning of August! We awoke to no power, it went off at midnight.

A reccie out and about showed a smashed tree on the 11,000 volt powerline that crosses the edge of Shalumar: this time our tree!

A call to Ausgrid alerted them to where the problem was. Fortunately the tree gracefully flopped on the centre of the catenary between the poles, grounding them. Ausgrid were fantastic, deft use of their chainsaw saw the wires bounce back up to normal, power restored after 16 hours.

We had dragged out the generator, got it going after a lot of fiddling: it had decided its oil level was low! We powered the fridge, our satellite receiver, the modem; and it even worked our coffee machine: just! So this meant we had internet, knew what was happening, and were caffeinated.

Our cows are calving which is having its ups and downs. The first birth was twins: but they must have been at least an hour apart. So Mum half licked calf 1, went off to have calf 2, and forgot about calf 1 completely.  We found calf 2 full licked and cleaned up, and a few hours later found calf 1 parked on the other side of the paddock. Mum was adamant calf 1 was not hers. In the yard bails we got her to feed calf 1 daily for three days, but she would just not accept the calf in the paddock. So calf 1 has been adopted out for hand-raising. This is not necessarily a bad thing as we were not sure the Mum had enough milk for two.

So onward and upward, as of Wednesday 13 calves on the ground.

 On the Extra Virgin Olive Oil front: we have just entered the Australian International Olive Oil Awards. Last time we won a silver award, which was really pleasing. We are also entering the Hunter Olive Show: where in the past we have won Best Oil of Show.

We have high hopes for this year. Shalumar is fairly unique in the Hunter Valley because we have our own processing mill. Everything is done on farm. We can pick the olives when the tree’s fruit is ripe. We hand pick each tree with pneumatic harvesting rakes tree by tree. Almost all other groves use a big tree shaker machine (prone to bogging!) which has to do a whole grove in one go for cost reasons.

So we have plenty of Extra Virgin Olive Oil available, send us an email on shalumar01@gmail.com when you are ready to order/reorder.

Regards

Alan and Jocelyn

0419255949

Friends, we have just now completed our olive harvest over a period of 8 weeks.

We, with the help of our loyal band of pickers, picked just over 2 tonnes of olives. Far better than 2024 when there was no crop whatsoever!

All this was immediately processed each day through our baby olive mill, which behaved flawlessly, running for 70 hours. Our yield was just under 16%, which we are very pleased with.

First tastings reveal our usual mellow oil style, that in 2023 won a Silver medal in the Australian International Olive Awards.

Right now our oil is settling, we will rack it off and start bottling from late June.

We can also bottle some oil right now, for those that cannot wait. This is from the trees harvested in late March/early April, we put a slightly shorter use by on these bottles, because the oil is midway through the settling process.

For orders send us an email at shalumar01@gmail.com or sms/phone.

From our home on Cremorne Point we can deliver to you in Cremorne, Neutral Bay and the lower North Shore.

For 2025, our pricing is below.

Alan and Jocelyn Smith

0419255949

Shalumar Pricing 2025
Number
of Bottles		Price
1		25
2		50
3		70
4		90
6		133
8		180
10		221
12		260

Hi everyone,
We hope that you are continuing to enjoy our Shalumar Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which we tend to call EVOO!
We entered our oil in the Australian International Olive Awards: and we have been awarded a Silver Medal. We were in the Robust Oil category: the choice is Mild, Medium or Robust.
The judges’ comments were:
Fresh fruitiness with floral, herb and green tea notes. Abundant aromas, with a high transfer to the palate. Additional fresh hay, meadow, and citrus on the palate. Warm and creamy mouthfeel. Slightly astringent with big bitterness and black pepper that is a little out of balance. Complex and persistent oil.
This is a great result for us considering the challenging past season.
In the cycle of olives, the trees have just flowered in late October, and we are waiting to see how much fruit sets on the trees. In the Hunter generally flowering has been modest, mainly attributed to a dry June and July, the period when the trees decide on their spring flowering. Growers with Hunter River irrigation who have abundant water and used it in June and July are faring better. Shalumar has only surface dams on our farm for water: we have to be much more prudent in water usage. Harvest will be modest in May, with bottling in June.
As we all now know an El Nino is upon us: the rain stopped in the Hunter more or less at the start of winter: our main dam is gradually going down!
On a wider front, we have finished calving, and we are hand feeding every second day until our kikuyu pasture gets growing again. For drought insurance we have taken delivery of a truckload of Lucerne hay, hauled all the way from the Murray Valley. The last lot lasted 5 years, we hope this delivery lasts as long, but everyone is nervous regarding the weather outlook moving forward.
We are reasonably prepared for bushfires. One can always do more! We have had the big jet water bomber going over us, whilst the helicopters were pulling their water from our neighbour’s dam. This was for what became called the Kearsley fire.
We still have a few bottles of oil left, so order now, if you haven’t already done so, or would like more for Christmas. Prices are unchanged:
1 bottle $20, 2 bottles $40, 4 bottles $77, 8 bottles $147.
Email me on shalumar01@gmail.com or asmith51@bigpond.net.au or text me.
As usual I will walk around and deliver it for those of you on the Point.


Alan and Jocelyn Smith
0419255949

After a two year hiatus, we have just harvested 1.6 tonnes of olives from the grove. Coming from 400 trees, this is a light crop, but nevertheless a crop! In 2022 there was almost no crop at all in most of the Hunter Valley.

We now have our own olive mill. This means gone are the days of harvesting everything in a mad rush to send off to the big olive mill, we now can harvest each variety as it matures. Our new olive mill is very small, a nominal 40kgs per hour. In practice with setup and clean down it is more like 30kgs per hour! But it gives us complete control of our Shalumar Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

The oil is currently settling, we will rack it off in the next two weeks, and then start bottling. Like 2021 our extra virgin olive oil is a rich, flavoursome, mild style oil.

Pricing for 2023 for our 500ml bottles is:

                              1             bottle    $20

                              2             bottles  $40

                              4             bottles  $75

                              8             bottles  $147

                              12           bottles  $215

For early orders email me on shalumar01@gmail.com or text on 0419255949

Last year was quite tough, too much water! We could not get the tractor onto the grove or pasture for months. As a consequence we have some disease damage in the grove, and the pasture is difficult to walk on from the cattle sinking in to the ground as they grazed. Now we appear to be heading for dry conditions which will introduce a new set of stresses.

One outcome of the big wet is we learnt why we have no fish in our dams: we have some very large eels, one got washed over the spillway and stranded in one of the flood events. Farm dams either have fish or eels, never both apparently.

The Black Angus cattle continue to prosper. We are now transitioning to Angus Lowline cattle. As the name suggests these guys are about two third the size of a normal Angus. They are full of personality and a bit of mischief.

With support from Local Land Services we have fenced off the last section of unfenced creek on Shalumar. This involved a lot of fencing, relocating a water trough, and planting 600 tube stock trees and shrubs. Unlike 2022 we had some bad frosts in May 2023, so I expect we will have some replanting to do.

The other big project we are working on is subdividing some of our paddocks to allow for more rotational grazing. We are splitting 5 paddocks into 10 paddocks of around 2 hectares each. This involves fencing and 5 new water troughs.

So retirement for Jocelyn and I continues to be full on busy.