The Dome of the Olive Tree

At our last place in Tuscany, we were helping on a smallholding (property with a farm under 50 acres) that had a small vineyard and olive grove. Devon and I worked in the olive grove for a bit and learned a lot about olive trees. The most interesting part was the trimming.

An olive tree would virtually be a bush if it weren’t for a whole lot of pruning and shaping. An olive tree will just grow branches anywhere it can. In fact, if a tree has been frozen due to cold weather, or had appeared to be “dead,” the solution is to cut the tree down to a stump. New branches will grow out of the stump, and voila, the olive tree is back.

Part of the pruning process was to open up the center. Each olive tree should have a dome like center with little to no branches in the middle. To create and maintain this shape, Devon and I were charged with cutting out all the suckers and any branches that were growing straight into the center.

At first, we weren’t sure how to tell if the branch was a sucker. But, eventually, we got the hang of it. The suckers were usually new growth and the bark was lighter than the rest of the tree. Anything growing right into the center should be cut. A branch that looked like it could be coaxed to grow away from the center should be pulled out and guided to point down. In the end, you want a tree with branches primarily pointing down at the ground with a hollow-esque center.

Olive trees take a while to grow, but can also last forever. The trees we pruned were four years old and pretty small. They were just starting to produce olives. To make his olive oil, our host would harvest the olives by hand and then send them to the co-op which creates the oil for him. Financially, it made more sense to have the oil produced by the co-op.

We were able to enjoy his olives and olive oil. I loved both – they tasted so authentic and “fresh,” (which is a strange thing to say about something that’d been sitting in a jar for five years). Devon, however, thought the oil was lovely but the olives were too bitter. We hope to try more olive oil and olives while we’re out here to compare.