From Olives to Olive Oil in Turkey
First you need your Olive tree. Then you need help from your family or friend with some long strong sticks. The sticks are used to rattle the olives from the tree. The olives fall onto the tarpaulin. The dangerous part is climbing the tree to get at the olives out of reach from the ground. Most accidents are from people falling. Getting hit by the falling olives can hurt especially when you get hit in the eye. After all the olives have been collected, they need to be sifted from all the twigs and leaves which takes a long time. Once all the olives have been put into sacks they can be taken to the local olive press. Milas has many of these and they can be seen spread all the way through Turkey. This is what we produced from our single tree which could be about 60 years old. Olives collected 190kg Olive oil pressed from this 34 litres. The press charged 20tl for their services. The other option would be to let them keep a percentage of the oil between 3 - 6%. Fingers cros