There was a lot of excitement and anticipation on harvest day, cleaning, sorting and jarring them in different brining methods. And now the first leg of their journey is over.
Background: Last winter, we harvested 20-25 lbs of olives from two trees from the corner of the yard and split the yield in thirds. One third was dry brined and two thirds were water/salt brined at varying degrees of salt concentration. We harvested twice: early November at the start of the season and mid December at the end. We wanted to learn if the size and flavor of the fruit would change.
Dry brining is a quicker method, 60-80 days, and we gave it a try. On Feb 23rd those olives were rinsed, soaked in water for days and stored in the fridge in two types of marinades - one spicy and one normal - including olive oil, vinegar, spices and garlic/onion. To be frank, they were all puckered up and incredibly salty. But we gave it a couple of months, hoping they would rehydrate and lose some of that salty flavor. They never did and so out they went. We had high(er) hopes for the remaining batches, which involved bimonthly and monthly salt water changes throughout the winter and spring. Brining is amazing because you decide when they are ready. You can adjust the degree of ripeness - we prefer ours with just a little nip of bitterness, and this week they were perfect and we removed them from the brine. Next, we drained and rinsed them and will be put through a daily water bath for 5 days to leach out some of the salt and then on to the marinading room.
We have learned a lot from our first harvest. We learned about color. For Kalamatas, you can pick all of the colors at varying degrees of ripeness, what you look for is size. Once it's in the marinade, the concentrated salt brine strips some of the the flesh color anyway and you end up with a beautiful variegated assortment of green, light red, and darker black olives. We have a commercial bottle of Kalamatas in the pantry and they look the same way.
We learned about harvest differences. The late harvest fruit has a more robust flavor but a more delicate flesh because it was allowed to completely ripen on the tree. It doesn't need as long or strong of a solution to cure. Brining late and early harvests the same amount of time left the later harvest a little softer meat than we would like. We will fix that next year.
We learned why it is important to keep the early and late harvests separate. Now that both are out of the brine, I mixed them together for their water bath. And then realized the late harvest fruit needs to be used first because it is soft, and we will toss the early harvest back into a lighter storage brine for later. So that added an extra step of hand sorting them. Next season, the research will take all this into account and concentrate more on the trees. What will happen to olive production when they receive regular water and fertilized through the growing season? WIll it matter in the fruit by watering heaviest right before the harvest? Will there be more
yield? Larger and meatier fruit? Will it speed up the fruit maturity? I think we mentioned the trees had been sorely neglected for the last decade or more. They needed a modest pruning which I did and hope it won't shock the trees into skipping a season of production. With only two producing trees, and won't be going for a deeper prune until the two adolescents produce fruit.
And just this week, more comparative research came up. Our neighbor down the way has a big olive just on the outskirts of his land. It gets no special attention or water, other than what nature provides. He offered the harvest to us if we want it. Trees have different yields year to year, and so this will be especially helpful to compare with ours and teach us how to best care for our little grove. Always learning. This is fun. 
