ACTIVITIES - no olive picking this year

What a joy and gastronomical pleasure it is to taste one's own hand-picked, organic olive oil! We pick in December ... but not this year...

Early December is usually the time we get cracking: supplied with small baskets and bags we descend onto our olive grove of about 200 trees, located between La Vudèle and Quinson, and we pick this delicious fruit for a good 10 days. We pick by hand. We pick slowly. We stop for a hearty lunch in the warming winter sun. We enjoy sharing this time with friends like Lynn, our American friend in Quinson/Grenoble/Berlin who usually makes a special trek to Provence every year to participate in the harvesting and grace us with her fantastic singing; various friends who happen to be around; guests of our B&B who want to experience this special time.

Not so this year.

With a very short winter and a very long spring including weeks of rain fall the quality of the olives this year was so devastating that it was not worth it to pick the few which were left on the tree to turn them into mediocre quality oil which will not keep very long.

Here some images of past olive harvests:

20009 Alexander & family and Chan came up from Aix...

 

... and we enjoyed a lovely lunch in the sun

special olive picking baskets for easy picking

Elmer came down from the Netherlands last year...

... and Katja with Alice from Hamburg

2012 with Linda & Josh from New York at the mill...

our harvest last year!

... and after a little more than an hour with our own olive oil!

sharing a delicious dinner with Elmer

some olives we cure in brine for the summer

2013 with Lynn and Marie-Louise from the Netherlands

Hopefully next year we will be back on track! If you want to partake in this experience look on our web site for details and dates

Happy walking in Quinson!