Olive Oil Could Eventually Prevent a Variety of Heath Concerns Including Colon Cancer
By Rocco Loosbrock,
Most gourmets and nutritional health aficionados already know that olive oil is the natural juice produced by the olive tree to naturally and effectively preserve the taste, aroma, vitamins and properties of the olive fruit.
Some culinary connoisseurs know that olive oil is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as it is, freshly pressed, directly from the fruit without any form of refinement or processing whatsoever.
What most people don't know is the near miraculous health benefits derived from the monounsaturated fatty acids and its high content of antioxidative substances found in olive oil, the primary component of the all Mediterranean diets.
Numerous University studies have shown that olive oil offers protection against heart disease by effectively controlling LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels while at the very same time, raising HDL (the "good" cholesterol) levels.
Posted in Health, Olive Oil by: Olives101
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Californian Olive growers see low crop this year
By Sean Janssen,
The fortunes of Californian olive growers are mixed this year.
In Jamestown, grower Leslie Hurst said her Hurst Ranch Feeds & Fencing crop looks to be following a statewide trend of light tonnage as weather has taken its toll on this year’s crop.
The California Farm Bureau Federation Food and Farm News reports that, as the California harvest nears its halfway point of completion, some groves have no olives or so few that they will not be harvested. Yields are varying from less than one ton per acre to three tons or more per acre. Thus far, more than 17,000 tons have been sent to processors from California groves. Carryover from last season is expected to keep retail stores supplied with olives all year.
“Olives are an every-other-year crop normally. This is definitely the off year,” Hurst said. “There was not much rain last year. The bloom came really late. Normally, (it would be) around the 15th of April. This year, it was in May.”
Frost that hurt winegrape growers badly in the late spring did not extend its misfortune to olive trees, she said, saying any effects of the cold snap were very minimal. However, the dryness brought on a much lighter harvest this year for Hurst when compared to 2007.
Posted in California, North America, Olive Oil by: Olives101
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Family traditions and olive milling
By PJ Bremier,
“I’ve got 38 of the most wonderful olive trees and they produce tremendously,” Jim Simon says gleefully as he looks forward to his annual olive-pressing party in November.
That’s when Simon, owner of the Building Supply Center in Point Reyes Station, and his wife, Linda, spread out a festive Tuscan feast and turn up the Italian music in their sunny Nicasio olive grove entertaining the six to 10 neighbors who have come over to help pick olives.
The topmost olives are picked the day before “so no one falls off the ladder after drinking wine” but Simon leaves the lower fruit for the guests. “We pick and pick and pick until we’re tired of picking – about five or six hours – and then we eat some more.”
He takes his harvest to McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma where his olives are pressed with the olives of other small growers in the McEvoy’s annual Community Milling Day. He’ll return days later for his proportionate share of olive oil.
Last year, Simon’s picking party shared his 7 gallons of oil, which were bottled and labeled “Linda’s Olives of the Redwoods.”
Linda Simon unknowingly inspired the olive grove 12 years ago as she and her husband were leaving the Nicasio ranch of their friends, Chuck and Leslie Gompertz. She idly commented on the beauty of the trunks of their 120 olive trees.
Posted in California, Ecology | Environment, Olive Oil, Olive Tree by: Olives101
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New Zealand’s Kapiti Olive oil stays golden
Kapiti olive oil scooped gold for the 4th in a row at the New Zealand Olive Gold Awards held in Wellington.
One of the three Raumati and Te Horo growers, Helen Walshaw, said hot days and cool nights on Kapiti Coast helped enhance the robust fruity flavour of the oil.
Kapiti Olives sends the fruit to a local press within hours of harvesting to ensure the resulting oil maintains its pure olive flavours. “It also means the oil retains its health-enhancing antioxidants,” she said. Also, the hole in the ozone layer affecting New Zealand increased the amount of vitamin D in the oil.
International judge Roberto Zecca, of Tuscany, described the Kapiti oil as “seriously, seriously good”.
There were about 135 entries in this year’s awards. Waiheke Olive Oil won best in show.
[Source] Click here
Posted in Australia | NZ, Event-Festival, Olive Oil by: Olives101
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Mechanical table olive harvest: ‘We’re close’
Hand-picking can cost growers more than half of their gross returns
By Hank Shaw,
A clutch of olive growers stood around a machine that looked like a mobile, padded skateboard ramp attached to a conveyor and armed with a massive pair of grippers.
The machine’s grippers grabbed the trunk of an olive tree and began to shake it. Olives flew off in all directions, most of them bouncing off the padded shields and rolling into the conveyor, where they were collected into bins.
When the shaking stopped, some growers gathered to check the olives to see if they were bruised. Others looked at the tree to see how many olives remained. A few looked at the tree’s trunk to see if it was scarred.
Researchers have been trying to perfect mechanical harvesting of table olives for about a decade, and while they are closing in, “we still have a ways to go.”
So says Erick Nielsen, who is among the manufacturers working on shaking machines. Others are working on picking heads, which use thick rubber fingers to knock the olives off the tree.
Posted in Business, California, Ecology | Environment, Olive Tree by: Olives101
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