How to cure homegrown green olives naturally

[Mark]

Here's our latest harvest this year we got 8kgs of olives

It took me 2.5 hours to score them all before brining in a 30 ltr brewing container, hopefully one day I'll be able to fill this whole container with curing olives.

The scoring process gave me "olive thumb"

 

[Steve]

Looks awesome Mark.
Pardon my ignorance but do you have two different types of olives? Just wondering why some are green and some black?

 

[Mark]

Just wondering why some are green and some black?

Yes, they are the same olive but the black are fully ripe. We just harvested them all at the same time whether ripe, turning ripe, or still green. Last year we harvested them before they started turning black but I wanted to experiment this year curing ripe olives. I love the taste of both ripe and green olives.

However, there are several different types of olives in the mix: the majority are manzanillo, but we also have some Helana, and another medium sized one, which I don't know what variety it is as it was a gift from the in-laws without a label. Our Kalamata tree is probably the oldest olive we have and it still has never produced - it probably never will since it's a typical colder climate variety.

Also, we've harvested a bunch of arbequina olives these are a really small variety and practically fruit in any climate although they taste good (I tried a few my brother in-law cured once) the small size is a little off putting but I might try to cure them whole without scoring - we'll see. I'm keeping them separate for now.

 

[Jnel]

Once you have done the curing process, how do keep them. Can you flavour what you want, then keep remaining in the brine to they don't go off ?

 

[Mark]

Yes exactly, if you have a lot then you can do what the ancient Greeks used to do and store the olives in the brine until you are ready to use them.

Then it's simply a matter of marinating a batch when required by scooping out some adding your flavours etc and keeping them in the fridge.

If you find the olives straight from the brine are too salty then soak them in unsalted water for a while before marinating.

 

[OskarDoLittle]

Any updates on your olives Mark? Quantity of water given over winter...any signs of flowering as yet? (That might be a ridiculous question...but I don't know too much about olives!)
I'd always thought they'd be too much hassle, but your method seems fairly straight forward. Most of the other pickling recipes seem to require a daily (or second daily) change of brine (possibly not going to happen for me) so I wondered whether you used this longer, but less labour intensive method to minimise time...or just through trial and error?
I quite like the "Sicilian green" olives which are a bit smaller and bright green...not sure if their name reflects a specific cultivar, or a specific stage (ripeness) at which they're picked, or how their processed.
I also can't find anything much on how much sun they need...I assume full sun?

 

[Mark]

Some of our trees are flowering but I think it's a little too early yet and I'm hoping to see more flowers coming on mid-spring.

They have had lots of water this winter and start of spring so if more water is supposed to increase productivity then we'll soon see I suppose.

I still have my last season batch of olives in the fermentation drum. I only changed the brine twice and now they don't require any more curing but we're just keeping them in the drum for storage. When we want olives or give a jar away we simply scoop them out with a little brine juice and it's working like a charm!

Nina and the boys prefer the olives plain as is because they are actually very tasty without any extra marinate but I still like to flavour them sometimes with some herbs lemon chillies etc...

Curing olives in a large beer fermentation drum like this is very easy!

Olives do grow best in full sun but they can still do alright when shaded out slightly at times throughout the day.