Three (3) days Residential olive harvesting

Description

3 days Residential olive harvesting, cooking class with olive oil, and olive oil tasting

Day One

Arrive at our house late in the afternoon. Meet and greet, settle into your room and we will serve a welcome dinner overlooking the Aegean Sea, the most mythical of all seas.

Day Two

Wake up early in the morning, meet at the olive orchards with others. Start by placing the nets under the trees. You will have the opportunity to collect 3 packs (40 kgs each) of olives before breakfast is ready. While you are picking olives, someone will prepare tea and coffee over a woodfire, along with a rich breakfast including a variety of olives, olive oil, tomatoes, and cheeses. After breakfast, the picking continues, with a friendly competition to see who collects the most olives! In the late afternoon, there will be snacks served by the fire. Some days it may be similar to English high tea, with cookies and cakes, or grilling sucuk (Turkish Sausages) or chicken wings over woodfire.

Once all the packs are on the back of the tractor, you will accompany the olives to the communal press, where it is always exciting to see the olive oil come out. You will then have the opportunity to sample the fresh olive oil — served with fresh bread and a glass of wine.

Come back home to sleep.

Day Three

After a nice Turkish breakfast with fresh eggs from the neighbors, a variety of cheeses, olives, fresh baked bread, we will visit a small vegetable farm in the village and pick some vegetables to cook with olive oil at our cooking class. We will be making boreks (Turkish stuffed pastries) with herb and cheese stuffing as well as ground beef and potato stuffing, and fresh vegetables cooked in olive oil and as a special treat, we will also make a dessert with olive oil.

While cooking you will sample different kinds of olive oil from different regions of Turkey. At the end you will learn how to taste olive oil and understand the differences between early harvest and late harvest olive oil as well as different grades of olive oil.

After this class, olive oil will never be the same to you!

We will eat the food we made paired with wines of the region.

Late in the afternoon we will be saying our goodbyes and will hope to see you again.

If you wish you may extend your stay and join more of our cooking classes.