Caltech Olive Harvest

A week from Friday Caltech is hosting it's second annual Olive Harvest Festival. If you'll be in the area, the site says they are still looking for volunteers.

There will be olive harvesting, brining/pickling and the olives will be pressed on a mill and press built by a local welding company which is designed to be operated by hand (pushing 1600-pound wheels). They say it can be operated by 10 people at once.
We were hoping to harvest our own olives for pressing this year but got a late start and didn't do enough to prevent olive fly infestation. We were also caught a little off guard by how early they ripened this year. Next year we'll try again but we hope to learn something from the folks at Caltech.

2008 Caltech Olive Harvest