Next time you are spooning olive oil over your salad spare a thought for the poor sods who have to produce the stuff for a living (fortunately not us!).

When we moved down here (Datça) we invested some money in some plots of land, one of which just happened to have some olive trees on it. This particular plot is quite small at around 400 sqm. and it's got 13 trees on it (these numbers are important for later maths!).Bear in mind we only bought the land for investment , we don't want to go into the olive business ,It'll be used later to build on or to sell.

Anyway as the trees were becoming full of fruit which was beginning to go black, we made a few inquiries with the locals as to what to do about them. Apparently black olives are suitable for oil production (although some can and have been cured for breakfast consumption), we were advised to collect the olives from the trees and take them to local co-operative where they will be squeezed for oil. Easy so far isn't it ?

Well no, it really isn't. Trees are bloody big things and the olives are to small and numerous to pick by hand, you have to get some long sticks and bash the little things from the trees (we used some local bamboo from one of the nearby beaches) and collect them from the ground (or polythene sheeting in our case). So the process is;you whack the trees with your sticks, the olives fall off (not half as many as you would want to), you collect them up, blah blah.

We did this and it took 7 solid days and it is f'ing hard graft, we collected them all up and the total weight of said olives was about 115 kilos. There were still quite a few on the trees but the bastards just wouldn't come off. The other downside to this is that you spend so much time looking at the little black fuckers that you see them when you close your eyes or dream about them when you are asleep!! ; maybe there is a disease olive psychosis


We went to the olive oil factory, they remarked about the quality of our olives and pressed them for us which produced about 24 litres of fine 'Zeytin Yağ' which incidentally is cloudy and resembles the colour of zitty pus (it clears after a few months apparently).

After a few days we decided to give the trees another few whacks (actually 3 days of whacking!) to try and remove some of the remaining olives, this resulted in a further 55 kilos which produced 12 litres, I should add at this point that the factory take 10% of your oil as a pressing fee.

So, after 10 days bloody hard work, we now have about 33 litres of green olive gunge (having given a commission to the factory).


Olive oil here sells for 6 lira a litre, so if we were to sell it (which we won't) we would get in the region of 200 lira , this represents 10 days work. Luckily this isn't our livelihood , though I have read some stories about foreigners selling up to buy an olive grove etc etc.

I have no idea how farmers make a living producing this stuff, think about it, if 400 metres of land produces 200 ytl's worth of olive oil after 10 days work of 2 people, how much land / effort do you need to make a living ?? you do the maths.

Luckily this is a 'hobby' but next time you are in Migros looking at the olive oil and you comment 'isn't this expensive' spare a thought for the poor bastards that get it into the bottles. On top of this your trees only produce every 2 years

Here is a link showing some of the processes we undertook to get this stuff from tree to bottle .
http://www.europe-nikon.com/nbvpmailred ... 0_29676430

Time to move back to the city? Great story though

so how much longer for the stuff to clear and do you lose any of the oil during this process? ie, is part of the clearing process sediment that separates and needs to be filtered out?

have you tried your product yet?

i think the numbers work out more positively for the companies you see in the stores. they're dealing with probably dozens of workers a day at say 5-10 YTL/person and they probably knock those little guys down more quickly and efficiently than you do. resulting product is thousands and thousands of bottles, not just 8 like yours

Oz- absolutely no way, there is more chance of you finding rocking horse shit, just put your head out the window and sniff/listen we don't have that here. Matt, yes you can use it, it's really good and tasty but I don't think it is commercially viable while it is cloudy. Therefore if you are doing this for a business, you have to wait a long time for your cash

My point is that the large companies are knocking this stuff out for 'big' prices, but what filters down to grass roots (or fruits) is nonsense. Thank God I can fall back on my proctology career.

Oi!!!!!!!!!!n get a grip Ch !!!! these guys see this as a pleasure/familly gathering/ annual event... just cos we are used to earning the big dosh lets not "dis" an older more reverent lifestyle. i watched while bay tree was processed for 400 ytl/ton.... they didnt ask whether it was worth 3.20 per hour minimum wage...... no it was their lifestyle and therefore more important. ........

Write a book about your experience, exaggerate the yield and underexaggerate the time and effort.

Hey presto! You have a best seller for plonkers who want to leave their city jobs and come to turkey and make oil for a living.

Then you can sit in your grove all day long poking trees with sticks counting the money its made for you, and where to place the swimming pool once you've bulldozed the poor humble olive trees down.

So you are turning your Datça into a property development project CH?
I was surprised about the oil yield per kilo.
Heard that the bottle/can you keep the oil in affects the colour - I'm presuming light turns it cloudy.

Elinize sağlik, ch.

Is your olive oil riviera or sizma or some other type? I'm not really sure the difference except that sizma is more expensive.

6 ytl/liter may be the market price but if you put it in a nice glass bottle with a cute label, I'd pay more for it. Also, they will make amazing gifts, methinks.

Just one difference: Sızma tastes lush, whereas Riviera tastes like motor oil.

Cold pressed sızma (which is extra virgin is it not) is the best I reckon.

Charly - the quick answer to your question re development is NO. , I of course understand where you are coming from on this. For your information, they do seem to have strict controls on development on this peninsula, they are quite strict on what is for building, agriculture and archaelogical and tourism( unlike Bodrum), the land I purchased was designated land for building some time ago. My concience (which I indeed have is clean).

With regard to bottles I'm told and I've read that the oil should be kept in the dark ( a bit like yourself
) this keeps it happy for up to 2 years.

Burbaco- the oil is extra virgin as it's the first pressing from the fruit and it has a low ph level , if the gunge is repressed or old olives are use then this gets sold on to factories for refining or made into soap.

Unfortunately for the locals they can't afford to develop a bottling plant in line with your suggestion, where would they get the cash?.

Arikan- correct!