What happens during olive season

We’re almost at the end of olive season. We’ve got about 45 olive trees. Most are syrian olives and a few are manzanillo (sometimes called spanish).

We start picking right after Succoth. We’ve got some friends, Ron and Marty, who enjoy helping us and come out everyday to pick. This year we have a volunteer, Michael, helping us out as well.

So it’s pick, pick, pick. We pick by hand and we use an olive picking machine. The machine looks likes a rake. We hook it up to a battery and it shakes the olives off the trees.

We put plastic around the trees so when the olives fall it’s easier to see them and pick them up.

We cure and spice the manzanillo olives. This year we’ll have enough olives to last us at least until Pesach. If they come out good, we’ll share them with our friends who helped us.

We bring the other olives to press and make oil. Since it's just us, it takes time to finish picking all the olives. As we pick, we store them in a large refrigerator. We try not to store the olives more than a couple of weeks before we bring them to the press. So we usually end up going to the press 2 or 3 times a season. This year we’ve been there twice and we have about 75 liters of olive oil. We’ll probably go once more.

I usually put aside enough olive oil for us and we bottle and sell the rest. It’s 100% olive oil and it’s delicious.

As we’re working, we trim the trees to keep them healthy. As usual, nothing is wasted at Meshek Muslow. The sheep and goats eat all the trimmed branches. Anything they don’t eat, we chip.

Wow! What a Great Week

We opened our farm to visitors during the Succoth holiday and we had such a great response. We had visitors from Beit Shemesh, Modiin, Rechovot, Jerusalem, and a few other places.

Here’s some of what we showed our visitors:

Blue Java banana plant

First stop. We introduced our visitors to the blue java banana. Everyone got a chance to taste this very special fruit and learn how the banana grows and walks. Although it looks like a tree, the banana is not a tree because its stem doesn’t contain any woody tissue. So technically a banana isn’t a fruit because it doesn’t grow on a tree. It’s an herb!

Sheep, goats, chickens, pheasants, ducks….

I love this part of the tour. Some visitors jump right in, pet the goats, run after the ducks and laugh with the geese. Others are a little tentative about the idea, but in the end everyone spends time petting the sheep and goats and seeing the birds.

Isabella grapes

After walking around the olive, macadamia, avocado and orange trees, it’s time to taste the delicious and sweet Isabella grape. The grape is small and has  a seed. The Isabella is an American grape from South Carolina.

Guava

Guava is a fruit that people either love or hate. I love it and I love the smell. All our visitors tasted the guava, some for the first time. Guava is high in vitamin C and in addition to lots of other benefits, it’s supposed to help your eyesight.

Bay leaves and  Curry leaves

These 2 leaves add very different and delicious tastes to soups and stews. We gave everyone a few of them to take home and try.

I thought the Curry leaf was spelled as Keri. I got the use right, it’s great in Indian recipes. I also learned you can fry it with onions and I’m planning on trying that next.

Succoth species

We grow all 4 species. We sell the the willow (aravot) and myrtle(hadas). All our visitors saw how they grow, how we cut them, and brought some home.

Governor’s  plum

Another snack for our hungry visitors. This fruit from Madagascar is a little different but most everyone seemed to like it.

And that was not all...Our visitors tasted carob, the peanut butter fruit, and of course pomegranates. At the end everyone had a chance to pick pomegranates as well.

Pomegranates and Blue Java Bananas

Red Pomegranates and Blue Bananas

We've got pomegranates and blue java bananas at Meshek Muslow!

Pomegranates

We have about 40 pomegranate trees and that’s a lot of pomegranates. This summer our volunteers, Steve and Shelley wrapped each pomegranate in paper bag to keep the bugs out.

It took them several weeks to do all that work but look at these pomegranates.

I love pomegranates. I found some recipes but I’d rather just eat them fresh.

The way I open a pomegranate

Since it can be very messy to open a pomegranate, I use the water method. I just open the fruit in a bowl filled with water. That way the juice spurts into the water. I’m not very organized about how I peel it but you can choose the peeling method that works best for you.

1. Fill a bowl with water
2. Open pomegranate and place in the bowl
3. Remove the seeds
4. The seeds sink to the bottom and the white pieces float to the top
   

   
5. Remove any white pieces that are floating
6. Drain the seeds and eat
   

   

Blue Java Bananas    

Our Blue Java bananas are ready too. The Blue Java banana is a sweet tasting fruit. It’s sometimes called the “ice cream banana” because it has such a creamy sweet taste with a hint of vanilla. Before the banana ripens to a yellow color, it’s peel is aqua blue and the plant is beautiful.

As soon as they're ripe and yellow, it's time to eat and with such a great taste they're perfect for baking sweet banana breads.

I’ve made a few loaves with these sweet bananas and date honey. I'm sure this recipe works with any type of banana and regular honey.

1/3 cup oil
1/2 cup date honey
1 cup mashed bananas (about 2 1/2 bananas)
2 eggs
1/4 cup almond milk
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup flour
optional add walnuts and raisins

1. Mix oil, honey, bananas, and almond milk
2. Add eggs and mix
3. Add baking soda, vanilla extract, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg
4. Mix in flours
5. Add walnut and raisins if using
6. Pour into loaf pans
7. Bake 325 for 45 to 50 minutes