Pavlos Gets (his hands) Dirty — Part 2 with the 1200 Year Old Olive Trees
Pavlos Georgiadis is back on the farm with his 1200 year old olive trees, for harvest time. Being at home on the olive farm gives Pavlos Georgiadis the opportunity to do some soil work — practical work to help make the land better, and formative work for the GROW Place emerging in his part of Greece. He has kept a daily #harvest diary on his facebook page to chronicle this month on the olive grove. For part one see here.
#Harvest Diary 2017 — Day 5:
The truth is that we don’t just grow olives. We grow the soil, with respect to its structure and biology. On this living soil our ancient olive trees thrive, to which we dedicate all our care.
In order to be able to return what they offer to us, we need to understand their chemical composition. This is why we take soil samples every two years, for analysis that will give us useful data for our cultivation.
#Harvest Diary 2017 — Day 10:
Let’s wish everyone a fruitful month! Today we joined the second meeting of the local group of the Sensing Mission of the GROW Observatory. Calypso | Single Varietal Extra Virgin Olive Oil joins this innovative project, with soil data that we will collect inside our organic olive grove, using GROW’s soil sensors.
The living soil is central to our growing philosophy, and our enthusiasm is great for two reasons. Not only will we get new insights about our soils, but we will also merge our ancient olive grove with high technology for environmental monitoring.
#Harvest Diary 2017 — Day 13:
A healthy, living soil is not only a central pillar or organic farming. It is the most vital solution we have against climate change. In our effort to better understand its structure and biology, we maximise the resilience of our ancient olive grove against climate change.
Today we started doing a simple soil texture analysis, as we learned it from the GROW Observatory. A better understanding of soil texture will allow us to take better, evidence-based decisions regarding next year’s irrigation regime.
Our work at Calypso | Single Varietal Extra Virgin Olive Oil does not aim to just create products of excellent quality. It is a climate friendly cultivation, merging one of the last traditional olive groves of the Mediterranean with scientific knowledge.
#Harvest Diary 2017 — Day 15:
Snapshot from routine of an organic farmer. Every afternoon, after the freshly picked olives come to our home, they go through a separator to be selected according to their size.
Any discarded leaves go immediately to our compost pile. In there, they will meet moisture and useful decomposers for the next months, generating a rich organic compost. With that we are going to feed our soils next year.
#Harvest Diary 2017 — Day 20:
We made an open-air soil testing lab, in order to analyse the samples we are collecting all these days from our ancient olive grove, following the techniques we learn at the GROW Observatory.
The best possible understanding of our soils is central to organic farming. But there is another interesting fact.
Different soils yield different olive oils, with different texture and intensity of the bitter, which is the natural taste of the fresh olive. These are details that can be traced by a trained palate and offer useful insight to the science of gastronomy.
Exactly because our olive oil is exclusively produced from trees grown by us, and in small controllable batches, we can create this knowledge.
For us, this is an exciting field of experimentation, constant learning and synergy with the land. This way and with much love and inspiration, we keep our olive oil interesting. Will you taste it?
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