The 2024 Olive Harvest is Complete – Fresh EVOO Bilini is Here!

Another olive harvest is behind us! As it is every year, it was stressful and exhausting. But most importantly, the delicious, fresh EVOO Bilini is here!

Preparations for the Harvest

About a month before the start of the harvest, we began preparing our olive groves:

• Trimming around the trees with a trimmer
• Mowing between the rows with a tractor
• Thoroughly cleaning stainless steel barrels
• Removing shoots around the trunks to avoid obstacles during harvesting

Trimming grass in our olive groves was very similar to what you see in the video below 👇🏻

Coordinating everything was crucial to ensure my regular job wasn’t neglected. In other words, after an 8-hour day at the office, I’d put on my work clothes, drive 50 km north, and get to work. Every day, unless it rained.

Olive Harvest 2024

Did someone mention rain? 🌧️ This year, the weather wasn’t as bad as last year, but it wasn’t ideal either. At least not while we were picking.

Before the harvest, we often get offers (mostly from foreigners) who want to help with the harvest to “experience that primal feeling” of olive picking. It’s a lovely thought, but it doesn’t have much to do with reality.

Our average day in the harvest goes like this:

🌟 Waking up around 6:30;

🌟 Leaving Pula for Rakovci at 7:00

🌟 Carrying empty crates to the olive grove for the day’s picking

🌟 8:00 – Start of the harvest

🌟 We pick olives alongside other harvesters. Around noon, we stop harvesting to collect the crates filled with olives and transport them to the mill for processing. We load them onto the tractor trailer, then transfer them from the tractor trailer to a car trailer.

🌟 It’s a half-hour drive from our village to our preferred mill.

🌟 (Usually) waiting at the mill for our turn to unload. Unloading the olives from crates into large bins.

🌟 This year, we managed to make three trips to the mill per day.

🌟 Bedtime at the latest by 21:00.

🌟 Next day: repeat.

🌟 … and again.

Fresh EVOO Bilini

After all the hard work involved in the harvest, the biggest comfort and reward is bringing home that fresh extra virgin olive oil after your olives have been processed.

This year, fresh EVOO Bilini is fantastic. You can order it from our web shop.

Note: Larger packages (1 liter, 5 liters) of EVOO Bilini will be available for a limited time, depending on the quantity remaining until the next harvest. So, if you’d like to stock up on these larger packages, it’s best to do so as soon as possible. Not only because of limited availability but also because – as the Christmas holidays approach – delivery companies face increasing pressure, leading to chaotic situation during December.

Feel free to visit our web shop by clicking the button below 👇🏻