Olive Harvest 2025 — The Story of Our Most Successful (and Most Challenging) Harvest Yet

We’ve just finished this year’s olive harvest. For our family farm, the 2025 harvest was both the most successful and the most challenging so far.

A Broken Ankle During Pruning

While pruning the olive trees this spring, I broke my right ankle. That put me out of action for at least a month and a half.

Still, I didn’t give up. I kept exercising regularly — walking, swimming, anything I could — and by the end of June I was already back working in the groves.

However, the discomfort and pain related to the fracture kept coming back during the heavy work of this year’s harvest.

Preparing the Groves (September – October)

From the last week of September until the start of the harvest (October 16), we mowed the groves. Before mowing, we also pruned shoots from the roots of many trees.

The Harvest

This year’s harvest took place in two “rounds”:
October 16–19 and October 26 – November 1.

It was… challenging. 😶

On the first day of the second round, our car broke down — the one we were using to transport the olives to the mill for pressing.

Since an organized olive harvest is an extremely demanding process that leaves almost no time for anything outside the pre-defined routine — moving full crates from the grove to the tractor trailer, then to the car trailer, driving to the mill, transferring olives from 25 kg crates to 400 kg bins, returning to the grove and repeating — the car breakdown was a serious setback. Even more so because it happened on a Sunday.

The Rental Van

Luckily, we found a cargo van for rent in the classifieds and drove 50 km south to Pula to pick it up. And – to make the day even more interesting – we got a message that the authorities in Pula were disabling an unexploded World War II bomb. Cool! Anything else? 😅

We then returned to the countryside, ready to work. The rest of the day went according to plan, and we managed to harvest and process 2,342 kg of olives that day.

As the old folks here say: “The devil always sh*ts on a big pile.”

Meaning: When trouble comes, it never comes alone. 🌞

4 x 4 Troubles

The very next day, something else went wrong — our tractor broke down. It’s the one we use to transport crates of olives from the grove to the vehicle that takes them to the mill.

On our trusty Tomo Vinković tractor, the rear-axle drive shaft broke down. Fortunately, an excellent mechanic, Mr. Ive, arrived quickly and managed to make it drivable again — but with front-wheel drive only.

That was enough to tow it to the workshop later, but the tractor could no longer pull a heavy trailer full of olives, especially uphill.

That’s when our dear friend Dragan came to the rescue and lent us his tractor, which we used successfully until the end of the harvest. Thank you, amico! ❤️

Of course, this breakdown caused a delay in collecting the last crates from the grove, so that evening we were driving around in the dark to finish gathering them. 😵

By the end of the harvest, we’d had sun, rain, cold, and warm weather — all of it. But we made it through and successfully picked all 600 trees in our olive groves.

We’re deeply grateful to everyone who helped make this demanding job possible — especially our pickers (Drago, Goran, hats off! 💪🏻) and the dedicated people at the mills where we turned our beautiful fruit into oil.

A big thank-you also to Vedrana and Ivana for their endless support and for tolerating my occasional frustration during the harvest, which — as always — felt endless at times. 😀

Here’s a photo of the last tree we picked this year, and below you can browse the photo gallery from the 2025 harvest, or order our fresh, high-quality, newly produced extra virgin olive oil Bilini.

Photo Gallery – Olive Harvest 2025, by Family Farm Rakovac