Harvest Time at Boutique Olive Grove — How We Pick Every Olive by Hand

Every year in autumn — typically April to May in the Karoo — the harvest comes. For a boutique estate like ours, that means no machines, no shortcuts, and no cutting corners. Every olive is picked by hand.

Four Varieties, One Harvest

Our grove grows Mission, Frantoio, Coratina and Leccino olives. Each cultivar ripens slightly differently, which means the harvest isn’t a single day — it’s a careful, cultivar-by-cultivar process, working through the rows at the right moment for each variety.

Organic from the Ground Up

No synthetic pesticides, no fertilisers — ever. The trees drink pure borehole water from beneath the Karoo veld, and the rest they take from the land itself. Organic practice isn’t a marketing choice for us; it’s how we’ve farmed since the first planting in 2007.

Rakes and Matts — The Traditional Method

We harvest using small handheld rakes. Each branch is worked gently, the olives falling onto large matts spread beneath the trees. No bruising. No rushing. Once a matt is full, it’s lifted and the olives emptied into crates, which are weighed to record the yield from each individual tree. A single tree typically takes ten to fifteen minutes.

From Tree to Press

After the harvest, olives are sorted by hand to remove leaves and debris. Then they go directly to the cold press — within hours of picking, because freshness is everything when you’re making extra virgin olive oil. From the branch to the bottle, the entire journey happens on and around the estate.

Each limited-release vintage is the record of one Karoo year. That’s what you’re opening when you pull the seal on an ASCENSION or PROSPERITY.