Matt's Journal

We’d moved to our Land Park house. I wanted to volunteer, to get involved in the area as I’d been in the old midtown place. The Land Park Volunteer Corps was looking for workers so I worked one Saturday a month with their teams to trim redwood sprouts, rake, whatever they needed. The work was well organized and I felt an increased sense of ownership of the park.

One day they put us to removing some small rogue olive trees. We had a spot in our front yard for a tree, so we took pity on one, brought it home and planted it. The maple was already in the ground. It grew and produced olives that turned dark and fell off, making a mess.

COVID came and I had time, so I experimented with them. Hand soap? No; a mess. Oil? Not much and not good. Laura found a recipe for brining kalamata olives. We picked them. They were small. We soaked them 10 days in water, changing the water daily, then made a salt/vinegar brine per the recipe and jarred them up.

Much to my surprise they were excellent. They were small, though, and hard to eat. I found ways to more easily pit them and we continue to use them for bread, sandwiches and salad.

Friend Dennis commented on the small size, and that made me want bigger ones.  I called the city of Davis, where we saw big olives on city olive trees on a bike ride, and they said “take ’em”. I went there with Joe across the street and collected some. They were great, even better than our tree for easy eating. Later, Dennis and I fetched good, big olives from a big tree in the park. We brined them and they are delicious.

The olives last a couple of years unrefrigerated. They aren’t the green martini olives found in stores. These are brown, oily olives with a rich taste and some oil content. Few people know how to process them, or care to, so there are plenty of trees available for harvesting. It feels good knowing how to put them to good use!

Here’s the recipes; look for “kalamata”. https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8267.pdf