Monday October 21, 2013 Making olive oil

Students used the equipment on the Center property to make oil from the olives they picked last week. The technology is 2000 years old, and is still used in some parts of the middle east.  Donkeys, rather than students, usually turn the crusher wheel. 

 

The process starts by putting whole olives, pits and all,  into the crusher. 

As the wheel turns, the olives are crushed...

 

and crushed...

and crushed some more...

You get the idea by comparing the whole olives on the right to the crushed olives on the left.

The log is inserted through a hole in the center of the crushing stone, and we crush the olives by pushing on the log which rotates the crushing stone inside the crushing bin. The unlucky guy on the outside has more ground to cover with each revolution. We push round and round...

and round...

and round...

and round...

and round...

and round.

 

Then we shovel the crushed olives into hemp baskets and stack the baskets under the olive press screw. 

As the screw is tightened, pressure builds on the olives in the baskets... 

and oil starts to ooze out of the hemp baskets...

 and spills down the stone into a large basin, into a smaller basin, and into another smaller basin.  The oil sits for a few days to allow settling.  Water is added, oil rises to the top and is skimmed off. The oil is sent out to be processed and each student receives a small bottle of olive oil as a souvenir.

 

 This is another olive press representing 3,000 year old technology.  It is no longer used in the middle east, but we used it anyway to demonstrate this press.

 Large stones (not the pretty girls) help apply pressure to the olives in the hemp baskets.  The oil flows into the trough and into the settling basins.