Olives in Israel

Sorts of olives

There are many sorts of olives like green olives, black olives, European olives and more but the mainly olives on in Israel are the green olives.

The importance of the olives in the past and today

The importance of the olives in the past connected to the miracle of the eight cans and the little oil jug. The jug had enough oil to eight days! And he was a very small jug!!!

The olives also used in the temple for Zevachim to the god and their oil used to crown the kings.

The Jewish people used oil to their holydays, too.

Today we use olives mainly for eating and to do olives oil for our food, too. There are some people that drink one small spoon with olives oil because it is very hood and healthy and there are some people that combine the olive oil with their food like salad with olive oil or a turkey with an olive oil and things like that.

Israel makes 130000 – 400000 liters of olive oil on one year.

The Quality of the olives in Israel

The olives on Israel have good quality for some reasons:

• Israel export her olives to other countries – I saw some websites of food selling and found that other countries even sell the Israeli olives on the web which means that Israeli olives quality is very good!
• Israel is one of the Mediterranean Sea countries that have many olives in her country. Some of those countries just don’t have that amount of olives so Israel exports olives to other countries.

Olive oil production

The oil production is conduct on the olive press but first you need to take the olives from the olives area.

Some people spread a map under the olive tree and throw a stick to drop the olives to the map and then collect them to the olive press to crush them and remove their oil from them by crushing all the olives in a big tank.

Local olive oil production

I know some olive oil production in Israel – "Beit Hashita", (the way house) "Hetz Hazait", (the tree of the olives) and more – but they are only pack, market and sell them to the consumers – the olive press do all the work!

Visiting local olive harvest

My class went to an olive harvest in "Moshav Netaim" with our farm lessons teacher – Ruth. She explained us the important things about olive harvest and we went to work.

We pick the olives from the trees to a box and then the boxes sent to the olive press. Some olives have sent to our farm and the children make their own olives and take them home. After two months we open them and started to eat. Yummy!

by Or