People imagine harvest as the busy season. Harvest is three loud weeks in late October. The other forty-nine weeks are the quiet work that decides whether those three weeks matter.

Winter prunes, summer waits

In February we prune hard, which feels brutal and is the kindest thing you can do to an olive tree. Spring is flowers and worry. Summer is irrigation math and afternoon shade. By September we are walking the rows daily, biting olives that are not ready and saying so.

Then one morning they are ready, and everything else stops.