David S. Rodock
The Valdosta Daily Times
LAKELAND —
You can add olives to that long list of South Georgia agriculture products.
Georgia Olive Farms grower Jason Shaw estimates he had about three tons of arbequina variety olives harvested Tuesday.
Olives were refrigerated immediately on the field then taken to a local blackberry cold-storage facility which helped the olives cool to the recommended temperature of 41 degrees Fahrenheit.
At 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, the olives were loaded onto a refrigerated truck and sent to Texas to be milled and processed for olive oil. The oil will be shipped back to Georgia to be bottled and labeled.
“We did pretty good; we did about what we were hoping and the fruit looked really good,” said Shaw. “It was definitely a very experimental process. We tested three different types of (mechanical) harvesters and Archie Bennett of Bennett Tractors in Waycross managed to figure out a lot of things that would work best for us.”
Even though it rained almost all Tuesday, Shaw said they had to work through it to ensure freshness of the olives.
Shaw said he has been informed by numerous sources that this is the first olive harvest in the American East Coast since the 1800s.
“There are some records of barrels of olive oil being shipped from the Georgia coast back in the 1800s,” explained Shaw.
“I don’t know what happened, if it was hurricanes or the Civil War; but everyone is telling us that this is the first commercial harvest on the East Coast.”
This might be the first harvest in a long time for Georgia but, if Shaw has any say in the matter, it won’t be the last.
“We hope to see a potential of a large market in the next five years,” said Shaw. “In the next five years, we should have 500 acres of olives in production in South Georgia, which should yield somewhere around 1,800 tons of olives each year.
“We just have a great team and we’re staying committed to reaching our goal of creating a strong market of olive oil produced in the Southeast and being able to supply the demand of not just the local market, but potentially the entire East Coast,” said Shaw.
For more information about Georgia Olive Farms, visit georgiaolivefarms.com
