Like any country, Spain wouldn't be Spain without its assets & traditions...bull-fighting, the Costa's, sherry & brandy production, Flamenco, Fiestas, and Olive growing, to name but a few of the commonly known ones.

The province of Jaén is home to Spains main olive growing territory. Whether it be on the vast plains, over the deep rolling hills and even stretching up the steep slopes of the mountains, the region is a dotted green lattice work quilt. The earth colour here is predominantly a distinctive lime white giving everything a surreal brightness about it.

Many olive growing farms here are more like mansions belonging to ancestral nobility of decades passed. Indeed the growing of Olives is the big industry here next to Tourism. In some instances it can become an extremely cut-throat industry whereby one extra tree, reverred as gold-dust, can make all the difference. Whatever the lie of the terrain, one can only be impressed at the perfect lines of trees stretching off into the distance, the gaps in between specificly measured to allow for maximum growth.

Not only the placement of the trees sets the onlooker in awe but also the seemingly perfect order in which they and the terrain is in. A well looked after series of groves sees the ground around the trees, finely plowed down to small grains of earth which are in turn smoothed over as butter on bread. Little or even no sign of any undergrowth & weeds etc..

The importance of this is not to make things look pretty however but to prevent large cracks opening up in the ground with the heat of the summer sun. When this happens, the suns rays penetrate the cracks and damage the tree's roots which then affect their general olive count production. Pruning each year is also fundamental, the tree trunks themselves should be clear of branches and the trees are then encouraged to grow as much outwards as upwards.

A single young tree of say 6/7 years of age can be expected to provide 8-10kgs of olives during an average year. When that same tree reaches further maturity at say 14 years of age, with the correct care and treatment, it can be expected to provide 80-100kgs of olives. There are a surprisingly large amount of different variety of olives, some for eating and others for converting to oil. The processes used for creating olive oil can perhaps be compared with the subtleties of wine making in respect to the many grades of quality given in regards to their acidity & flavour relative to that particular year's climatic conditions.

As with wine, olives have their good years and their bad years!! For example, as a result of a very wet and relatively cold winter in 2003/4, farmers are expecting minimal production this year. However, "superstition", (and perhaps fact), says that the land requires repose from time to time so whilst this year may be a poor year, the subsequent years are likely to reap the benefits!
Cultivating the olives takes place in December/January time. The traditional methods of beating the trees with sticks for the olives to fall to the ground have somewhat changed over the passed decade or so. Nevertheless, methods are not so technologically advanced as to make life stress free.

The standard method used and seen very openly, is a petrol fuelled machine looking like an over-long hedge trimmer, where instead of the trimmer, is a metal rod with a clasp at the end. The clasp attaches to the branch and the rod simply pumps up and down to shake the branch rigorously. Nets around the tree base collect the fallen olives which are then loaded into a trailer. Most olives these days are taken to the local Co-Operative who take charge of weighing them and then putting them through the processes of making oil or preparing them for eating.
If you find yourself eating olives or using olive oil, the chances are that it will come from this province or even Cazorla itself.