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As I continue our house tour I wanted to show you the olive press.  NO, we don't have an olive press at our house but we do have lots of olive trees, some lemon trees, a fig tree, and persimmon.  I didn't take any outside pictures but will show you the fruits of the property in these pictures.

Here are all the olives being hauled to the olive press.  I told Hap to say thank you for going to Ikea so much so that he could haul the olives ;)

We went to a different olive press this year.  The owner is a neighbor from our apartment.  All of the olives go into this bin, are brought up the elevator, cleaned, and come out on the other side ready to be pressed.

This year the press is a literal stone press made from 1 ton each granite wheels.  It pressed the olives for probably around 15 minutes until they are mush.

Andrew was loving the factory.  He has been before with school and he was like an old pro!

After the olives are pressed, they come out on a rattan mat as a mush.

The smell is overwhelming and it is very loud.  See picture below!

After all the olive "mush" is put on rattan mats, they place them one on top of the other and put them in this large machine.  Then the machine presses down on the mats and

dripping out comes the olive oil!

It was hard to get good pictures because it was so dark but you can see the olive oil dripping down in this picture also.

After all the olive oil is drained out, the remainder of the olive is dry.  They then put it in a big room and sell it for furnace kindling as well as fertilizer.  The owner said that he wants to buy a machine that will press it into bricks and that 1 brick will burn for 7 hours!  I love how nothing goes to waste.  

Here comes the olive oil!

Our olives were 22% oil.  The worker said that was about normal for this year.

Hap is so great talking with all the guys.  Here they are weighing the final product and sending us out the door to enjoy!

And there you have it... our yard :)