First, the olive trees are cleared of wild shoots or thorny bushes by pruning them, exposing the trunk. Ten meters of space around the trees is necessary to later lay out the nets for harvesting. Since we completely refrain from using herbicides on our land, the trees are manually cared for several times a year.

Now the actual harvesting process begins. Fine-meshed nets are placed under the trees so that the olives can fall onto them. A so-called tree trimmer specifically cuts off fruit-bearing branches without damaging the tree. In addition to knocking them down with wooden sticks, Koroneiki olives are also harvested by raking them down.

The fallen branches are beaten with targeted blows to separate the olives from the twigs. In the end, smaller twigs and olive leaves remain on the nets along with the separated olive fruits. These are sorted by hand, and the thoroughly cleaned and reddish fruits are then packed into jute sacks and transported to the olive mill on the same day and stored in a fresh, shady place to prevent the olives from sweating.

Upon arriving at the oil mill, the jute sacks full of olive fruits are transported to the hopper. Here, employees carefully cut open the sacks and let the olives fall into the hopper. This fills with several hundred kilos of Koroneiki olives. Once it is full, the conveyor belt begins to transport the olives upwards.

The conveyor belt attached to the hopper transports the olives to the second station. Here, the leaves and remaining twigs are separated from the fruits. After this, the olives are washed. Then, the olives are ground to obtain an olive paste, called pomace. This is spun for another 25 minutes with a wide screw. This separates a fruit water-olive oil mixture from the solid components of the fruit pulp.

Finally, the olive oil-vegetable water mixture is filled into containers to go through the last production stage. The containers have a capacity of up to 900 kilograms and are filled as needed. In the last step, extraction, the olive oil is separated from the remaining vegetable water and the olive oil is removed.

The harvesting of Kalamata olives, also known as Kalamon olives, begins in the same way as the harvesting of Koroneiki olives. The trees are cleared of wild shoots so that the nets can be laid out.

The actual harvesting process differs from that of Koroneiki olives – special care is required here, because if an olive is damaged or bursts, it is unusable for debittering and must be sorted out! To avoid damaging the fruits, they are harvested by a gentler shaking and tapping method.

The harvested Kalamata olives are placed into crates with a capacity of approximately 20 kilograms and transported by tractor to the sorting machine. Here, bruised olives are sorted out, as otherwise there is a risk that all olives will be damaged during the debittering process. The sorted-out olives are fed to our chickens and goats. For the debittering process, all olives are eventually placed in a clean barrel with fresh salt water.

Lye is added to distilled water. A chemical reaction causes the mixture to heat up considerably. This must now rest until it has cooled down to 40° Celsius. While the lye-water mixture is cooling, olive oil must be poured into a separate container. The amount of olive oil needed for the production of, for example, 200 olive oil soaps must be determined.

Now, the cooled lye mixture is slowly and carefully poured into the olive oil. The actual saponification process begins, creating what is known as Sodium Olivate (saponified olive oil). The saponified olive oil must now be thoroughly stirred. This process can take around 15 minutes.

In the final step, the solidified olive oil is poured into handmade wooden molds to obtain the typical rectangular soap shape. The mixture must now rest there for several days until it hardens. The solid soap blocks are then removed from the wooden molds and cut to size. For a 100 g olive oil soap, the fresh weight of the soap must be approximately 107 g, as water still evaporates from the soap.