Alex Iszatt (Reporter)
A FEW fun facts about olives:
- Olives have been around for thousands of years, appearing in one of the earliest cookbooks ever discovered! This was a 2000-year-old text by a Roman named Apicius.
- Olive oil has traditionally been used as fuel and was even used to light the earliest Olympic torch.
- The olive flower is white and only flowers after four years.
- Olive trees can live for more than 1,500 years and grow to a maximum of 50 feet tall.
- It was the Phoenicians who first brought the olive tree to Spain, but the Ancient Romans are credited with establishing vast farms of olives, often owned by absentee landlords who lived back in Rome.
- The olive garnish is what makes the Martini Cocktail, shaken or stirred!
- When the tradition of tapas was born, the first and simplest tapas was a slice of bread with olives.
- For thousands of years the olive branch has been used as a sign of peace and goodwill.
- Olive trees are harvested for the first time after 15 years.
- The average life of an olive tree is between 300 and 600 years.
They are very difficult and time consuming to harvest.
You get almost nothing for them at the mill.
If you try to pickle your own they go fizzy and have to be thrown away !
The wood is unbelievable dense and hard, and will blunt a chain saw in minutes.
If you whack your head on an olive branch it hurts !
If you are bald and do this your scalp will bleed for days.
The wood makes the most beautiful and practical kitchen implements – spoons, stirrers, scrapers – wonderful as Christmas presents.
If you whack your head on an olive branch it hurts ! haha that made me chuckle
Spanish would laugh themselves stupid at PM’s comments!