Carrs Peninsula Olives

Carrs Peninsula Olives was established at Lanbruk in 1996 on fertile alluvial soil between the banks of the Clarence River & Carr's Creek...

The 1000 olive trees, mixed varietals including kalamatas, manzanillos, verdello and frantorios provide ample fruit for Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Organic Olive Oil and Table Olives, produced using traditional Mediterranean methods.

The Olive Trees thrive with the organic farming methods, that include regular mulching and pruning, to ensure there is always lots of new growth and to promote flowering, in order to produce lots of good fruit. The trees will flower around September, and you can see small fruit beginning to appear on the trees around November. The fruit then grows, showing a green colour first and then moving towards the darker green and shades of brown.

Around February to March the green plump fruit is hand picked; this involves all hands on deck, ladders and picking pouches. To promote freshness and the best quality oil the freshly picked olives are taken 600 metres to the barn for sorting and then processing.

A fully imported Olive Press is utilised to give the best quality Cold Pressed Olive Oil available. There is no second or third press, all of our Organic Olive Oil is Extra Virgin. There is also no waste, the pulp of the fruit is used as a mulch and fertiliser for the grazing paddocks for the sheep, alpacas and cattle.

But what about Table Olives you ask!!

These are picked a few weeks later, as the fruit changes colour, again all hands on deck, for hand picking so as not to bruise and damage our precious olives. They are then sorted, and prepared to pickled using the Mediterranean Brine Method. After a few months they will be ready to be repackaged into jars for sale, some will be natural flavours and others will have locally grown organic herbs added to them for extra flavour, bite or punch!!!

The Relishes, Chutneys and Spreads are original recipes of Dorothy's (Don claims the Spicy One!), and utilise the fruit that just didn't make the cut for the Table Olives. They may have some marks on them or be odd shapes, just some of the things that makes organic produce a little different.

Tours of the Olive Grove can be organised, through contacting us or see the Tours page.

If you are interested in purchasing any of Carrs Peninsula Olives, you can see Don and Dorothy at the Local Produce Markets in Grafton on a fortnightly basis or you can download the olive order form and return via email or fax.

Please understand that as olives are seasonal, not all products will be available all year round. We do however do our best to provide good quality olives to our customers on a regular basis.