Kalamata olives are known as some of the best olives in the world. Olive week is your opportunity to find out almost everything there is to know about them! The olive harvest varies from year to year but we position olive week at a time when we can expect olives to be being harvested in the area. During the week you will be able to help harvest Kalamata olives, from our own trees or a neighbour’s. You will also have a few free days to take in local sight seeing or just relax!

Two days will be spent harvesting the olives using traditional techniques - some Koroneki variety for oil and thers Kalamata for eating. You will then follow the olives you have harvested to the press and see your olives being turned into olive oil. You can sample the oil as it pours warm from the press! You will then be shown how to cure the Kalamata olives you picked. Again you will have a sample of the work of your own hands to take away with you!

There will be a day visit to the olive oil museum in Sparta where you can sample a range of different olive oils and learn more about different techniques of harvesting and pressing olives. The journey to sparta takes in the spectacular Langada Pass and we can also visit the ruins of teh Byzantine town of Mistra en route.

You will also have 3 days free for your own sight-seeing excursions - or just relaxing from the exertions of the olive harvest!

All around us our neighbours are harvesting their raisin grapes and laying them out to dry. Our grapes are for eating and for wine. We will be picking the grapes in the first week in september when we still have one villa free!

Maria's home made bread is going down a treat with guests and keeping her busy with daily orders.

Well, all our guests for this year have gone and we are beginning preparations for the olive harvest. The first olives to be harvested are the big Kalamata’s and our last guests in October were able to help pick some of these from the trees between bathing on Peroulia and Zaga beaches in beautiful warm weather. Our kitchen is now covered in bowls of olives at various stages of curing.

In Mid November we will start the olive harvest. It is expected to be a very good year this year as we have had rain and sun at the right times. We will be harvesting about 700 trees in all, between ourselves and our neighbour. So if anyone knows of a good outlet for superb quality olive oil please let us know. We still have places on our "olive week" (See below) if you want to find out first hand how it is all done.

The garden is still yielding a healthy supply of fresh fruit and vegetables – we even had strawberries the other day, so we will definitely be putting more of them in for next year. Right now we have aubergines, carrots, beetroot, lettuce, onions, garlic, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, celery and the last of the tomatoes all coming up. The turnips, having survived the heat of the summer have all but succumbed to a large family of snails who hatched their extensive family on their leaves – hopefully one or two will have survived for our St Andrews Day celebrations on 30^th November.

Our wine is now ready and tasting excellent, especially the batch we have aged in a new oak barrel. It is a lovely light and clear white wine made with the "roditis" grape. Hopefully we still have some left for next year’s guests.