Laharum Grove

I've now been WWOOFing for Deirdre and Richard Baum on the Laharum grove for a week now and I have really come to love this place.  It has breathtaking views of the Grampions, Arapalies and the open planes to the west.  I like the view the best in the evenings when the sun slants in to light up the Grampions and bring out the beautiful red of the sand stone cliffs.

Laharum grove is an olive orchard situated on 300 acres directly adjacent to the Grampions.  There are around 1100 olive trees on the property which produce olive oil sold by the family at markets.  They also produce a spicy tomato  marmellata (Italian for jam) and a few other small dishes, but the olive oil is their main product.  The marmellata that Deirdre makes is to die for.  The first night that Leighton and I staid she provided some for dinner and we really enjoyed the flavor it gave to our sausage.
On Tuesday I spent my morning removing suckers from the base of the olive trees.  These suckers aren't quite what you would suspect from the name.

They are actually tiny olive tree shoots that are put up by the tree in an attempt to propagate.  Unfortunately they use up quite a bit of the trees energy to grow, and since that energy is being put into growing little shoots it isn't being used to grow olives. I was out chopping these shoots away from the tree with a hatchet and clearing up the area around the base of each tree.  It is hard work swinging the hatchet repeatedly in the sun, but its also kind of rewarding as you turn a bushy mass into a nice picturesque gnarled olive tree.  I also spent one day this week making vanilla olive oil.  This is a really nice oil that you can drizzle on fruit or bread to make a somewhat sweet dressing.  It is made with their Laharum Olive oil that is infused with raw vanilla beans, so I spent about an hour slicing vanilla beans in and placing them in the oil can.  By the end I had stained my fingers a slight brown hue from handling the vanilla beans and every time I rubbed  my face I got a whiff of vanilla which was quite delightful.  I haven't tasted any yet, but I'm looking forward to trying some as soon as our batch is done marinating.
One of the Grampions boldering areas (the campground boulders) is only about 30 min by bike from where I'm staying so I have been working on a few problems this week which has been a lot of fun.  However it is quite hard to take pictures of yourself climbing, but im working on figuring out a good method :).  Hopefully I can post some sweet climbing pics soon.