School olive project comes up with the good oil

A collaboration between five kitchen garden schools has provided students with the experience of producing their own olive oil.

The project was initiated by Brendan Bolton, the Garden Specialist at Thomas Chirnside Primary School in Melbourne’s west.

Thomas Chirnside Primary has several established olive trees, and Brendan was inspired to come up with the olive oil project after some parents from the school harvested olives to press their own oil.

He decided to join forces with other olive-growing kitchen garden schools for the project. Four schools came on board – Point Cook College, Altona Meadows Primary School, Bellbrae Primary School and Westgarth Primary School.

The olive harvest threw up some logistical challenges, as the olives all needed to be harvested within a tight timeframe from a spread of locations and transported to the central collection point at Thomas Chirnside.

The schools rose to the challenge, with enthusiastic students, staff and some volunteers from the school community hand-picking the olives at the five different sites.

Once the olives had made it to Thomas Chirnside, Brendan transported the harvest to Camilo Olives in Teesdale, near Geelong. Peter and Nikki Corbet from Camilo Olives generously donated their time to press the school’s olive harvest into oil.

Some lucky Thomas Chirnside Primary students also visited Camilo Olives when it was bottling time, and helped bottle their very own extra virgin olive oil.  

Approximately 600 kilograms of olives were harvested at the five schools, resulting in a yield of approximately 60 litres of very precious olive oil. The oil was evenly distributed among the schools, and will now be used in kitchen classes and for fundraising.

Brendan said it was an amazing opportunity for the students to see the process of making olive oil from start to finish.

The project also provided many opportunities for curriculum integration.

“There was a number of learning opportunities for the children, including tree care, sustainability, applied art and design and the paddock-to-plate philosophy,” Brendan said.

Students at Thomas Chirnside designed labels for their olive oil in art classes. They found inspiration from an excursion to the Vincent van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, as well as from the traditional designs of French and Spanish olive oil tins.

“This gave the children the opportunity to learn about applied art, and gave them greater ownership of the end product,” Brendan said.

Labels designed by five students were chosen to be featured on the bottles, and the proud students cut them out and glued them on the bottles themselves.

Grade 5 student Luneah was very excited to be part of every step of the olive oil project, helping to harvest the olives, visiting Camilo Olives to help bottle the oil, and having her design chosen as one of the labels.

“I feel kind of excited (about making the oil), also a bit happy and also shocked as I’ve been at school for a while and the olives have finally ripened!” Luneah said.

 “I felt very happy and excited because my label was going on the school’s olive oil, and I was very proud to be representing the school.”

Westgarth Primary School’s Garden Specialist, Virginia Millard, said the olive oil project had also been a big hit at her school, providing great links to the wider school community.

“The engagement we got out of that activity was unbelievable, people just came out of the woodwork. It really was a highlight of the year,” she said.

Virginia said one of the grandparents in the school community, who had migrated from Greece, saw them harvesting their olives and came to help. He provided expert tips on how to prune the trees and harvest the olives from the cut branches, which Virginia said was a big timesaver.

“There was no child who wasn’t active in harvesting. It was like a party,” she said.

The olive harvest at Westgarth also provided valuable curriculum links for students. A group of Grade 4 students used maths skills to estimate how much oil their harvest would yield. As well as designing labels for their oil, students used arts skills to make wreaths and tee pees with the pruned olive branches.

Virginia said the problem-solving aspect of working to the strict timeline for harvesting the olives was a challenge embraced by the students.

Brendan is looking to expand the project to more schools next year, with the aim of processing more than a tonne of olives over the next two seasons.

To kickstart this goal, more olive trees, donated by olive oil producers Boundary Bend, have been planted at Thomas Chirnside Primary and the other schools in the project.

To join Brendan's 2018 Olive Oil Project email bolton.brendan.b@edumail.vic.gov.au

See the harvest at three of the schools in the gallery of images above, and watch the video below to see the olive oil project in action at Thomas Chirnside Primary School.