How will the olives be picked?
Most harvesters will collect olives by hand into 5-gallon plastic buckets using ladders. For lower reaching trees, harvesters can use rakes to drop olives onto tarps spread beneath trees or some trees can be picked by hand. The treetops will be denuded of olives by the Caltech grounds department using three cherry pickers in the days leading up to the harvest. All picked olives will be transferred to large, centrally-located bins supplied by the Santa Barbara Olive Company, which will be forklifted into trucks and sent to Santa Barbara for pressing and bottling.
