Spain | Janne, Atte and Jorma Built an Olive Community in Andalusia’s Mountains

About 50 kilometers east of Málaga, beyond the A-7 motorway and the hillside town of Torrox, a narrow mountain track leads down toward Cómpeta. Drivers must use low gear on the steep road, carefully following the bends to avoid overheating the brakes in temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius, or worse.

This is where Atte Hietanen and Janne Vanhanen established an olive farm in Andalusia roughly five years ago. The community’s third “Olive Boy,” Jorma Styrman, was away when Helsingin Sanomat visited.

The men did not begin with agricultural expertise. Their community grew out of a series of coincidences, and they had to pay for their mistakes while learning how to work the land. They now have 5,000 olive trees and produce their own olive oil.

The farm’s remote mountain setting and the group’s unlikely start give the venture its distinctive character: Finnish men building an olive-growing community in southern Spain, despite having initially known little about farming.