Raises hand, I'm here, I'm here... I'm accounted for!
My oh my, it is nice to be missed, and yes i was MIA for practically all fall.
I had a hard drive crash and it was a PIA to get back up to speed after that, then my hsuband went to Africa to visit our son, he is int he Peace Corps in Guinea Africa (bmac did you catch that spelling error above?), and while he was gone I worked really hard to get the almond trees prunned. I almost made it, I am short 5 trees form having all the almond trees prunned way back. We ahve been doing this now for 2 years int he fall and I really thought I would finish. Alas there is next year....
What happened is all fo september & october we were doing fall work and then it stayed so warm that the olvies ripened early and boom Otober 24th we were in full harvest already. We finished then a month later, the end of November and it simply has been go-go-go. I think I have had jsut one day off since August. During the harvest it rained oe day, but then it really wasn't a day off because I took my dad (he's 82 and came to work the harvest with us) into town and bought him a new outfit. He looks soooooo cool in his new leather sports coat, matching sweater and new slacks. i told him with this sweater and the zipper in the fornt he does not have to wear a tie, jsut the sweater. The old man is a suit and tie guy, and he looks so nice in a more casual outfit. Man he was proud as a peacock wearing that home. He wore ti to church the first Sunday and never took it off because they had a church party at 4pm. Even my mom said he looked great. It was jsut a small gesture my hsuband and I could make considering my dad has come 2 years in a row to work on the harvest. This year I know his ticket cost him $900. So to send him home in his first new outfit in Golly knows how many years felt good. He simply doesn't want new clothes, "I don't need any I ahve more than i can wear". So ti was a bit of a force job to get him to go with me but he was soooooo happy wearing his new outfit back on the plane it was worth the struggle to get him to go shopping and try it on.
So if anyone else has worked Sept, Oct, Nov and the beginning of December with one day off please raise your hand. That is the sole reason for my absence. Nico and I took 3 days off Wed - Sat and went to stya in our condo in Cannes France but then on Friday we got an e-mai from our German distributor for a large order, (and they ahd jsut placed a large order 3 weeks ago!) so that blew our vaction mode attitude. Now at the condo in Cannes i have high speed internet, so I am able to check e-mail there. After getting that e-mail my hsuband and I kind of lost or vacation enthusiasm and thought about the work ahead of us filling allt he bottles. it's crazy!
nes ont eh harvest, it is a good one!!!! Yippie! we really needed it because last year was a very very low harvest, lot's of problems. This year we picked 26 metric tons which produced 4,000 liters of olive oil. We target 15 Euros a liter, so you can see tht we are not getting rich off of olive oil. We paid jsut over 5,000 Euros in labor to my french nices and nephews to pick and then there is the milling expense, which is going to be about 10,000 Euros, and the cost of the glass bottles and boxes. But we did not pick this life to "get rich" so at least we are meeting our goals SMILE.
The cusotmers are ordering strong, the chefs are telling us they want 20% more than their previous orders sot hat is good. We do sell some to the mill and get a lower revenue, naturally for sellign in bulk, but we do get $$$ right away to offset our mill costs. The mroe we can sell at the higher prices the better off we are. And really that is lookign very good at the moment. Time will tell. It is always a gamble of how much to sell to the mill and how much to keep to sell under your own brand becasue you don't want to get stuck at the end of the year with oil you kept and then didn't sell under your own brand.
The sales in Miwaukee are fantastic. The store we sell to asked for a re-order and thankfully I had shipped some inventory to my sister. He took tha a month ago and now asked for more. I ahve like 3 more cases at my sisters, not the same size he bought and he jsut said to tell my sister to bring him whatever she has. We are trying to make a shipment in January of this new havest. It is ahrd to get the chef's attention because they are so buy at this time of year. I guess if it were easy then everybody would be olive farmers....
The thing is this is the warmest fall/winter in france in 1,300 years so Nico and i do't get any down time we jsut keep working becasue the weather is so good. We ahve left to do a heavy pruning of 750 of our olive trees. We did a heavy prunning last year of 700 of them. With the weather so good it is a shame not to jsut keep workig because if you can prune them early they recover for the ext growing season and you get another good harvest. Typically olive trees only give a good harvest every other year. so witht he good weather if we can prune now hopefully we can get a good ahrvest 2 yeas in a row.
oh and did I tell youa bout the other new products we branched out into? Yeah we ahnd picked olives in Septmeber and took them to a mill that cured them and pasturized and bottled them. The lives are to die for!!!! Um-um they are sooooo good. Seasoned with wild fennel. Then after that we had to pick more olives, again by hand, one by one for making tapenade. it si liek an olive spread. We picked green olives in late september octobe for green tapenade and then we will pick black olives next week for the back tapenade. It is amazing, for really good tapenade ti takes almost a eyar to make for the black tapenade and a good 6 months for the green tapenade.
Soa re you getting the picture how busy we ahve been? I am actually getting tired jsut thinking about how active we have been. I am ready for a tru vacation, but I know that won't happen until next jan-feb.
Plsu I have worked witht he city and the toursit office and got signs installed, still waiting for the big sign on the main road, and the bigger toursit bureau for the department of the Bouches du Rhone, to get on their maps etc. We found out that tourists buy a lot of olvie oil and we can get full retail pricing so that whole activity has taken place this fall also. Thankfully my neighbor has a small excavator and he dug 2 holes for our signs, then they were building a new house down the road so I asked the mason to pour the cement int he hole and stick int eh signs so that project got done. Of couse I ahd to orde the signs first. It is amazing to me that with my really crappy French langauge skills I mage to get all thsi done. My hsuband jsut defers to me and he concentrates more on the ehavy work. Tuesday i meet witht eh Mayor about getting a name for our road, it currently is ot named which means it is not found ou European Mapquest nor on GPS. The Mayor visited us in the summer and I put int his request. Finally Tueday perhaps he will move on it.
the rental of the Guest hosue has been better lately. We really need that revenue and the toursit office in our city was not promoting it at all. I finally got each employee fo the tourist office to come and visit and so that has improved. It is much easier to recomend a place when you ahve seen it. Plus I sent them away with free olvies and olvie oil sot hat can't hurt either
This is a rather long update form rox but at elast it is in this Famly and friends forum so it won't bore people who are not interested.
Now I cna't wait to finish and go look at the forums and see what I ahve been missing.
