rox
Veteran Member
Grrrr what a time we are having this year. First off as I posted in the Related Topics Forum a while back our life has not been going that great lately. Regardless of that mess, the olive trees are ready to be picked and we have to focus on that. It is a great year for olives, everybody has olives, the trees are heavy and it is going to be the best harvest since 1991, at least that is what the mill tells me. I knew it was going to be a good harvest because a lot of people farm bare, meaning they don't irrigate. The last two years bare farming produced jsut that, nothing. However this eyar the rains fell just right so I knew it would be a bountiful harvest.
Now the problem is the mills can't keep up! In order to produce the high premium olive oil you need to press the olives within one day or if it is really cool to cold 2 days. One day is better though. The first 3 weeks of picking were fine, it rained and so nobody picked except my silly husband and myself outside picking in our raincoats. We took our olives tot he mill and they were pressed that night. We always pick by variatal, first we pick the Salonenque olives then the Grossane, then the Bouteillan and finish with the Aglandau. My husband and I picked by ourselves with my father helping the last 2 days all our Salonenque. Can we say the Salonenque is a tough row to hoe? These are the trees that grow on our most narrow terraces and it requires a lot of extra netting plus jsut going up and down the steep hillsides etx. Well anyway we got it done which is about 20% of our crop, all by ourselves.
Now comes great weather and everybody is out picking like mad. Last week we had over froneds of ours who work for free, jsut to help us. It is great one friend is our main cook and the other wife is a cooks helper. Two men plus myself my husband and my father and we are shaking the olives off the tree like nobody's business. Scheduled to sttart jsut this last Satrurday was 2 nephews and a niece, they all took vacation time to work on the harvest. The young people we pay the friends are so gracious they jsut work for some olive oil. As soon as the weather turned great the mill told us to stop picking and not bring any more olives until Saturday. Boy my husband was ticked off, me too, but we stopped for a day and a half.
Satruday I go to the mill with the first of 4 loads and guess what? The mill is still loaded in olives, they were jsut as full as before. So now I'm really ticked off! We had free labor good weather nice flat fields with long lines of trees to pick, we stopped picking yet when we get to t he mill they obviously still accepted olives from others. I was there about 9:30am with our load and the father and daughter (she runs the mill) were talking and they decided to close down the mill for 2 days and not take olvies from anybody. They needed to press the backlog. Then they tell us not to bring any more olives until Thursday fo this week. The pickers they hired for thier 6,000 trees were in fact prunning the grape vnes and not picking thier olives either.
Geesh I sure didn't want to brinh that bad news home to my husband, we were stopped the previous week for a day and a half and now I had to go tell him to stop the 2 nephews from shaking we couln't bring any more olives to the mill until Thursday that the Mill was shut down from accepting olives until Monday afternoon and the mill told all the major producers to wait until Thursday.
It isn't as if we were not under a lot of stress wtiht eh US financial situation now our harvest is going bust. What would end up is that all our help excpet for one nephew who will work longer ,has this week to pick (plus our friends who who were here since Wed the previous week they were giving us 10 days) so when we finally could pick olives all our help would be gone and my hsuband and I would have to do it by ourselves. Then we have to worry about us not being able to work fast enough and the olives over maturing.
The panic at the mill mad a big panic on our farm. Some how between that first load at 9:30 on Saturday morning and the last load that my husband took the owners decided that we could start pickign on Monday and bring in our olives on Tuesday afternoon. Talk about preferential treatment!!! Woo Hooo!!! This mill has always treated us really right. They have us I think as their number one client. Every day when I bring in the first load of the day I go look for our oil from yesterday and verify that it got pressed. On Saturday ont he last load the mill manager told my hsuband, "Tell Roxanne that th eolvies you brought in today will be pressed today" I'm smiling like a cheshire cat. All those pallet boxes of olives they got backed up yet they put ours to the front of the line.
I think there is 2 reasons for this. I think the number one reason is that we have won so many numerous awards with our oil. They know that we absolutly want and need our olives to be pressed right away because we enter our oil in a lot of competitions and win I might add
We get a pretty good amount of press and I always have the reports mention the name of our mill in the newspaper articles and I know for certain the the mill owners see that. Plus our national olive growers association send out e-mails with competition results and I know they get those. Being selected as the best Oil in France in 2008 in the biggest International Olvie Oil competition puts some extra bargaining power in our hands.
So we wnet from a Saturday morning disaster to a victory. We still lost half a day Saturday and all day Sunday picking but as I write this a full crew is out there picking Monday morning we will take them to the mill Tuesday and they will be pressed Tuesday. We had a little setback but it looks like we will be okay.
Because they closed the mill on Saturday I was able to take some pictures. I think I'll do seperate posts with the pictures so I can explain them a bit. Oh one more thing. Those Salonenque olives my husband and I picked first, in five years we have never had such a delicious Salonenque Olive Oil. It is our best Salonenque ever. We are now picking the Grossane and it also is very very good. All the Grossane should be picked by tomorrow night I hope.
Now the problem is the mills can't keep up! In order to produce the high premium olive oil you need to press the olives within one day or if it is really cool to cold 2 days. One day is better though. The first 3 weeks of picking were fine, it rained and so nobody picked except my silly husband and myself outside picking in our raincoats. We took our olives tot he mill and they were pressed that night. We always pick by variatal, first we pick the Salonenque olives then the Grossane, then the Bouteillan and finish with the Aglandau. My husband and I picked by ourselves with my father helping the last 2 days all our Salonenque. Can we say the Salonenque is a tough row to hoe? These are the trees that grow on our most narrow terraces and it requires a lot of extra netting plus jsut going up and down the steep hillsides etx. Well anyway we got it done which is about 20% of our crop, all by ourselves.
Now comes great weather and everybody is out picking like mad. Last week we had over froneds of ours who work for free, jsut to help us. It is great one friend is our main cook and the other wife is a cooks helper. Two men plus myself my husband and my father and we are shaking the olives off the tree like nobody's business. Scheduled to sttart jsut this last Satrurday was 2 nephews and a niece, they all took vacation time to work on the harvest. The young people we pay the friends are so gracious they jsut work for some olive oil. As soon as the weather turned great the mill told us to stop picking and not bring any more olives until Saturday. Boy my husband was ticked off, me too, but we stopped for a day and a half.
Satruday I go to the mill with the first of 4 loads and guess what? The mill is still loaded in olives, they were jsut as full as before. So now I'm really ticked off! We had free labor good weather nice flat fields with long lines of trees to pick, we stopped picking yet when we get to t he mill they obviously still accepted olives from others. I was there about 9:30am with our load and the father and daughter (she runs the mill) were talking and they decided to close down the mill for 2 days and not take olvies from anybody. They needed to press the backlog. Then they tell us not to bring any more olives until Thursday fo this week. The pickers they hired for thier 6,000 trees were in fact prunning the grape vnes and not picking thier olives either.
Geesh I sure didn't want to brinh that bad news home to my husband, we were stopped the previous week for a day and a half and now I had to go tell him to stop the 2 nephews from shaking we couln't bring any more olives to the mill until Thursday that the Mill was shut down from accepting olives until Monday afternoon and the mill told all the major producers to wait until Thursday.
It isn't as if we were not under a lot of stress wtiht eh US financial situation now our harvest is going bust. What would end up is that all our help excpet for one nephew who will work longer ,has this week to pick (plus our friends who who were here since Wed the previous week they were giving us 10 days) so when we finally could pick olives all our help would be gone and my hsuband and I would have to do it by ourselves. Then we have to worry about us not being able to work fast enough and the olives over maturing.
The panic at the mill mad a big panic on our farm. Some how between that first load at 9:30 on Saturday morning and the last load that my husband took the owners decided that we could start pickign on Monday and bring in our olives on Tuesday afternoon. Talk about preferential treatment!!! Woo Hooo!!! This mill has always treated us really right. They have us I think as their number one client. Every day when I bring in the first load of the day I go look for our oil from yesterday and verify that it got pressed. On Saturday ont he last load the mill manager told my hsuband, "Tell Roxanne that th eolvies you brought in today will be pressed today" I'm smiling like a cheshire cat. All those pallet boxes of olives they got backed up yet they put ours to the front of the line.
I think there is 2 reasons for this. I think the number one reason is that we have won so many numerous awards with our oil. They know that we absolutly want and need our olives to be pressed right away because we enter our oil in a lot of competitions and win I might add
We get a pretty good amount of press and I always have the reports mention the name of our mill in the newspaper articles and I know for certain the the mill owners see that. Plus our national olive growers association send out e-mails with competition results and I know they get those. Being selected as the best Oil in France in 2008 in the biggest International Olvie Oil competition puts some extra bargaining power in our hands.So we wnet from a Saturday morning disaster to a victory. We still lost half a day Saturday and all day Sunday picking but as I write this a full crew is out there picking Monday morning we will take them to the mill Tuesday and they will be pressed Tuesday. We had a little setback but it looks like we will be okay.
Because they closed the mill on Saturday I was able to take some pictures. I think I'll do seperate posts with the pictures so I can explain them a bit. Oh one more thing. Those Salonenque olives my husband and I picked first, in five years we have never had such a delicious Salonenque Olive Oil. It is our best Salonenque ever. We are now picking the Grossane and it also is very very good. All the Grossane should be picked by tomorrow night I hope.
