3RRL said:
3RR, is that 10 miles from your old place or your new place?
I totally would like to go to the Fair. I think it would be awsome if I could judge also, i'm a judge over here in France. Of course you don't judge oils in your catagory so I wouldn't judge International Oils but I would be pleased to judge California Oils. Next year, 2009 is the year we will finally have my parents paid back, whew. The final $65,000 we needed to buy our farm we borrowed from them. If the Dollar would have held it's own instead of sinking 30% betwen the offer and the closing our lives would be much different. Que serra seraa, no sense looking back on things that were not wihin our control. Nothing to do but move forward.
Eddie, I guess the farm wasn't failing so much as just not taken care of and there was no real marketing or business effort to establish the brand. The previous owner jsut sold his oil to the mill. Just in France there are 30,000 olive farmers, there is a lot of good olive oil (mostly poor and mediocer though) and it is tough to get you bottles on the shelves or into the clubs that have the $$$ to aford it. I did not push that hard for new accounts this year becasue it was our low year but in 2009 I am going to get back out there ont he street and hustle up some new business.
We did get a couple good sales fromt he Der Feinschmecker win. ast week up rolled a german couple with the magazine in their hand wanting to buy oil. They bought 3 bottles of 0.75L for I guess it was around 55 Euros and said that they wuld try it while staying in their rented accomodations in Frace and on their way out stop to buy more of the ones they liked. this week they stopped by again and spent 226 Euros on olive oil. This week also another German couple rolled up and bought 123 Euros worth of oil. Just now the toursit season is starting so hopfully we can get more sales.
This Thursday I take up again giving a weekly guided tour to groups the Tourist Office organizes, that is usually pretty good for some income. The best news is we ahe managed to hang onto all our customers, the commerical customers, they are all repeat buying. My sister who was in sales for years always said you never really have a customer until they order the third time.
The brother and his wife of our new Salt Lake City custoer was over 2 weks ago for a few days and now tomorrow some Peace Corps freinds of our son will be here leaving Thursday. Those young kids are going to work though, we are high into almond picking. For the last 2 years we lost half of our almond crop to a worm. now this eyar my husband I think finally sprayed the right stuff at the right times (he did try the 2 previous years) and so we are going to be able to sell our whole crop. Picking green almonds is like picking a small apricot, yu kind of have to snap it off the branch but it is not ahrd work. I would much rather pick almonds than cheries, we picked and sold cherries our first year and THAT was a lot of work.
With the almond money my hsuband is going to buy a new tv, his has had a rainbow in it for 2 years, and i'm going to buy another orchard ladder, plus today i boght the materials to make screens for the patio doors in our tow other bedrooms. I made them last year out of wood for our office and our bedroom. The first year i was here I jsut bought the screening material and duct taped it to the outside walls. Today i splurged and bought the screen kits out of powder coated aluminum. It drives me crazy how they build houses around here with no screens. I can't sleep at night with a patio door open, I always think a rat is going to come in while I'm sleeping. I honestly don't know how the previous owners lived with no screens.
Sot hat is our life on the olvie farm, fresh almond pickers coming tomorrow
. if all goes well with the almond sales we should clear probably a little over 4,000 Euros. When I think back to our previous lives, my husband owning 2 restaurants and me having a good job at GE how much more money we made and how much much less we make now i still dont' regret our decision and neither does my hsuband. It is a great life we don't have anybody to answer to- bosses; nor do we have the burdens of managing employees. It took some getting used to, having to wait for the things we want/need like when we were younger and just starting out, but it's worth it. When we pay off my parents our life will be much much better. When you have debt you really can't go around blowing your money on new things, you have to get the debt paid off first. It is taking 2 years longer than we anticipated but thankfully my parents put no pressure on us all. The problem is we are not used to having debt. But we do have allt he things that matter, we have full health insurance including all pharmacy at a very low rate, we eat well and pay all our bills. We are able to travel back to the states once a year and last eyar we even took my dad to Madrid for 4 nights so we had a little vacation. We ahe a lto fo dreams for this place, we would love to have a swimming pool and a FEL and pallet forks and a grapple. I would say in about 5 to 6 years or less we will build our own mill. I thinkt he mill idea is a good one. we will give the farm to our son, he really wants to be an olive farmer later in his life, and if we keep the mill business that will give us some revenue seperate from the farm. plsu with the mill you really only work about 2 months a year so it is ideal for when we really retire, not like this fake retirement we are on now. Retire from the restaurant business and become a farmer. Taht is not really retiring jsut changing our lifestyle.
So I guess i prattled on long enough and better quit. kudos to those of you who read to the end
Ego- you missed a smiley face i think I should get one for each medal in LA!
Jinman - you and your garden stories are an inspiration to me. Next year we plant a real garden not the container garden i have made do with for 2 year now. One more idea for you there, Jinman have you ever planted fennel? Fennel is big over here and is used in a lot of recipies. We use it for when we make table olives.
