daedong,
Yes you remember well, the hills were terrifying. What we did is figure out how to get the smaller articulated tractor to work. My husband feels safer on that tractor. Also the tires are filled. He only uses the big tractor which holds the PTO driven sprayers to go up the big hills for spraying. Basically it was fill the tires, and minimize the trips with the big tactor.
Through TBN I have learned about an implement called a Box Blade. We totally need that, he should run the box blade on the drives up and down the hills to smooth them out, cuz they are rather full of ruts. I will keep my eyes peeled in France to see about getting a used BoxBlade. Also my husband has gotten a bit more experience on the tractors, so he isn't as terrified. It still makes him quezy but it wasn't like before. He always back down the hills.
Depending on the ahrvest this November and December, 2006 might jsut be the year we buy some equipment. We are very conservative and like to have the money in the bank before we buy since we are so new to farming. Like to keep the bills paid, and not have any credit. We sleep better that way. In our former lives when we had more regualr income we would stretch now and then to invest in things, but we are not taking any chances finacially jsut yet. Need to have more than one crop picked and sold that is for sure.
We did real well our first year though. We sold everything, and we sold it to quite prestigious clubs in USA, I mean you would recognize them. The oil is really the tops. We have a small inventory to carry us through the end fo the year but basically we grew it, we scrambled to find cusotmers, that was hard, and we sold it and got paid.
The farm, so far appears to be able to provide us with a moderate income, and that is all we were looking for. We have other investments, we just wanted to make a moderate income and enjoy our life, and after a year and a half we have reached the goals we set. Basically we are happy!
We are happy with our decision, our transatlantic move, and our life. It is a good life, we love our work on the olive farm, it is a challenge to learn something completely new. It is more or less keeping us young (I'm 51 my hubby is 54). The crop this year doesn't look as big as last year but it still looks pretty good. But OMG do we have prunning to do, I will probably spend 2 more years jsut prunning every chance I have. But then the trees will all be lower and it won't be so bad to just do maintence pruning. Right now we are doing remidial prunning, the farm hand from the previous owner let these trees get way to tall. But we'll geter done! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Thanks for asking BTW.