CurlyDave
Elite Member
What a great story.
Yes, work and perseverance is rewarded.
Yes, work and perseverance is rewarded.
Our Olive Oil, Grand Slam Win in European Competition
- Thread starter rox
- Start date
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Hakim
Moderator
Rox,
Thanks for all the details of your remarkable and fascinating life project. We farmed 55 acres organically in the 1980s and 90s, so I can appreciate all of the nuances to produce great crops. You though have "gone the extra mile."
I am sure it will give you enormous satisfaction when your son "takes over." I'll bet Mom & Dad will always "be around" with advice.
I placed my order from iGourmet. Very easy and efficient order process, BTW. I surely do look forward to when there is a local source. In the meantime, I consider myself and all of TBN so fortunate to have such distinguished and interesting members.
All the best,
Thanks for all the details of your remarkable and fascinating life project. We farmed 55 acres organically in the 1980s and 90s, so I can appreciate all of the nuances to produce great crops. You though have "gone the extra mile."
I am sure it will give you enormous satisfaction when your son "takes over." I'll bet Mom & Dad will always "be around" with advice.
I placed my order from iGourmet. Very easy and efficient order process, BTW. I surely do look forward to when there is a local source. In the meantime, I consider myself and all of TBN so fortunate to have such distinguished and interesting members.
All the best,
wroughtn_harv
Super Member
Evening Hakim, long time no see.
I think you're going to love your olive oils from Rox. We ordered one each of the three varieties and have enjoyed them tremendously. I never knew olive oil could have such distinctively different tastes before Rox came on board.
I think you're going to love your olive oils from Rox. We ordered one each of the three varieties and have enjoyed them tremendously. I never knew olive oil could have such distinctively different tastes before Rox came on board.
billbill1
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Rox, I have a question for you. The olive pits that you have left from making oil. What do you do with them? I wonder if you could use them in a corn/pellet stove to use for heat in the winter? I am proud to be part of the same TBN with a "world champion"
Billbill1,
This is the process of milling. We bring the olives to the mill.
We shake the olives off the tree using like a vibrating pitchfork and they fall onto nets. The nets serve 2 purposes, #1- any olives that are rotten and have fallen off the ground are trapped under the net and we don't pick them up. In huge olive farms they use like a big lawn vac and jsut suck up everything, yuck!.#2 whent he fresh olives fall on the net, we then use a leafe blower and blow off the leaves and small twigs. From the net we muscle them into rectagualr milk crate type crates.
We put the crates in the back of our mecury mountaineer (sucks gas!) and i drive them to the mill which is about 5 miles away. I usually make 3 trips to the mill per day, bringing 20 crates which is always about 400k to 450k per trip.
At the mill we dump our olives into Pallet boxes, same size as a pallet and about 3 feet tall. The olives sit outside in the pallet boxes until they are milled/pressed. Beause we are a top producer our mill always presses our olives within 24 hours. And I know for a fact that they do this, because every day on my first trip I walk through the yard at the mill and look for the olives that I brought yesterday. All our pallet boxes have a pice of cardboard stuck in them showing the farmer and the kilos and the variety of olives. Our mill knows I am looking and i better not find any from yesterday!
The mill brings in the pallet box with a lift truck (In French universally a lift truck is called a Clark, kind of like facial tissue is always called keleenex I guess) and they have a machine that picks up a pallet box and dumps the olives onto a conveyor. Now the olives pass through a fan that blows off leaves and small sticks. The leaves are shot outside the building into a farm tractor and they are spread on the field of the mill owner.
Next the olvies are washed, becasue they have dust on them from growing in a dry area, we have a lot of dust here. This is called the field dust and they move by conveyor into the bath. Next they are dumped into the malox, think of a malox as a big meat grinder. You know the old fashioned meat grinders, the kind that you clamp on the table and have a hand crank? Basically the Maloxer is like that. The olvies go in pitts and all and get maloxed. The screw grinds the olives but at a specific speed and for a specific amount of time, this is where the expertice of the miller comes into play. Now the olvies are in paste form, they are not solid but not luquid either, just kind of a soluable, goey paste. Using piping the paste is moved to a big centrifuge, it spins really fast, the gunk stays at the bottom, the water seperates out and on top is the wonderful pure olive oil. That oil is suctioned off and put into big vats. We own our own vats which we keep at the mill. Te olive 'gunk" the flesh of the olvives with the ground up pits arre pumped outside to a waiting wagon. They spread this olive residue on the fields for fertilizer and compost. So basically every part of the olive is utilized and actually there is not much water used so it is very ecologically friendly. Nothing gets wated. now in Spain they are burning the olive gunk and producing electricty. But those mills are huge, French mills are small. I hae to admit i am not a huge fan of Spanish olive oil because of the environmental damamge they do olive farming. They plant olvie trees in arid desert areas and have sucked practiaclly all the fresh water out of their country irrigating olive trees. In Italy, Greece and France we grow olive trees where nature provides the right amount of water. We do irrigate but not that much, every other day for 4 hours on a drip system. in Spain they have practiaclly sucked their water tabel dry, in fact every 2 days a huge tanker leaves Marseille France for Barcelona Spain. Marseille selling water to Barcelona which goes into thier municipal water system because the intense olive farming has sucked the water out of that country. i would not feel this way if they were desalinating sea water, but currently and in the past they suck it out from a water table that has dropped 40 meters in 5 years. There are parts of Spain that get the right amout of rain, like other countires in the Mediterian, but they have allowed their whole country to be taken over by olive farming and planting in areas that are not self sustaining. That is wrong. These big olvie growing countries, Spain and Italy, there is a whole LOT of fraud that takes place, really. In France the farmers are small, the mills are small, and the oil is pure.
I probably wrote more than you asked but I kinda got on a roll, you know I lvoe talking olive farming!
This is the process of milling. We bring the olives to the mill.
We shake the olives off the tree using like a vibrating pitchfork and they fall onto nets. The nets serve 2 purposes, #1- any olives that are rotten and have fallen off the ground are trapped under the net and we don't pick them up. In huge olive farms they use like a big lawn vac and jsut suck up everything, yuck!.#2 whent he fresh olives fall on the net, we then use a leafe blower and blow off the leaves and small twigs. From the net we muscle them into rectagualr milk crate type crates.
We put the crates in the back of our mecury mountaineer (sucks gas!) and i drive them to the mill which is about 5 miles away. I usually make 3 trips to the mill per day, bringing 20 crates which is always about 400k to 450k per trip.
At the mill we dump our olives into Pallet boxes, same size as a pallet and about 3 feet tall. The olives sit outside in the pallet boxes until they are milled/pressed. Beause we are a top producer our mill always presses our olives within 24 hours. And I know for a fact that they do this, because every day on my first trip I walk through the yard at the mill and look for the olives that I brought yesterday. All our pallet boxes have a pice of cardboard stuck in them showing the farmer and the kilos and the variety of olives. Our mill knows I am looking and i better not find any from yesterday!
The mill brings in the pallet box with a lift truck (In French universally a lift truck is called a Clark, kind of like facial tissue is always called keleenex I guess) and they have a machine that picks up a pallet box and dumps the olives onto a conveyor. Now the olives pass through a fan that blows off leaves and small sticks. The leaves are shot outside the building into a farm tractor and they are spread on the field of the mill owner.
Next the olvies are washed, becasue they have dust on them from growing in a dry area, we have a lot of dust here. This is called the field dust and they move by conveyor into the bath. Next they are dumped into the malox, think of a malox as a big meat grinder. You know the old fashioned meat grinders, the kind that you clamp on the table and have a hand crank? Basically the Maloxer is like that. The olvies go in pitts and all and get maloxed. The screw grinds the olives but at a specific speed and for a specific amount of time, this is where the expertice of the miller comes into play. Now the olvies are in paste form, they are not solid but not luquid either, just kind of a soluable, goey paste. Using piping the paste is moved to a big centrifuge, it spins really fast, the gunk stays at the bottom, the water seperates out and on top is the wonderful pure olive oil. That oil is suctioned off and put into big vats. We own our own vats which we keep at the mill. Te olive 'gunk" the flesh of the olvives with the ground up pits arre pumped outside to a waiting wagon. They spread this olive residue on the fields for fertilizer and compost. So basically every part of the olive is utilized and actually there is not much water used so it is very ecologically friendly. Nothing gets wated. now in Spain they are burning the olive gunk and producing electricty. But those mills are huge, French mills are small. I hae to admit i am not a huge fan of Spanish olive oil because of the environmental damamge they do olive farming. They plant olvie trees in arid desert areas and have sucked practiaclly all the fresh water out of their country irrigating olive trees. In Italy, Greece and France we grow olive trees where nature provides the right amount of water. We do irrigate but not that much, every other day for 4 hours on a drip system. in Spain they have practiaclly sucked their water tabel dry, in fact every 2 days a huge tanker leaves Marseille France for Barcelona Spain. Marseille selling water to Barcelona which goes into thier municipal water system because the intense olive farming has sucked the water out of that country. i would not feel this way if they were desalinating sea water, but currently and in the past they suck it out from a water table that has dropped 40 meters in 5 years. There are parts of Spain that get the right amout of rain, like other countires in the Mediterian, but they have allowed their whole country to be taken over by olive farming and planting in areas that are not self sustaining. That is wrong. These big olvie growing countries, Spain and Italy, there is a whole LOT of fraud that takes place, really. In France the farmers are small, the mills are small, and the oil is pure.
I probably wrote more than you asked but I kinda got on a roll, you know I lvoe talking olive farming!
Hakim,
I went on the Gourmet Gift Baskets, Artisan Cheeses, Gourmet Food, Cheese Basket Gifts, Month Clubs, igourmet Buy Holiday Organic Food website last night and I only saw our Aglandau oil. I wonder if they are out of our A.O.C. and our Bouteillan. Which one did you order? Hakim Californai is really taking off right now planting olvie trees for olive oil. California produces a lot of olvies but it is for table olvies. Sadly I am not a huge fan of the Mission olives that are found in California for oil. U.C. daves does a lot fo research on olives and recently olives specifically for olive oil. in fact they jsut got funding to uild and install their own mill which will be sued for research. Check out Kern County, our French Variety of olvies grow well there. if you can pick up 40 - 50 acers in Kern County and plant olive trees, about 7 to 8 years later you could be enjoying a great life. that is the problem with olive farming, you ahve to have deep poclets since ti takes so many eyars for the trees to begin producing. Jut be really really careful on the variety of olvie tree you plant. You can't get a silk purse out of a sows ear, so planting the right varietal of tree is the msot important choice you make in olvie farming.
What crops did you grow when you were organic farming? We could be organic except for one product we use to fight the olvie fly. I cannot take a risk of loosing our whole crop to the olvie fly so we spray. but by french law our last sraying for the olvie fly is in September. There is always one last flight (Olvie flys swarm in on what is called flights) betweent he lst time we are allowed to spray and the harvest. There is nothing we can do about that except pray. We strictly obey every agricultutal law.
I went on the Gourmet Gift Baskets, Artisan Cheeses, Gourmet Food, Cheese Basket Gifts, Month Clubs, igourmet Buy Holiday Organic Food website last night and I only saw our Aglandau oil. I wonder if they are out of our A.O.C. and our Bouteillan. Which one did you order? Hakim Californai is really taking off right now planting olvie trees for olive oil. California produces a lot of olvies but it is for table olvies. Sadly I am not a huge fan of the Mission olives that are found in California for oil. U.C. daves does a lot fo research on olives and recently olives specifically for olive oil. in fact they jsut got funding to uild and install their own mill which will be sued for research. Check out Kern County, our French Variety of olvies grow well there. if you can pick up 40 - 50 acers in Kern County and plant olive trees, about 7 to 8 years later you could be enjoying a great life. that is the problem with olive farming, you ahve to have deep poclets since ti takes so many eyars for the trees to begin producing. Jut be really really careful on the variety of olvie tree you plant. You can't get a silk purse out of a sows ear, so planting the right varietal of tree is the msot important choice you make in olvie farming.
What crops did you grow when you were organic farming? We could be organic except for one product we use to fight the olvie fly. I cannot take a risk of loosing our whole crop to the olvie fly so we spray. but by french law our last sraying for the olvie fly is in September. There is always one last flight (Olvie flys swarm in on what is called flights) betweent he lst time we are allowed to spray and the harvest. There is nothing we can do about that except pray. We strictly obey every agricultutal law.
TBDonnelly
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Rox, It sure has been an honor and a pleasure following along with you, through the olive farm, for the 'reclaiming process' over the last few years. What a success story of hard work and determination. Congratulations!
Thank you for taking me along for the virtual ride.
Don
Thank you for taking me along for the virtual ride.
Don
groundcover
Elite Member
Outstanding Rox !
I did go to Cheese, Specialty Food, Gourmet Gift Baskets, Cheese Gifts: igourmet
but your oil is out of stock, any other outlets ?
I did go to Cheese, Specialty Food, Gourmet Gift Baskets, Cheese Gifts: igourmet
but your oil is out of stock, any other outlets ?
chh
Veteran Member
Congratulations Rox! You have really educated me on olives and I will have to find out what truly good olive oil is like.
billbill1
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Rox, thank you so much for sharing your story and educating me about olive farming. I had no idea how much time and effort it took to produce olive oil. It's no wonder it is so pricey. Thank you again, I really enjoy hearing of your process.
Egon
Epic Contributor
A piece of cheese, a loaf of bread, a dish of olive oil and the meal of your lifetime can be had!
groundcover said:
Grouncover and everybody
I called igourmet today and they are out of 2 of our oils, athough they do have the Aglandau.
For AOC and Bouteillan
Steve At Larry痴 Brown Deer Market (Steve is Larry's son) in Milwaukee 414-355-9650 My husband has known very wel both Steve and Larry for 35 years.
http://www.larrysmarket.com/
For those in the Midwest and east coast.
He probably has some A.O.C. and might have some Bouteillan
For the western states how about contacting Steven Rosenberg at Liberty Heights Fresh in Salt Lake City
801-583-7374
http://www.libertyheightsfresh.com/
Steven is a new customer of ours and just got pallet of the new Bouteillan not more than 2 weeks ago.
In addition to being our customers they both happen to be really great guys.
DocHeb
Veteran Member
I saw from the Larry's Market website that you were from Elm Grove. What a small world! Over Easter weekend I went through Elm Grove, past the churches and the convent to Blue Ridge Blvd. We were up on the hill to drive past my Grandparent's homestead - what a trip down memory lane. I can remember sleeping in their house as a kid and hearing the train whistle down in the valley, and the sonic booms of the Air Force fighter jets in the 60's during the Cuban Missle Crisis.
Will you post when and where this year's AOC oil is available? - I did buy a bottle of Anglandau from iGourmet, but I've never had the "best" of anything before, and I don't want to miss the chance!
Will you post when and where this year's AOC oil is available? - I did buy a bottle of Anglandau from iGourmet, but I've never had the "best" of anything before, and I don't want to miss the chance!
groundcover
Elite Member
Thanks ROX,
Just called Larry's market but the two guys that could do that had just left ,but they will call me back tomorrow.
Just called Larry's market but the two guys that could do that had just left ,but they will call me back tomorrow.
gsganzer
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Rox,
We've loved your oils with our dinners. We'll have to order some more before the rest of the world learns about you. Congratulations on your success. It's well deserved.
I might be in Paris for business in a few months, with my wife in tow. How far are you from Paris if we wanted to visit a world class olive operation?
We've loved your oils with our dinners. We'll have to order some more before the rest of the world learns about you. Congratulations on your success. It's well deserved.
I might be in Paris for business in a few months, with my wife in tow. How far are you from Paris if we wanted to visit a world class olive operation?
DocHeb said:
Doc,
Small world isn't it. My husband owned the Elm Grove Inn for 13 years as well as the Red Circle Inn in Nashota, well to be entirely accurate he co-owned both of them with his business partner, my husband ran the kitchens and his partner ran the dining rooms. His parter wanted to buy a third place and my husband didn't so they each took one restaurant and amicibly went thier seperate ways. My husband kept the Em Grove Inn. He was pretty well known in Wisconsin. So yup, that is us, guilty as charged. I just know I am going to be getting an e-mail from Steve at Larry's Market asking me when the next oil will arrive. I truly hope you enjoy our olive oil.
gsganzer said:
If you make it to France you are more than welcome to come for a visit. Best is probably take the TGV (Tres Grande Vite -translation very fast and grand) train from Paris to Aix en Provence. It should be about a 2 1/2 hour train ride if I am not mistaken. You are more than welcome to cme and visit.
Well no rest for the wicked as they say. I still ahve 7 more trees I really wanted to get prunned but I don't knwo if I will or not as now you can see the itty bitty buds forming. We still have 3 burn piles to burn, although they are not huge ones. The Director of toursim calls us last week, they want to throw a kick off party for the Flanerie (I am positive i did not spell that right) on our olive farm. A Flanerie is a program where the Tourism Office organizes group tours of various local businesses and cultural attractions. I think we are on for every Thursday for the rest of April and May, then they start it up again in July. Last year the kick off was held at a local soap factory, you know the old fashioned olive oil soaps, we have 2 nice soap factories in our city. We have a chocolate artist here who is pretty famous and us and a few other similar operations. he calls on a thursday and says they want to do it next friday.
So now we have to drop what we are doing and spruce up the property as the local politicians come, the press, officials from the District Headquarters of the Toursim Department etc. My husband has to stop his burning operation and switch out the sprayer on the tractor, put on the rototiller and till down the weeds in the fields. It was next on his agenda after burning and my gosh we only had 2 posibly 3 more days of buring and then we were done. Nope, stop what you are doing and switch to rototilling.
I realize that I cannot put off any longer installing a proper flower garden in the raised garden bed that is at driveway level and what you see when you first drive down our long driveway. Plus this is where they are going to set up the tables and speakers stands. Our nephew had planted a few lavendar bushes in there but basically it was all weeds. I have put it off for 4 years now because I knew how much work it was going to be. There were 2 big old rose bushes and this other flowering plant that was like a tree and those had to come out. I thought back to a post i had read here on TBN and I used the method of tying a steel cable around the bushes and pulling them out with the car. After several hours I did get them out, what a job that was. I spent 2 days finally putting in a proper flower garden that I was going to do anyway but now i ahd a deadline. I'll post a few pics of that.
While all this is going on, a store in Aix ordered oil, a store in Salon de provence orered oil, Houston Country Club finally gave me their order and it is huge, my cousin in Florida orderd more oil, a very upscale local hotel ordered more oil and we are trying to finish the spring work, spruce up the place and fill olive oil orders. It is crazy! Sadly i did not get any pictures of the party as I took all the guests on an abbreviated version of the guided tour I give to our visitors. What is a bit intersting is they typical way that any event similar to this is handled in france. it will always always finish with an aperitife. The city provides chips, orange juice, water and a few bottles of wine. A City employee comes during the day and delivers, and then another city employee comes and sets up and serves. now since the Tourism office threw the party you would think that they would serve the snacks afterwards, but no there is a civil servent whose job entails setting up and serving an aperitife. In the states you might get at the most coffee, but over here there will always be some type of liquor served, might be wine, champage, or a punch with liquor or pastise but it will be there. Also interesting is that nobody ever drinks to much. People have a glass, perhaps two and that is all.
We got most of the olive oil bottled and packed up and delivered, tomorow i have to fill all the remaining stock of our mini bottles 108 of them. We just bought 500 mini bottles about 6 weeks ago, I just can't believe how it seems like I am always filling mini bottles. I even sold 6 mini bottles at the Toursim office party.
If the Germans do not order more oil pretty soon they are not going to get any because our stock is very low. When that Der Feinschmecker magazine comes out in May they will be scrambling I bet. Mostly around here by July everyone is out of oilive oil. Well you have some small stock to fill your local orders but not enough to fill pallets. I think that is a good thing, it means that everyone is getting fresh olive oil and not oil that is 2 and 3 years old. I hope we get a lot of olives this year as our harvest from last fall was our famin year. One year you get a lot of fruit then the next year not much fruit. On or "fat" years we would sell some of our oil to the mill, but we hope that for this year not to do that and to keep all our oil for ourselves and sell it all.
At least if we do well in the Los Angeles County Fair Competition our American suppliers will have oil to sell, it is packaged up an in our basement ready to ship. I hope i can get that done next week. Next week my husband will burn and I'll working on shipping ut this order and probably help also with the farm work.
I can see why farmers will live on practically nothing and hang onto their life farming, and fight to not give it up. it is a wonderful wonderful life. Doesn't pay that well, we will never hit it rich growing and selling our olive oil, but we are our own boss, we decide what to do when, and we don't have any particualr hours to keep. The only 'deadlines" we have is when a customer orders olive oil, then we stop what we are doing and get the order out the next day. What is really nice is we don't have to deal with any complaints. We have never had one customer complaint ever, that is pretty sweet. Whatever a customer wants that is what we do.
Life has been busy on the olive farm and I am starting to figure out that it always will be busy on the farm, but we like it, I can't imagine doing anything else.
So now we have to drop what we are doing and spruce up the property as the local politicians come, the press, officials from the District Headquarters of the Toursim Department etc. My husband has to stop his burning operation and switch out the sprayer on the tractor, put on the rototiller and till down the weeds in the fields. It was next on his agenda after burning and my gosh we only had 2 posibly 3 more days of buring and then we were done. Nope, stop what you are doing and switch to rototilling.
I realize that I cannot put off any longer installing a proper flower garden in the raised garden bed that is at driveway level and what you see when you first drive down our long driveway. Plus this is where they are going to set up the tables and speakers stands. Our nephew had planted a few lavendar bushes in there but basically it was all weeds. I have put it off for 4 years now because I knew how much work it was going to be. There were 2 big old rose bushes and this other flowering plant that was like a tree and those had to come out. I thought back to a post i had read here on TBN and I used the method of tying a steel cable around the bushes and pulling them out with the car. After several hours I did get them out, what a job that was. I spent 2 days finally putting in a proper flower garden that I was going to do anyway but now i ahd a deadline. I'll post a few pics of that.
While all this is going on, a store in Aix ordered oil, a store in Salon de provence orered oil, Houston Country Club finally gave me their order and it is huge, my cousin in Florida orderd more oil, a very upscale local hotel ordered more oil and we are trying to finish the spring work, spruce up the place and fill olive oil orders. It is crazy! Sadly i did not get any pictures of the party as I took all the guests on an abbreviated version of the guided tour I give to our visitors. What is a bit intersting is they typical way that any event similar to this is handled in france. it will always always finish with an aperitife. The city provides chips, orange juice, water and a few bottles of wine. A City employee comes during the day and delivers, and then another city employee comes and sets up and serves. now since the Tourism office threw the party you would think that they would serve the snacks afterwards, but no there is a civil servent whose job entails setting up and serving an aperitife. In the states you might get at the most coffee, but over here there will always be some type of liquor served, might be wine, champage, or a punch with liquor or pastise but it will be there. Also interesting is that nobody ever drinks to much. People have a glass, perhaps two and that is all.
We got most of the olive oil bottled and packed up and delivered, tomorow i have to fill all the remaining stock of our mini bottles 108 of them. We just bought 500 mini bottles about 6 weeks ago, I just can't believe how it seems like I am always filling mini bottles. I even sold 6 mini bottles at the Toursim office party.
If the Germans do not order more oil pretty soon they are not going to get any because our stock is very low. When that Der Feinschmecker magazine comes out in May they will be scrambling I bet. Mostly around here by July everyone is out of oilive oil. Well you have some small stock to fill your local orders but not enough to fill pallets. I think that is a good thing, it means that everyone is getting fresh olive oil and not oil that is 2 and 3 years old. I hope we get a lot of olives this year as our harvest from last fall was our famin year. One year you get a lot of fruit then the next year not much fruit. On or "fat" years we would sell some of our oil to the mill, but we hope that for this year not to do that and to keep all our oil for ourselves and sell it all.
At least if we do well in the Los Angeles County Fair Competition our American suppliers will have oil to sell, it is packaged up an in our basement ready to ship. I hope i can get that done next week. Next week my husband will burn and I'll working on shipping ut this order and probably help also with the farm work.
I can see why farmers will live on practically nothing and hang onto their life farming, and fight to not give it up. it is a wonderful wonderful life. Doesn't pay that well, we will never hit it rich growing and selling our olive oil, but we are our own boss, we decide what to do when, and we don't have any particualr hours to keep. The only 'deadlines" we have is when a customer orders olive oil, then we stop what we are doing and get the order out the next day. What is really nice is we don't have to deal with any complaints. We have never had one customer complaint ever, that is pretty sweet. Whatever a customer wants that is what we do.
Life has been busy on the olive farm and I am starting to figure out that it always will be busy on the farm, but we like it, I can't imagine doing anything else.
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BTDT
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Good for you Rox. I'm guessing that your husband has overcome his hand injury (from last years pruning I think it was). That is great news, 4 gold medal awards. Nothing like the new kids on the block coming in and going right to the top of the competition. Sure sounds like a lot of work, though. I found it interesting that they grind up everything to make the oil. Once again, congratulations, and I hope your son realizes the worth of what he stands to inherit, not just dirt and trees, but a family business.
dmccarty
Super Star Member
Yes, I can believe it.
We just got back from Disney World. The wife and I go to eat really good food and our favorite restaurant is the California Grill. It is on top of the Contemporary Resort which is the building the monorail runs through the middle. The California Grill has the best all around food we have ever eaten. The sushi chief is named Yoshi and is self taught and one of the first women to make sushi. Sushi making has long been the domain of men but that has changed over the last decade or so.
Anywho, the one disappointment is that the olive oil the California Grill serves is just ok.
I suppose the Grill's oil might be pretty good but we have tasted Rox's olive oil and there is no comparison. Congradulations!
Later,
Dan
