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
Veteran Member
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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
Veteran Member
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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
Veteran 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
Veteran Member
- Joined
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- Tractor
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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.
