billbill1 and everyone, I ahve to say I am amazed that our hum drum life has an audience. but okwy here is some more about the last few days. friday I went to the mill to pick up a couple barrels of our oil, they loaded it in my car and they were asking if I thought if it would clear the rear window, 'Sure no problem " I say and lower the hatch and smashed out the back window, and it was raining. get home, the mill manager Christine had already called my hsuband to give him a heads up, also i guess he had another question for him. Well anyway the next day hubby calls the neighbor upt he hill Claude, he goes over to his brotherin law who owns a used car part business, and Claude brings over the whole back door of a renault Clio. Within an hour he has removed the window from the salvage part and installed it in our car. I told Claude in french, "I am going to disappear now, well becasue this is my fault" he smiled and said that i should disappear, so i left hubby and Claude to put in the new back window. Which is a totally unique and diffferent experience for hubby and I. in our former life we would have called he auto glass people, had them come over and isntall and write a check, no problem. now living this more modest lifestyle we are salvaging scrap parts and feeling overjoyed that our neighbor had the connections and know how to help us. of course he would not take $$$ but he does so much love our olive oil, so he went home with a couple bottles. So that was rather exciting.
Then today we had 12 American cars who were participating in a car ralley. Basically they dress up in costume, blow their horns and drive in a line together and go visit things. I was going to give the olive oil tasting inside the Borie but it was raining this morning so we decided to do it in our living room. I had already told hubby that it was his turn to clean the hosue as I had cleaned it for our last 3 visitors. So he got up at 7 and cleaned and I slept until 9. They were supposed to come around 10 and jsut about 10 it stopped raining. They shwed up about 10:45. it was very odd to me to see a line of American cars, in the lead was a Cadillac Eldorado, followed by a Hummer, then and old chevy Station wagon, 3 Thuderbirds, a Camero adn I frget the rest. So they came in for an olive oil tasting and really were impressed we had such a beautiful home. This also amazes me as I don't think this home is all that "special" My home in the US was much nicer than this, it is a nice home don't get me wrong, but it is not an ohhh ahhh home, iMHO. So I give the olive oil tasting and i ahve figured out a very good way of doing it. At the end i lay out index cards and pens and say that if they would like to purchase olvie oil to write their name, the type and quanity of oil they would liek to purchase and the total. i give the cards to hubby, he goes downstairs and fills the orders. While he is doing that I jsut visit. Most people are always interested on how an American came to live in france and what our lie was like int he states. After they left we had a really crappy lundh I made, it was terrible. the grocery store had a bunch of Asian food on sale so I thought I would try it. We ended up being rather hungry and throwing it away. Lesson learned, do not buy Asian food on sale!
then int he afternoon, mu husband carried up 180 1/4 liter bottles that were filled and I put lables on them and use the heat gun to shrink on the capsule. You know that plastic wrapper over the cork of a wine bottle, that thing is called a capsule. I had to make up the boxes. It was so nice to be able to sit on the sofa in fornt of the fireplace and do that. I ahte our basement, it is cold and doesn't ahve any windows, that is where we usually put the labels on. While I did this my hubby put on 50 labels on our mini bottles, we got another order so had to make even more, I think we are at now about 300 of the mini bottles. Then he scounged around to find boxes for the minis. the minis are a 2oz bottle, jsut like liquor bottles you get on an airplane. My hsuband hates filling the minis becasue he has to do it by hand with a small funnel and it takes a lot fo time, it is to small for the filling machines. We don't ahve any boxes for the minis like we do for our other oils so he has to go thorugh our huge empty box collection to find boxes for the minis. he was overjoyed that boxes for the 2 food grade hand pumps I jsut boguht were perfctly sized for the minis. Boy you would have though he struck god or something when he came upstairs with thsoe 2 boxes. We have about 6 or 7 customers (and we are talking here about our USA Order) who ordered mini bottles so he has to do a lot of scrounging. Just packing up the mini bottles took him the whole afternoon and early evening. Over here everythig is custom made, rarely do you find anything off the shelf. So if we want cardboard cartons with dividers we have to get them custom made and the minimum order is 600 boxes, i know because we already get custom made boxes for our regualr sized bottles. thankfully the 3 liter and 5 liter tanks fit inside our 0.50L 7 0.75L boxes, so those boxes do double duty. we sold about 25% of our harvest to customers int he USA. we sell about another 25% to customers in Germany and the reamianing 50% is sold in France.
My husband made us a nice salad for dinner and then I went on the internet and using a proxy server I am able to watch the shows on ABC, CBS etc. so i watched Greys Anatomy and Ugly Betty. I also answered some e-mails one in particular a captain in the US Air Force assigned to the french Air Force Academy in our city of Salon has been writing for the last few days about renting our guest hosue for 3 months Sept, Oct, Nov to his brothers in-laws. So i answered his questions and also my husband took a phone call for a french family and they rented our Guest hosue for 3 days in May. I need to do better at renting out the Guest house. I jsut have not taken the time to market it at all on the internet, most likely becasue I don't ahve the French langauge skilsl to do so on my own.
This coming week with any luck our labels will arrive form the American printer in Ohio. When those labels arrive we will stop everything and label the bottles. They are all filled sitting in plastic crates, waiting for the labels to arrive. I still ahve a tremendous amount fo work to do to organize and arrange the shipping. I hat doing that job is is a PIA. I have used DhL twice and another one twice. the french staff are pitiful, jsut lousy therefore I dread it and I have delayed starting that process, but next week i have to get on it. There is a whole lot to do, you have to fill out a manifest, complete invoices that have all the info the fench officals want as well as the Americans, fDA & Customs etc. etc. I did get us an FDA Number and we have a US Customs number so that is a pain I wn't ahve to go through again. I have a good 2 days jsut getting the shipping docs ready and printing up the shipping labels for each box/carton. it is a lot of work.
So if the labels don't arrive right away and I finsih up o the shipping paper work, I'll head outside and start a new section, pruning trees. just afterwe finished our last day of burning it has been off and on rain. But light easy rain, no storms. Wait i'll probably have to help my hsuband finish painting the trees we already prunned with tree wound first. that is one of my least favorite jobs, and hubby doens't relish it eaither, so if it doens't rain we'll probably do that first before we start again on cutting/pruning.
If I am lucky iGourmet.com should receive the samples next week that i mailed out so i will need to begin following up on that lead as well. I forgot to fax an invoice to a customer who pays us slow. he called up for another order and I said I would be happy to do so, but I would like to be paid for our last order. Blah blah blah my accountant doesn't ahve a copy etc. well anyway my hubby reminded me tonight that they didn't pay which triggered me that I forgot to fax he invoice to his accountant like I promised, so I better do that first thing in the am. It's not like i am going to loose this customer, I designed private labels for his Chateau and it sells really really well, so more or less he has to go through us if he wants the private label, which he does. I buy a really unique product for making labels through my injet printer. i buy blank labels that are made out of vinly and once run through my injet printer the ink is waterprrof, also olive oil proof. So i can make really really nice custom lables waterproof, right on my injet printer.
End f the night, log onto TBN and read all the wonderful iteresting stories, challanges and accomplishments, and connect with my friends over here on TBN.
