Rox's EVOO(Olive Oil) for sale on Amazon!

[rox]

We just hit 36 reviews. If you search on Amazon Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Amazon Prime, and then sort by Customer Rating we are number TWO on Amazon! Whoop Whoop!

I worked so hard on the shipment. There is a lot to this, more than I can explain here, importing food into the United States is not easy, and also the French Export process is not easy, but I finally got it all bottled, and on the pallet, all my paperwork is in order, and I ordered the UPS pick up today. UPS Marseille, says, "I'll get back to you I have a question for UPS USA first before i order the truck."

I revised my document numerous times in all cases getting the advice from the US Customs broker and the French UPS Export Manager. I finally ended up submitting a Pro Forma Invoice. This is not a typical shipment where there is a Seller and a buyer, I am not selling myself the olive oil, I am shipping it to myself at the Amazon warehouse and Amazon is NOT the buyer either. Finally it was decided to use the Pro Forma Invoice as the document. The export Manager in France is gong to show me as the Consignee in USA, but the USA Customs Broker is going to enter it as merely a ship to address. Trust me, shipping overseas logistics is not simply picking up the phone and calling UPS. You have to get everything right as the last thing you ever want is to be stopped by US Customers.

 

[ultrarunner]

We had a nightmare to ship a few years ago food product from USA to Austria... simply could not do it.

Our work around was to ship to Switzerland which was easy and then forward to Austria which was also easy from Switzerland... the cost of shipping was the downside... only did it once!

 

[rox]

I see that UPS records that my shipment just cleared US Customs yesterday. After days spent going back and for with the UPS Export Manager in France and the UPS Customs Broker in New York to get my invoice just perfect for both countries I got a call on Tuesday from UPS somewhere, instead of using the UPS Broker entered into the computer system, they sent it to the UPS Philadelphia Customs Broker. I had to rewrite my invoice one more time, see it is always always something when doing international shipments. At least I made it through Customs. In Customs frequently I will get hit with a Vacus exam, basically they X-ray your shipment and then they charge you for that. Now I wait for Amazon to schedule a delivery appointment for UPS. My last shipment which was delivered through a trucking company, Amazon was backed up and my olive oil sat on a truck for 2 weeks. I hope since they are a close partner with UPS that Amazon schedules a delivery soon.

I was really panicking, because almost a week went by and I didn't have a single order. That never happened before and I was highly stressed, I am spending all this money on replenishing inventory but what if the sales fall off? My daughter reminded me that there was this little thing called a hurricane that went through in that time period.

My husband and I took a 5 day vacation in Strasbourg and all during that vacation I kept worrying about, if my shipment would get through UPS okay and what about sales? I forgot that I had entered the e-mail address for Amazon different from my regular e-mail address, so when I was in Strasbourg and checked e-mail I never saw any orders. Stress level mounted. But then when I got home Monday and went on my regular computer and logged into Amazon I saw many orders, whew! My daughter was right, it was the hurricane. Very cool I got my first order in Beverly Hills. But with these new orders now I am completely out of AOC de Provence. I hope, I hope, I hope that Amaon allows UPS to deliver soon. But once you get it into Amazon then you have another good week to wait for them to check in the inventory. I wrapped each product individually in bubble wrap, 4 layers of bubble wrap on each product, so I hope nothing gets broken on Amazon check in this time.

Today we will make the final connections to our milling equipment and fire it up to make sure everything is operable. Our nephew comes Saturday to lay down the nets. It is going to be a low harvest this year, Italy is reporting a 50% reduction of a normal years harvest and that is about right for us also. Again for the second year in a row I can see we are going to be very low on Salonenque, the rest of the trees look like they are about 50% of the olives we would normally see on our trees. This is the life of olive farming, some years are just low yielding years, nothing you can do about it. When we first started farming this would stress me out, "What did we do wrong?" I would wonder. But then after a number of years you just figure out that it is a low year for everybody and nothing you did wrong and nothing you can do about it. I think this is our 13th harvest so I have mellowed over the years.

Strasbourg was wonderful, and we even went one day and took the train to Baden-Baden Germany and saw the beginning of the famous Black Forest. The trains run every hour out of Strasbourg to Germany, it was so convenient and so relaxing to just take the train. Once we arrived in Baden-Baden we took the bus from the train station to the bottom of a mountain which had a funicular running up the mountain, cost was low 4 Euros round trip, they would have charged much more than that in France I bet. There wasn't much else to see in Baden-Baden and it was Sunday so everything was closed anyway so we just had lunch at the top of the mountain and then turned around and went back to Strasbourg.

 

[Egon]

A few vacation days are always nice.

 

[Bird]

The lunch on that table sure looks good. And those people aren't bad looking either.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

cheers!

 

[rox]

Back upstairs from working on the mill. We have a water regulator that had a little drip. It is hard to explain but I'll try.
The ground up olives get pumped into the fast spinning centrifuge, inside the paste separates into 3 rings, at the center rests the paste, it is the heaviest and stays in the center, next is a ring of water, all olives have some water in them, if you pick early to get the more fruitful tasting oil, you get more water and less oil, then finally at the exterior the last ring is the oil, it is light so it gets flung to the exterior.

There is a spout (2 actually) from the outside of the cylinder going to the inside. You raise and lower that spout to try and find the sweet spot where the ring of oil is just touching the ring of water. If your oil comes out to dirty (debris from the olive paste and to much water) you have to stop the spinning and raise the spout, but if your oil is to clean your spout is to high and you are losing oil (oliveoil). Trust me it is a real art to figure out where to set that spout. Other than stopping the machin, a 15 minute ordeal, what I can do is slow down the pump to pump the paste in slower, let it spin longer and most of the time get a bit more oil, which makes the oil ring deeper. Or I can add just a little bit of water, making that water ring bigger and push the oil ring up to the spout.

Now adding water is very tricky, we have a regulator with a simple ball valve that I can open and close and adjust the flow of water. Trust me those rings of paste/water/oil inside the centrifuge are very tricky, you adjust the water by a micro adjustment, it is that sensitive. The tube that delivers the water through the water regulator to the centrifuge are connected with push to fit connectors. Is that the right term? Anyway, I had small leaks on each end, the end where it connected to the water regulator and the end that connected to the centrifuge so I wanted to replace them. What an ordeal, frst of all I did not even know what they called those fittings in English much less in French. When after days and days of searching on the internet I finally found the term "Push to Fit" and bingo, there was what I wanted. When visiting my mother I took my pieces with me that I had cut off and found a supplier in Colorado and mailed him the pieces. The thing is, these fittings screw onto my regulator and my centrifuge so I didn't know what size threads were used, how the threads are cut is another way of saying it. As I researched this I found out about different types of threads. The supplier, once he got my pieces told me what type of threads are on my equipment and he didn't have the smaller tube but a little bit bigger tube, but most important he had those fitting pieces the tubs go into in the right thread size. He also told me that the reason I had the leak is that the fittings were for air hoses not for water hoses and he did have the fittings for water which grips the tube better I guess.

Today I unbolted the water regulator, and screwed the new fitting on the back and shoved in the hose. oops! Once you shove them in you can't pull them out again. Now the connector he sent me was just a straight out connection whereas the one I removed was an elbow connector. I tested with water and no leaks so that is great. However because it sticks out I now have to attached the water regulator to a new spot as it will no longer fit flush because of the missing elbow fitting. But I am really happy that it no longer leaks. That is so annoying having just a little dribble leak. I had to keep a small pail under it, it was just annoying. Same thing on the other end, just a dribble leak. Tomorrow my husband and i will have to drill probably a 1/4" hole in some pretty heavy stainless steel to bolt the water regulator on in a new spot. Then I am going to really analyze exactly how long I want the tube before I cut it off and fit it in the centrifuge side as I now realize there is no going back. Once you stick it in there, it is stuck in there for good. I did buy one spare fitting.

I hate leaks, I am always the one who has to clean up water leaks, like the regular hose with a garden sprayer at the end, when that leaks I always have to squeegee the floor. Last year I bought an all metal spray gun so no more plastic parts which break off when we drop the spray gun on the concrete floor, which happens all the time do to the nature of the work.

When we were done working on that Lucien stopped by, another olive farmer and good friend. He has got a big parcel of trees that have tiny olives on them, just a bit bigger than a big pea. He isn't even going to pick them as the amount of oil he would get out does cover the cost of picking and pressing them. It is just not a great year for olives.
... ...


This is the panel I am going to bolt it on to


This is where it attaches to the centrifuge

 

[ultrarunner]

We have a local bee keeper... he has had a great year and brings his hives to farmers for his primary business.

This year the bees produced a lot of honey.

Selling is another story... it is regulated differently than produce (Fruits, Vegetables and Nuts) making it very difficult unless he just wants to give it away...

I can't believe how much his busy bees have made.

 

[rox]

We have a local bee keeper... he has had a great year and brings his hives to farmers for his primary business.

This year the bees produced a lot of honey.

Selling is another story... it is regulated differently than produce (Fruits, Vegetables and Nuts) making it very difficult unless he just wants to give it away...

I can't believe how much his busy bees have made.

Maybe he could look at selling it on Amazon.

 

[rox]

Whoop! Whoop! I got an e-mail from UPS that my pallet will be delivered to Amazon tomorrow at 3pm.
I can't believe it. Last shipment it sat about 3 weeks before Amazon would schedule a deliver date, so this is great news.

Also I am completely out of AOC De Provence in all sizes so this is really great news. I only have 4 Aglandau 0.50L left. More Bouteillan are in inventory which I guess is because of price, it does cost $3 more than AOC de Provence and Aglandau. I am kind of surprised though, it is the Gold Medal winner, I thought people would like to try that, I would like to try a Gold Medal Olive Oil but in commerce price is always an issue. I did not send much Bouteillan to replenish inventory, there is already enough there.