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

[rox]

My pallet is checked in at Amazon. Now I wait for them to open it up and stock the shelves with it, this can take around a week to happen.

We connected everything up in the mill, got the water regulator connected, no leaks now on the water tube connection on the centrifuge, however there is a small leak over on the water regulator, not by any of the tubes but it seem like the dial that I turn, oh well, not gonna take it apart this year, hooked a small bucket underneath and called it a day.

Everything was connected, I pushed the green button, "All Equipment On" and nothing happened. We checked all our electrical connections, we checked the fuse box, nothing. Oh crap, what is wrong? It was working perfectly well when we unplugged it last year. About an hour later my husband went downstairs one more time to look, and noticed the big Red Emergency Stop knob was turned. We have never used that knob, if I have an issue with one machine I turn off that specific machine, but some little kid who visited our farm must have turned it. Whew, the mill is up and ready to run.

We had 2 local people lay down nets yesterday and our nephew arrives today, he will be here for the whole harvest. It is an exciting time of year, it is hard to describe what it feels like when you are just about to start the harvest, the hope and anticipation of a good harvest is on our minds. The best decision we made in our business was to install our own mill (press). Having full control of the process from start to putting the oil in the bottles is very comforting. Everything is within our control, anything that it is possible to control we own it, and we never have to leave our farm. When that first batch of ground up olives, the olive paste, goes into the centrifuge I am always tempted to shout out to my husband, "Fire in the Hole!" This is it, this is where the rubber meets the road, this is the big moment where we separate out the oil from the harvest and when it comes out to taste test it.

You have to be able to look at the paste and realize that the olives paste is to dry and you better add a little water to the paste to make it more slippery or the used paste is going to plug up at the end of the centrifuge and not expel. There is no book for this, there is no YouTube video that you can go watch, it is a process each person has to learn from trial and error and experience. It's the harvest, game on, this is our game day, we will for sure be running olives through the mill tomorrow.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Good story Rox, I enjoy your motivation.

 

[milkman]

Bet it's a relief to have it up and running, are you doing your olives or others. Do you press yours first and then others, what is the order and will there be fresh olive oil for Amazon, sure hope you don't run out.

 

[ultrarunner]

I do hope you run out... with customers eagerly anticipating next year!

Soon... I will take a couple days to help my brother with his Christmas Tree business... he hopes to sell 1200 trees this year.

They had a lot of expenses the last few years... all new lighting with hundreds of LED bulbs, a new large tent for when weather is bad... bringing in gravel for parking and woodchips for the trees...

The Kubota L3800 has been a real workhorse.... moving and spreading the gravel... installing the 16' light polls, trenching for electric and pallet forks to move trees around...

Here is to a successful harvest and time to enjoy the fruit of your labor!

 

[rox]

Two customers bought us olives today to press, which we will press tomorrow.
The first customer is our neighbor. Last year she brought us I would say around 500 kilos of olives.
She brought us today, 30 kilos, that is her entire harvest.
She is a neighbor that lives next to one of our back parcels and she is a widow.
Nico always sprays her trees when he sprays our trees. He never accepts anything for it, she has maybe around 50 trees so it is not like it costs us that much for the insecticide. He never takes anything for it but almost every year she gives him a bottle of Scotch at Christmas. She is a very good neighbor and her husband was such a delight before he passed away. Her olives this year are much different than ours, hers are very small and hard, she doesn't regularly water like we do. I hope those small olives don't jam up my equipment. I guess I'll see tomorrow.

Then another customer who we have had as a mill customer brought us 400 kilos, last year it was triple that. He had two types of olives, the Salonenque were just barely tender to the touch but his other varietal was VERY hard, he picked those way to early. He agreed with me, he agreed his oil was going to be bitter but his wife wanted them picked so he did it.

Nico hand picked about 20 kilos of Salonenque from a few treet that are on a terrace and the other trees didn't have olives on them so there was no sense bring up the nets and sprreading them, it was quicker to just hand pick those. We will run the 400 kilo customer order through firts, then we will mix the neigbor lady and ours for 50 kilos and run them through second. The very very first batch of the year there is a lot of loss as the pipes and hoses get filled up, so my first customer which is usually us is going to lose a lot, but somebody has to be first. I warned him about that tonight when he brought me his olives that he was going to go first so he would have loss of the residual that remains in the hose. Maybe I will wait, we have 3 people on for tomorrow picking and the nets are already laid down, maybe I'll wait on the pressing until a load of ours comes in in the early afternoon and then I will push ours through first.

Really great news though Amazon checked in my pallet and we are completely restocked in Amazon inventory, yeah!
Sorted by Customer Rating we were on page ONE of Amazon, searching Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Amazon Prime. We now dropped down to the third page. I have no idea the logarithm that is used to rank the products I suspect it has something to do with maybe the number of Customer reviews in the last week or something. Hopefully as the oil sells now that it is back in inventory and hopefully people again start leaving reviews I will get moved up on the Amazon web pages. If you search French Extra Virgin Olive Oil we are Number ONE, so that is something. Now that I have inventory again I am going to check out how much it costs to be a promoted product. I spent a small fortune on the air freight so I will weigh that option carefully.

It was nice to have our nephew with us tonight, we had a nice dinner. It's sad, he is around 30 years old I would guess, and his wife is an RN, and she developed a particular type of arthritis, I forget the name but it attacks the coxes bone and sends you into excruciating pain. She was in the hospital for it not long ago and was in for a few weeks it was so bad. It is the kind of disease that is always there but at times flares up really bad. They have a beautiful 3 year old daughter. She is no longer able to work and is on 100% disability. He has another job but takes off in order to work for us and pick up some extra money.

 

[rox]

I do hope you run out... with customers eagerly anticipating next year!

Soon... I will take a couple days to help my brother with his Christmas Tree business... he hopes to sell 1200 trees this year.

They had a lot of expenses the last few years... all new lighting with hundreds of LED bulbs, a new large tent for when weather is bad... bringing in gravel for parking and woodchips for the trees...

The Kubota L3800 has been a real workhorse.... moving and spreading the gravel... installing the 16' light polls, trenching for electric and pallet forks to move trees around...

Here is to a successful harvest and time to enjoy the fruit of your labor!

1,200 Christmas trees, that is a lot of income for him.
And you sir are a very, very, very, very good brother.

 

[ultrarunner]

Thank you for your kind words...

It's fun to see the kids and Mom loves going out to the countryside... she always finds a way to help out even at 82...

My brother would one day like be exclusively on the property and not have to work in the city... several of his friends basically died from heart attacks on the job... makes you rethink things.

The total property is 30 Hectares or 65 Acres... Property Tax is the big obstacle... his property tax when it is all said and done is $25,000 this year... so he needs to clear $500 a week just to pay taxes... during Christmas season he employes local High School and College kids... they are good workers but it is a real job with Paycheck withholding, unemployment, workers comp, etc...

The region was all AG at one time and he is one of the few AG properties remaining with pressure from the nearby city to annex... the city limits come right to his doorstep...

Some love his property and hopes it never changes... others have complained hearing saws and tractors... same everywhere I imagine.

Years ago the property was mostly a pear orchard... with some grazing livestock and the usual pigs and chickens...

Mom's side of the family is all Dairy Farmers... that is a never ending, 7 day a week job... but a great place to be a kid or visit as a Grandchild!!!

 

[gsganzer]

Just ordered some more. This time I went with a quart (or maybe it was a liter) of the AOC de Provence. Should arrive in time for cooking something up next weekend.

 

[rox]

The mill worked perfectly! Best shut down I ever had. We put ours through first which we typically do. The Salonenque is fantastic I love it :licking: Of course putting our through first gives a low yield, I only got a 12% yield, all the hoses have to fill up and the machines also, but we expected that. The next customer I put through I got just over an 18% yield which is fantastic for picking so early. I am not touching that machine, going to leave my settings just how I set them.

I did take a short video for you. This is the olive oil coming out of the centrifuge. Notice the foam on it, this is perfect, you want it to come out with that little bit of foam, in this way you know you have your level set right and you are capturing all the olive oil and it is dropping out through the spigot. When I remove the bucket and weigh it I then use a skimmer and skim off the foam. Then what water is left will naturally settle down to the bottom and separate from the oil.
Notice how slow that oil comes out. The customer brought in (I'm trying to remember the exact number) 359 Kilo of olives and they will pick up 12 tanks of 5 Liters and one tank just over half full. It took us 3 hours to extract that oil. I did run the pump to the centrifuge slow though, I let the ground up olive paste stay in the centrifuge for a long time in an effort to spin the maximum amount of oil out of the paste.

 

[rox]

Just ordered some more. This time I went with a quart (or maybe it was a liter) of the AOC de Provence. Should arrive in time for cooking something up next weekend.

Your best deal by far is to order the bigger sizes. I have half a mind to raise those prices. I'm thinking about it especially since that air freight cost me so much. We sell half a liter for $23 and a full liter for $35. I really probably should raise that price, many many of the Premium oils like ours sell for $30 - $35 for half a liter, but those are being sold through distributors so of course there is going to be a mark up for the distributors cut. I'm thinking about it but it is not something I am going to do right away. I'm kind of tired from working in the mill today. But darned happy to because everything worked and went perfectly today. It is not just the physical labor it is the mental labor to make sure you are doing everything right and your are not forgetting anything. All day long staring at olive oil coming out of the exit pipe all day. Analyzing it if it looks right, has the right amount of foam on it, should I add just a touch more water to see if I can bring up the yield? Is the spigot set at the right depth? The physical labor is not bad at all, it is the mental labor that wears you out.