I'm back from my annual extended visit with my mother in northern Illinois. I have always spent two months with her but this year I made it a 6 week visit, Nico had the heart attack last year and I worried about leaving him alone on the farm for so long. It is very very difficult for me because my mother needs me so, I am such a comfort and companion to her when I visit, yet I'm married and I have a husband also and when I am with my mother that means my husband is home alone. What if he had a health issue and there was nobody there? See? It's stressful. My visit with my mother is done, I only wish my siblings would, you know, make a little more effort, mom is 89 now, how much more time does she have, but that is a different subject. The one good thing is my husband always encourages me to go, "Go take care of your mother, I'll be fine." So that is that update.
OMG our olive oil sales on Amazon are going GREAT! I want to pinch myself, I am only 9 reviews away from ONE HUNDRED reviews. Never when I started on Amazon did I ever think that 8 months later I would have so many positive reviews, and except for 3 they are ALL great reviews. We are now the NUMBER ONE French Olive oil, number one, can you believe it? And if you sort by customer reviews of all olive oils we are on maybe page 5, I think this is pretty good since we haven't even been on there for a year. I always knew our olive oil was great, this is not a brag just a simple fact, I am a judge in France and also have tasted so many, maybe by now thousands of olive oils, I know we really do produce a great olive oil, and I see it as total validation that we have so many great reviews on Amazon. What crushes me are the 3 bad reviews, I know them word for word and I have a very hard time getting over them. Isn't that terrible, 88 terrific reviews yet the ones that I remember the most are the 3 lonely bad ones, and really the people who left them are obviously inexperienced in consuming premium olive oil The last bad one really kind of pissed me off, they said I send out to much spam mail. Excuse me, ONE old fashioned mailed thank you letter with your first order and I sent a post card in March alerting our present customers that inventory at Amazon is low, is excessive? You are going to ding me for that on an Amazon review? One Thank You Letter and One Post Card, this is excessive? Not only that the reviewer said our Bouteillan was "grassy" which is total BS, I left a reply comment and just told the buyer flat out "Our Bouteillan is NOT grassy, in fact it has a hint of Banana to it and not only that, we won a GOLD MEDAL for that same Bouteillan we are selling on Amazon." It was the first time I directly told a customer on the Amazon web page they were, umm, incorrect. I know it is wrong of me to focus on the 3 bad reviews when I have 88 great reviews, but I'll tell you what every time anyone leaves a bad review the sales just stop until more people leave a good review. I figure each bad review costs me round $700 in sales, no small amount. OK, rant over.
Nico bought a
chipper that runs on the PTO of the tractor, it got delivered when I was by mom, however it kept killing on him. Out dealer came over to check on it and it turns out we do not have a variable speed transmission on the tractor and the PTO is turning to fast for the
chipper and then it kills the engine of the tractor. I don't know what we are going to do about it, we will probably have to buy another tractor as between transportation costs and parts and repair it would cost a lot to change the transmission on our current tractor to variable speed. Well that will have to be for next year, this year he burned the prunnings as we have always done. Nico just spent 3 half days rototilling down the weeds, other than that not a lot of exciting news from the olive farm. On farm sales have been strong, we have such nice customers.
