txdon
Super Star Member
Wait Rox, aren't those the OSHA approved shoes for pressing grapes to wine?
Rox's EVOO(Olive Oil) for sale on Amazon!
- Thread starter dmccarty
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rox
Veteran Member
Oh.My.God! what a horrible harvest. I thought last year was bad. Last year we did not get enough rain (okay for us as we have a robust irrigation system) and the olives from the public came in dry like H-E-Double -Hockey-Sticks.
This year the complete OPPOSITE.
Oh.My.God, it never stopped raining. It rained and rained and rained and rained starting about October 25th. And of course olives and olive trees LOVE rain, I mean they just drink it up. The olives were like a drunk sailor on leave, except they were drunk with water. I can't even tell you how bad the yield was this year, it was bad. We had a LOT of olives, like it was a really great year, but when we went to press them so little olive oil, the olives were full of water. I didn't yet run the numbers of how much oil we actually got, I'll do that in a few days, I am only thankful we had so many olives to offset the horrible yield. I'm not kidding you for 7 weeks we never went 3 days in a row that it didn't rain. And of course that drove up our cost of picking, we spent around US Dollars $8,000 to pick the olives. That was the highest we have ever spent. When it rains the trees and leaves are wet, the nets we use to catch the olives are wet and heavy and everything just takes more time, more time to harvest = more cost to us.
The one bright spot is the moulin (olive press) business did really well. I beat out my competitor in yield, the other local moulin, I was returning a higher yield than they were, but what a lot of work to get that yield. Normally you use water, not a lot, but you use a little bit of water into the olive paste to concentrate the band of oil and force it to be expelled from the centrifuge. To be clear the water does not come out, the water creates a band (a circle) that kind of squeezes the band of oil and forces it out. This works well because all day long you are pressing olives for the public and some olives have more oil and some olives have less oil so you set your level in the centrifuge and use water to adjust between the different customers olives. However ALL the customers olives, like ours was LOADED with water so I really could not introduce any more water or I would get a big mess. My only option was to stop the centrifuge and manually adjust the spigot (deeper or higher) to capture the olive oil. Stopping the centrifuge takes time the darned thing is spinning like heck and not only that I have to draw off all the oil before I stop it so that takes time. In your world think of it as a spinning wood lath, when you stop the power the wood lath does not some to an abrupt halt you have to wait for it to stop spinning. Same concept. Most mills are going to set the level to the spigot of the oil to come out to a certain level and they just keep running it all day long at that level adding water as necessary. But this year we could not add water as the olive paste was already loaded in water, so we had to stop the centrifuge and manually adjust the spigot. I did it, I did it many times and spent a lot of time to do it because that resulted in a higher yield for my customers. I really can't fault the other mills who just kept going and and never made adjustments and the yield was the yield. It is a lot of work and a lot of time spent to stop the centrifuge and make an adjustment. BUT we did have a good amount of customers who brought us a good amount of olives and we came within a couple of hundred dollars of the revenue from the moulin being enough to pay for the pickers to pick our olives. Every year we have more and more customers all by word of mouth.
Let me put it this way, our picking costs were $8,000 if we did not have a moulin we would have paid around $6,700 to another mouin to press our olives, we earned very close to $8,000 in the moulin pressing for local people. So you can see how important it is for us to have the moulin. If we did not have the moulin we would have spent $8,000 (picking)+ $6,700 (pressing) = $14,700. For a small 12 acre farm this is not insignificant. I'm glad we invested in the moulin, as it is now the revenue pressing for the public pays our picking costs, and of course we have no expense pressing our own olives. It was NOT a small investment, to build out our moulin, but 8 harvests later we see what a right decision it was. And the really great part is, we have had ZERO equipment malfunctions. The milling equipment works perfectly year after year. It is really great equipment.
In the next few days I will add up the tickets and find out how much olive oil we actually produced. I have a rough idea.
Then in my never ending challenges at Amazon (this is not a piece of cake let me tell you) I finally (it took me 2 months) did get our Amazon Store up and running and because we are our own brand I am allowed to add a lot of extra information onto our listings, so I did that to. One thing might bring a smile to your face. I did what I have heard so many people do on internet dating sites, I put in pictures of us when we were younger. I had to add pictures and actually the older pictures we had were pretty nice pictures so I used them. Isn't that funny???? I succumbed. However on the individual product pages I did use a current picture. Here is a link to the 2 month project of Amazon storefront.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/node/14731548011
This year the complete OPPOSITE.
Oh.My.God, it never stopped raining. It rained and rained and rained and rained starting about October 25th. And of course olives and olive trees LOVE rain, I mean they just drink it up. The olives were like a drunk sailor on leave, except they were drunk with water. I can't even tell you how bad the yield was this year, it was bad. We had a LOT of olives, like it was a really great year, but when we went to press them so little olive oil, the olives were full of water. I didn't yet run the numbers of how much oil we actually got, I'll do that in a few days, I am only thankful we had so many olives to offset the horrible yield. I'm not kidding you for 7 weeks we never went 3 days in a row that it didn't rain. And of course that drove up our cost of picking, we spent around US Dollars $8,000 to pick the olives. That was the highest we have ever spent. When it rains the trees and leaves are wet, the nets we use to catch the olives are wet and heavy and everything just takes more time, more time to harvest = more cost to us.
The one bright spot is the moulin (olive press) business did really well. I beat out my competitor in yield, the other local moulin, I was returning a higher yield than they were, but what a lot of work to get that yield. Normally you use water, not a lot, but you use a little bit of water into the olive paste to concentrate the band of oil and force it to be expelled from the centrifuge. To be clear the water does not come out, the water creates a band (a circle) that kind of squeezes the band of oil and forces it out. This works well because all day long you are pressing olives for the public and some olives have more oil and some olives have less oil so you set your level in the centrifuge and use water to adjust between the different customers olives. However ALL the customers olives, like ours was LOADED with water so I really could not introduce any more water or I would get a big mess. My only option was to stop the centrifuge and manually adjust the spigot (deeper or higher) to capture the olive oil. Stopping the centrifuge takes time the darned thing is spinning like heck and not only that I have to draw off all the oil before I stop it so that takes time. In your world think of it as a spinning wood lath, when you stop the power the wood lath does not some to an abrupt halt you have to wait for it to stop spinning. Same concept. Most mills are going to set the level to the spigot of the oil to come out to a certain level and they just keep running it all day long at that level adding water as necessary. But this year we could not add water as the olive paste was already loaded in water, so we had to stop the centrifuge and manually adjust the spigot. I did it, I did it many times and spent a lot of time to do it because that resulted in a higher yield for my customers. I really can't fault the other mills who just kept going and and never made adjustments and the yield was the yield. It is a lot of work and a lot of time spent to stop the centrifuge and make an adjustment. BUT we did have a good amount of customers who brought us a good amount of olives and we came within a couple of hundred dollars of the revenue from the moulin being enough to pay for the pickers to pick our olives. Every year we have more and more customers all by word of mouth.
Let me put it this way, our picking costs were $8,000 if we did not have a moulin we would have paid around $6,700 to another mouin to press our olives, we earned very close to $8,000 in the moulin pressing for local people. So you can see how important it is for us to have the moulin. If we did not have the moulin we would have spent $8,000 (picking)+ $6,700 (pressing) = $14,700. For a small 12 acre farm this is not insignificant. I'm glad we invested in the moulin, as it is now the revenue pressing for the public pays our picking costs, and of course we have no expense pressing our own olives. It was NOT a small investment, to build out our moulin, but 8 harvests later we see what a right decision it was. And the really great part is, we have had ZERO equipment malfunctions. The milling equipment works perfectly year after year. It is really great equipment.
In the next few days I will add up the tickets and find out how much olive oil we actually produced. I have a rough idea.
Then in my never ending challenges at Amazon (this is not a piece of cake let me tell you) I finally (it took me 2 months) did get our Amazon Store up and running and because we are our own brand I am allowed to add a lot of extra information onto our listings, so I did that to. One thing might bring a smile to your face. I did what I have heard so many people do on internet dating sites, I put in pictures of us when we were younger. I had to add pictures and actually the older pictures we had were pretty nice pictures so I used them. Isn't that funny???? I succumbed. However on the individual product pages I did use a current picture. Here is a link to the 2 month project of Amazon storefront.
https://www.amazon.com/stores/node/14731548011
^^^^^^
Thanks for the update. Although you seem to have had some hurtles it sounds like you overcame them. :thumbsup:
We all wish that we were younger. The last time that I had my driver's license renewed they said "Do you want to use your old picture or take a new one" I told them that I would go with the one which makes me 4 years younger.
Thanks for the update. Although you seem to have had some hurtles it sounds like you overcame them. :thumbsup:
We all wish that we were younger. The last time that I had my driver's license renewed they said "Do you want to use your old picture or take a new one" I told them that I would go with the one which makes me 4 years younger.
dalola
Platinum Member
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Thanks for checking in Rox, and nice job on the store front! Good timing, as I'm a few weeks away from another order.
We had a similar fall (& summer too) here in Ohio. Rain, rain, rain.... Currently 2018 is the 3rd wettest year on record for Ohio, and just got a bunch more yesterday, so might've moved up to 2nd now, who knows... and December ain't over yet!
We had a similar fall (& summer too) here in Ohio. Rain, rain, rain.... Currently 2018 is the 3rd wettest year on record for Ohio, and just got a bunch more yesterday, so might've moved up to 2nd now, who knows... and December ain't over yet!
mark02tj
Platinum Member
Nice job on the store front - I think I'm going to order some for gifts for my sisters!
I don't know how you farmers do it. Around here, we still have corn and beans in the fields as it's been too wet for the harvesting equipment to get in. Hang in there, Rox!!
I don't know how you farmers do it. Around here, we still have corn and beans in the fields as it's been too wet for the harvesting equipment to get in. Hang in there, Rox!!
two_bit_score
Super Star Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2008
- Messages
- 10,983
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Great job on the Amazon site!
TBS
TBS
rox
Veteran Member
Thanks everybody, you guys (and gals) are great.
I have always loved this website, ya'll make it the best on the internet, always has been and still is today.
I always feel good when I come here, and the wealth of knowledge on a disparate range of topics is phenomenal.
I have always loved this website, ya'll make it the best on the internet, always has been and still is today.
I always feel good when I come here, and the wealth of knowledge on a disparate range of topics is phenomenal.
ronjhall
Super Star Member
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
dnw64
Veteran Member
Right back at you!
Kyle_in_Tex
Super Star Member
We love hearing of youz guyz endeavors.
