Great News! :cool2:
We sold the olive farm!
My husband is pushing 70 and I am not that far behind and it was time.
After 15 years and 25 Gold or Silver Medals it was time to move on.
It was a great ride, a fabulous ride while it lasted but we were ready for a change.
The new owners are very similar to us, almost the exact same age we were (I was 50 when we bought it) had a professional career not in agriculture and were looking for a new adventure.
We only found out a few weeks after the sale that the husband is CEO of an extremely BIG liquor manufacturer and liquor distributor based in Marseille France.
Believe it or not it took time to find someone who had the money but at the same time wanted to do agricultural work. Most of the people with the money wanted to have a hired hand to do the agricultural work and the farm is not big enough to support paying an employee. If a husband and wife do the work themselves and run it like we did it provides a modest lifestyle, but if you bring on an employee then most of your profit is going to pay for the employee. We had a very small needle to thread and in the end the right couple found us and paid us our asking price so we are now officially retired.
We bought a fabulous condo in St Petersburg Florida having just arrived December 8th so we are really busy getting settled in.
We also have a condo in Cannes France so we will spend our summers in southern France so my husband can stay connected to his family and the rest of the time in St Petersburg. It is great to be at least on the same continent of our children and grandchildren.
As part of the sale we had to stick around the farm and train the new owners on how to harvest the olives and run the moulin (olive press) for their first harvest which was in November.
I have not resupplied Amazon, I have about half a pallet of olive oil in cold storage in Ohio.
I have half a mind to get that shipped to me here in Florida and just keep it in the condo and sell it outside of Amazon, like dump it at a low price to liquidate the stock. I just get so sick and tired of dealing with Amazon. I need to sell this last bit of stock and then we are really done. Maybe I will do a quick and dirty website to take orders and sell, but to be honest my heart is not in the marketing efforts any more, I want to enjoy my new life not keep carrying on with our old life. I haven't decided how to end it but I really should move onto that pretty soon.
So if you have been wondering about rox well know you know, life is good!
