Holiday Greetings From the Farm

We wish everyone a joyous holiday and a new year that brings peace and better futures for all.

The farm is quiet now as it is the wet season when it’s best to stay out of the orchard: too wet and cold to prune and too muddy to till in the rows. We are thankful that things have slowed down. During the winter we turn our attention to learning more about the growing cycle of the olives and the yearly frost date timeline.

We’ll be reviewing the way we schedule irrigation and looking into the possibility of installing more sophisticated equipment to test available soil moisture during the growing season. We plan to fine tune our fertilizing as well since some trees in the original have plenty of canopy.

Once we have more hours of sun and the soil warms up, we will be back in the new orchard to continue filling out the rows with new trees. We still have a number of hedgerow plants to put in as well, plants that are wintering over in the Bay Area where relatively warmer temperatures allow them to continue to push out more root development.

We still have lots of oil available for purchase: please check out our Shop page on this website.

A Bountiful Harvest for 2019

The first weekend in November brought sunny weather—just right for welcoming about 65 friends and family for two days of harvesting our 2019 bumper crop. We set up tables, lights and heaters to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner to everyone. Everyone fanned out across the orchard with picking baskets and plenty of enthusiasm. We filled one macro bin after another until we had to go to Chacewater Olive Mill and borrow two more. When we gathered under the lights to celebrate we knew we had a harvest to be proud of after so many months of work to produce the best and plentiful fruit. Rich and I were celebrated as well. This month marks our 50th Anniversary and having all these friends and family around us swelled our hearts immensely. Look for our shop page to order our oil online.

This year we depended much more on our electric harvesters than last year. The trees are bigger and the crop three times the size. As we drove our 127 gallons of oil from the mill to the bottler we knew we had our best year yet.

In the Heat of the Summer

Late July and August bring Lake County’s signature hot, hot temperatures to the farm. When it’s 98 degrees the olive trees stop growing in a kind of summer heat hibernation. Weed growth also slows down, which is good. The fields were completely mowed two weeks ago and are very dry and golden brown.

We still work in the cooler hours of the morning, mainly devoted to orchard care. We are doing quite a bit of suckering and light pruning. Some of the suckers are bigger than the new trees we put in a couple of months ago. Apparently we didn’t get to them last year and they’ve gotten a bit out of hand.

The other day, as we moved down the rows with our pruning shears, we found a nest with three eggs in it. We wondered whether the parents were hovering nearby, waiting for us to finish with their tree and move along.

Fruit fly prevention is on the calendar for July and August too. We’ve placed yellow sticky traps with olive fruit fly biological lures attached in about 50 places throughout the orchard. We use a good magnifying glass to identify fruit flies that might be present on the yellow cards. Many varieties of fruit flies stick, so we have to be sure before we spray with a molasses/biological control substance. If we let a fruit fly infestation get the better of us, the fruit can be too damaged to use for oil.

Last week 300 gallons of seaweed fertilizer rolled in to the farm. After many frustrating tries, we got the pumps working and fed the very fragrant brown liquid to our trees via the drip irrigation system. The organic fertilizer mixture provides the trees with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The bubble tank used to mix the 300 gallons of fertilizer with 400 gallons of water has been in heavy use in the County. We saw it just the other day at Mostin Orchards down the road, where David Mostin grows pears.

We were at David’s orchard operation, hearing him and Rachel Elkins, our local pomology farm advisor, talk about the many advantages of cover crops: in particular, increasing soil PH and organic matter in the soil. Dr. Volder from UC Davis added that over time cover cropping would help the soil to become more efficient in sequestering carbon

Now that it is so hot and dry we watch for any sign of fires in Lake County. We remember that last year at this time, the Mendocino Complex fire was raging out of control to the west and north of us and came within three miles of the farm. Already there have been a few fires in the County, but fortunately were put out quickly.

The burn area on 175 is still a reminder of the fires in 2018.

"Orchard Beautification Project"

It’s the very beginning of summer and with the summer solstice taking place this week, we had the chance to start work at first light—5:15 am. Our new orchard had taken a couple of hits during last summer’s heat and last winter’s hard freeze, so there were trees to pull out and others to cut back to sturdy suckers in hopes they would join the ranks of “come-backers.”

Rich took charge of pruning the canopy and deciding which trees weren’t going to make it, in addition to pulling out the extra bamboo stakes, T-posts and rebar. Lianne worked from below, pruning the unneeded suckers away from the base of the trees and clearing weeds around the trunks to give them air. Hundreds of lady bugs who had taken refuge from the heat in the leafy suckers, had to scurry further up the trees to find shade. The earwigs just ran. After six days of working from pre-dawn to noon, we were quite pleased with the results and could envision the new orchard’s potential to produce enough olives to significantly boost our oil production in the not too distant future.

With renewed confidence in these four and a half acres, we made the major decision to transition the new orchard from conventional to organic methods. From now on, all fertilizers and pest treatments will be certified organic. As for the weeds, we will keep cover cropping to control them and then mow, mow, mow.

We are also encouraged about the fruit set in the “old orchard.” Though they are about the size of capers now, the olives look plentiful. Based on past experience, we probably aren’t seeing the entire crop emerge yet. A lot of variables can affect our harvest, but along with neighboring olive producers we feel more confident there will be a better crop than in 2018. Here’s hoping the quality and flavor of the oil will remain excellent as well.

Fast Forward to Late Spring

Lake County is probably at its most beautiful in May. The mountains that ring the County are full of wildflower blooms: poppies, blue, white, and yellow lupine, native penstemon, Indian Paint Brush, pink spineflowers, whisker brush, plus many more. The poppies and lupine blanket the now green hillsides off Highway 175 which had burned last summer. The flowers carpeting the new green grass under the blackened branches of the scrub brush present a unique beauty that shows off Nature’s hopeful side.

Here on the farm we are taking advantage of warmish days and cool nights to get a lot of work done. In fact the entire Big Valley is buzzing with activity, including tractor work that starts at 2:00 am in the morning.

Our project this week has been to plant about 100 new olive trees to replace those that succumbed to below 20-degree temperatures last winter. We lost quite a few trees in the “new” orchard so that replacement planting will likely go on for the next couple of years.

With good advice from our local UC Extension orchard advisor, we developed a “12-step program” for carefully planting the new trees. The elements are simple enough: breaking apart the tree’s root ball and spreading the roots in native soil mixed with a little clay soil conditioner; watering and gently tamping the tree in; lightly staking the tree so it can move a little in the wind, helping it to build caliper (thickness); and finally generously surrounding the tree with a good three-inch thick layer of playground chips for mulch, being careful to pull the mulch away from the base of the tree. Why playground wood chips? Because CCOF approves of this type of mulch for organic operations. If it’s good enough for children to play on, then it’s fine for the trees to grow in. In addition the new trees will eventually get a coat of orchard milk paint to prevent sun scald next winter.

Next week it’s back to basic farm maintenance: mowing, pruning trees, monitoring the irrigation, and as Rich calls it, “our orchard beautification program,” which consists of re-staking bent-over trees, removing the dead ones, and suckering the trees.

Spring Is Blossoming

When we’ve had this much rain, the flowers are bound to follow. We may have to wait to plant our next set of young olive trees and the long-planned-for hedgerow because it’s too wet to dig and till, but these lovely gifts in the woods mean a lot at this time of year when spring seemed so long in coming.

About that hedgerow: We have grants from the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Healthy Soil Program and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Incentives Program (EQIP) to plant a hedgerow along our western fence and to plant a cover crop in the orchard for the next three years.

EQIP helps agricultural producers confront challenges such as pests and adverse weather, all the while conserving natural resources like soil, water and air. The Healthy Soil Program grants fund conservation practices that improve soil health and sequester carbon. The cover crop will also help with our soil improvement plan, which is overseen by CCOF, our organic certifying agency.

The hedgerow will provide more biodiversity at our farm. We’ll be planting ceanothus, elderberry, California buckwheat, yarrow—among other native plants—and hope to see an increase in beneficial insects, quail, gopher snakes and other wildlife. An added benefit is the hedgerow’s dense growth and height at maturity will trap drifting agricultural pollutants from the west.

Winter Orchard Maintenance

What goes on at a farm during the winter? Whenever it’s not raining we need to be out in the orchard making sure that the trees are in good shape. Strong winds hit Lake County frequently during winter storms and our young trees in the new orchard took a hit this year. This weekend we spent re-staking and re-tying about 80 trees. Some needed the strength of T-posts to get them back to an upright position and firmly planted in the ground again.

Once we get tools put away from that job, we get out the clippers and pruning shears and begin to sucker the trees. Once the weather is a little warmer Rich gets serious about pruning the trees with his sawzall.

Starting in March, we will be checking every week to see if budding has started because then it will be time to apply an organic foliar spray to the old orchard to encourage fruit development.

Not Enough of a Good Thing....

Alas, for fans of our 2018 oil, we’ve sold out! We had a smaller production year for our olives, which was true of olive harvests throughout California in 2018. We also had instant demand once we bottled oil because 2018 was an especially fine oil. We are doing everything we can to ensure we have a good harvest next fall so we have enough for everyone. We’ll be experimenting with an organic foliar spray for the first time. We’ll let you know here and on Facebook when our 2019 oil is ready.

Harvest 2018 - Another year rolls around

After a year of many challenges from nature: two fires in the county, one of epic dimensions; unusually long spells of hot weather; and a certain amount of anxiety over frost levels we arrived on harvest day to find beautiful, sunny weather welcoming over two dozen friends and family who came to help us with the harvest on Saturday, November 3rd.

We used electric harvesters for the first time ourselves to comb the olives to nets below. After a couple of more years of practice we should be professionals.

We celebrated our harvest that night with a dinner in our neighbor’s barn. Dancing Poly Farm did a superb job of catering our festive occasion. Early next morning it was off to Chacewater Olive Mill to press our olives.

Spring 2018 Tree Planting

We’ve finally finished planting our 9 plus acres of olive trees! Victor Silva, all-around farmhand, planted the last trees brought up from the Bay Area home nursery. He’s been working over the past four weeks to set in the newest 250 trees. Irrigation is turned on and the baby blue grow tubes adorn the newest trees. We discovered a black bird nest in the miniature forest of new trees we’d set by the barn before planting. We devised a fake tree with field fencing and olive tree prunings and carefully moved the nest. The transition was successful and we’ll see in about a week how many baby birds hatch from the six speckled eggs.