Shawn's Blog — Farming

In May, I wrote about the peculiar bloom and fruit set we were experiencing.  I thought that it could prove to be a very interesting year. First, I should make a few qualifications about my comments below though. Most of the exposure I get to growing operations is in the coastal zones of California and tend to be from about Monterey south. Also, for the most part they are traditionally farmed orchards and not super high density operations. That being said, during the year I do talk to a lot of people throughout the state and it seems that it is...

Last week I was out on a small consulting project that has been particularly rewarding. My client wanted to be involved in agriculture on a hobby level. He wanted to farm something on a small scale, not go into it with any particular commercial intent, and produce something he could really take pride in. After looking at a number of options, he ultimately bumped into a constraint that we are all faced with: water costs. That made the decision easy, he would produce olive oil as all the other crops considered required far too much water. Being involved in the...

It's that time of year. Every year at about this time we start to get inquiries about olive milling. It is too early to be worrying about harvest and milling but it is hard getting this message to resonate with people very excited about their first or second crop. Like every year, this year I have already heard, "Well last year we started harvesting on October 25th, so we'd like to schedule based on that timing". And, "We'd rather book a time and make sure we have something scheduled than risk not getting a milling time".  There is no way...

Young blossoms   It is an interesting time in the orchard right now as we monitor the trees for what we can expect for a crop.  The rumor is that the crop may be quite light statewide which is not good news given the rapidly growing popularity of Californian olive oil and the price hikes and shortages we've been seeing the last few years.  Usually by this time of year in our orchard, we have had bloom and sometimes even fruit set, although that is pretty rare this early. This year, the trees seem confused.  Many have already bloomed and...

There is a lot of literature out there on the right way to do things in this industry whether it is planting, pruning, harvesting, milling, storage, or any of a number of other aspects of the business. In a perfect world they sound great and are what we strive for, but we see and hear a lot from people taking those points a little too far. Sometimes the physical or economic realities of the situation simply don't allow you to do something the way it is described in a book. Pruning this year is a perfect example of that. Ideally we'd...