Shawn's Blog — Farming

It has been awhile since I have posted anything as we have been in the period where we are mainly waiting to see how the crop is developing. This time is always a bit stressful and this year did not let us down. Just as we started to have bud break, there were several rain storms predicted but fortunately none of them amounted to much. The time was not spent sitting idly however. A lot of labor is used for weed control and irrigation maintenance at this time of year. We are certified organic so you won't find Roundup or...

I've digressed a bit in the last few postings and gotten away from what I had originally intended to cover in my blog. I really wanted to write about some of the day to day elements that differentiate The Olive Oil Source from some of our competitors that are strictly merchants. I think the biggest differentiation is that we actually farm and mill olives. The most basic element of this part of the business is producing fruit and this is the time of year when the crop load is decided. There has been a lot of coverage of just how...

My last post briefly described SHD production and alluded to the competitive difficulties this method of production creates for both traditional and small SHD growers. In order for SHD production to work, it needs to be done on a relatively large scale: the cost of bringing in or owning the equipment is sufficiently high that if you are not farming sizable acreage, there is no cost effectiveness to the mechanization. This means that the typical SHD operation is better capitalized and more efficient than the typical small producer. That makes for a pretty tough competitor. I was recently asked to...

  I frequently find myself in conversations about how the olive oil industry is doing and usually reference SHD production and get blank looks. SHD is Super High Density production and I am surprised how many people tangentially involved in the industry still don't know either what it is nor how important it is to the success of domestic olive oil production.   SHD production was really driven in the U.S. by California Olive Ranch (C.O.R.) soon after 2000. At the time there were many skeptics and C.O.R. operated with a very open format sharing what they were doing with...

This is the time of year when a lot of people with a few landscape trees or hobby orchardists see a crop ripening and decide to try to make oil with their fruit. Frequently tree owners are unfamiliar with the existence of the olive fly, the effects of the fly on the quality of olive oil, and how to identify olive fly damage to fruit. This post is not about how to control the fly or the effects of fly damage as that has been covered in great detail many places including on our site.   This post is intended...