Our Olive Oil is Here!

Our olive oil is here – at last! But it won’t last for long.

4^th year of drought produced a moderate harvest; however, it was much better than last year when we had no olive production at all. (We think this was also drought related.)

15 wine club members, friends and neighbors came for the harvest on November 14^th. It was a perfect harvest day, with beautiful weather and the olives ripe and ready to come off the tree with the slightest of touch.

Together we harvested 700 pounds. And, though we’ve always used organic farming practices, this is our first year of being ‘certified organic’. Being both dry-farmed and organic is something we are proud to share with you. It’s about being good to the environment and producing high quality wine and olive oil for all of us to enjoy.

So how much oil does 700 pounds of olives make? Not much. We took our olives to Figueroa Farms mill in Santa Ynez. The milling process separates the oil from the solids and the water. We were left with 17.5 gallons of oil. This is actually a very good conversion by weight of fruit to oil (19%), but as you can see it takes a lot of olives to make a jar of olive oil. While ours lasts it will be available to our wine club members and at the Santa Cruz area Farmer’s Markets .

Thanks to the great group of harvesters! It’s such a special way to share Condor’s Hope with our community. Enjoy the harvest pictures below and hope you’ll join us for future harvests.

–Robbie