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.

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.

There's been a long break from any posts here because I've been on vacation in the French Alps. I decided it was going to be as work free a vacation as possible, in an effort to rejuvenate my enthusiasm for The Olive Oil Source, to come up with some new ideas, and to leave behind the inevitable day-to-day frustrations.

I am involved with The Olive Oil Source as the owner, I farm 4,300 trees and I mill that fruit in our own mill. In addition, we mill olives commercially for a lot of small producers totaling somewhere around 20,000 - 40,000 trees worth of fruit depending on the year.

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.

One task I have that I wish I had more time for is getting out and talking to our customers as it is the best way to find out what is going on in the industry and what our customers want or need.

A big part of our business in the past has been providing equipment to small olive oil producers, essentially boutique operations.

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.

When I got into this business I had visions of sunset strolls through the orchard on warm summer evenings and enjoying a glass of wine or dining al fresco with a beautiful view over the orchard. It never occurred to me that as an added bonus I’d become a connoisseur of regulatory inspections.

We were asked why is it so hard to find oil from French varietals grown in the U.S.? My first reaction was that olive farming here was dominated by the canning industry for decades.

One of the basic principals of our business is flexibility. We feel that the best service we can provide to our customers is to provide them with what they need and not require nor limit them to purchase everything from us.

One of the questions we get asked most often from potential new customers is what makes The Olive Oil Source different from our competitors.

Welcome to my blog. My name is Shawn Addison and I am the owner of The Olive Oil Source. I decided it would be a good idea to share some of what I do on a day to day basis.