In the Spring of 1996, David and I attended the first Texas Olive Oil Council seminar on growing olive trees in Texas. That same day we decided to plant 140 trees in a one acre plot on our ranch in La Salle County just south of Dilley, Texas. Everything has pretty much been by trial and error. We chose to keep our orchard small, since we wanted the knowledge and the hands on learning experience. We wanted to do the work ourselves with occasional help from family members. Fortunately, they have all been very interested and supportive. They always come to help when needed.
Because of the area we live in, we decided a deer hog dog proof fence was a must, no compromising. Our trees arrived barerooted March 18, 1997 from the Tuscany area in Italy. The four varieties are Pendolino, Maurino, Leccino, Frantoio. The next morning we planted them in our ready and waiting plot. We had the fence up, the holes dug, the support stakes in place, and the drip water system ready to go. We prayed, we read, we studied, we prayed, we changed water systems, we pruned, we prayed, we took pictures we kept records, we hoed, and hoed, and hoed and prayed some more.
Now in 2001, by the grace of God, a lot of hard work, and much satisfaction, we have fruit ripening on our trees. In June, David and I went to Italy to purchase a fully automated olive press from Olerina, which is due to arrive the first week of September. In the meantime alot of our trees have ripening fruit falling on the ground while we wait. In an effort to save some of our yield, we borrowed a very small manual hobby press from our friend Lisa Deane in California. After a couple of very long days, and lots of hard work, we had little oil to show for all our our effort. We were simply losing too much oil trying to manually separate the water from the oil. At this point we decided to abandon this process and wait for our machine to arrive from Italy. However, the oil we were able to save is a beautiful green oil with a very good flavor.
Needless to say, we are proud and excited at having pressed the very first olive oil in Texas. We are looking forward to continuing in our pioneering venture. I think the olive tree is "God's Tree". Very beautiful, very hearty, and it lives and bears fruit for centuries. We are humbled to be able to grow these trees on our ranch.
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