Week 11

Week 11, day 4, Rubber Boot Journalist hit the ground running today. Doing interviews and transcribing tapes today and photos tomorrow. Here’s a few shots of olive trees in bloom.

Week 11, day 5, Rubber Boot Journalist, working on more tapes and a photo shoot this afternoon and believe it or not it’s supposed to be almost 70 today and it’s only the 3rd of January!  Begging for rain here.

Week 11, day 6, Rubber Boot Journalist, working on the olive article again today. I’ve made a New Years resolution to buy as much possible to support U.S. growers by buying food grown in the U.S. 

I came to this while working on the table olive article where I discovered that California makes a premium ripe table olive, but the industry is struggling because of competition from imports that can sell their olives $5 a case cheaper than we can produce them. So, to help ensure our growers have a market next time I have olives in a restaurant I’m going to ask U.S. grown olives.

Week 11, day 7, Rubber Boot Journalist finished the olive article yesterday and a little depressing. Olive orchard removal in California continues. Total acreage has gone from 35,000 acres 10 or so years ago to possibly below 20,000 acres or less this year. Growers are struggling to find labor and nuts (almonds and walnuts in particular) are paying three times or more and mechanically harvested, makes it hard to stay with olives. At this rate California will be mostly nut orchards. This doesn’t seem like a good thing to me. What do you think?

I’ve another picture of an olive tree planted before 1900. Isn’t it beautiful?