Growers and Producers of Premium Organic Table Olives, Tapenades and Preserves

Newsletter - Summer 2003 Hello everyone and welcome to the Summer 2003 newsletter. To say the weather has been unkind over the last 6-9 months would be an understatement. Record high temperatures over Summer [The candles even melted inside the house!!] , No rain at all, low humidity and hot, dry winds put stress on the farm and the Olives. The rainwater dam fronting onto Old Grattai Rd [ 1 of 4 on the property and the largest] is almost empty and we are having to bucket water onto the Olives manually as the pump is sucking up dirt and blocking the irrigation...my legs and arms are killing me!! They are down this year to about 2-3 kilos per tree but we won't really know until they are picked. We are currently negotiating with some growers for some olives to augment our own. Have just finished shovelling Cow, Donkey and Sheep manure round the trees with our own special Liquid Seaweed recipe as well...just in time for the rain that's started falling over the last week. We still have plenty of 2002 olives left although the Rock Salt Olives are almost finished for this year. The good people at "The Right Food Group" are about to send us down our 2002 Tapenades so there should be a bit of breathing space, which should finally see us stop chasing our tails trying to keep up with production. Just got back from the "Cowra, Bathurst, Orange, Mudgee Food and Wine Festival" at the Museum Of Contemporary Art over the weekend of Valentine's day. What a turnout...thet had to close the doors on Saturday Afternoon as there were too many people trying to get in. We did very well and it was nice for some of Mudgee's wineries to see some of the food that is on offer in the region. Katoomba Wines, the new food/wine emporium of Stephen and Tricia Hennessy in the Blue Mountains, has been open for a month or two and already they are going great guns. We finally have a distributor in the Mountains to go with our Growers Markets, which by the way is still the best place to get our Olive Products. Check our Stockists page for more details. Well it's halfway through February and the rain has started falling. In the last week we've had over an inch and a half with more on the way. Good news for us with Olives but bad news for the irrigated vineyards...everyone looks to the skies with there own wishes but we really do need the rain. See Ya soon, Richard

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