{"id":5107,"date":"2015-10-19T13:16:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T13:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5107"},"modified":"2016-04-07T13:18:35","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T13:18:35","slug":"a-note-from-chef-becky-october-19th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-chef-becky-october-19th\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from chef Becky: October 19th"},"content":{"rendered":"Dear CSA Members,\r\n\r\nYesterday, our crew began picking olives. We picked 5 1\/2 bins\u2014about\u00a03,300lbs. It\u2019s only October 15; that is a full 2 weeks earlier than when we\u00a0picked last year, which was about 2 weeks earlier than the previous year. And\u00a0while we have a big crop like last year, we are seeing some curious ripening\u00a0patterns in olives planted in different soils.\r\n\r\nWhen we first planted the 400 trees, (about 2 acres worth) in 2003, we didn\u2019t\u00a0have a block of bare ground to plant the trees in. So we planted them along\u00a0property lines and in between blocks. In one area the olives are ripening about\u00a01 week faster than the other olives on the trees in the other areas. These early\u00a0olive trees are planted north to south, along the northern most area of the\u00a0farm. They are on lower ground in compacted soil that has been subject to\u00a0flooding in the winter months (when we used to have rain). The soil is less\u00a0rich here and the trees show it; they are about half the size of the trees in\u00a0other areas. But, even though they have poor growth, they have still managed\u00a0to yield a decent crop.\r\n\r\nWe have had wonderful production on all our trees even as most Northern\u00a0California olive growers, and even our neighbors in Brentwood, have seen\u00a0slimmer yields. In fact, in recent years, our CCOF inspectors have expressed\u00a0doubt at our olive oil production and questioned our yields since many others\u00a0were having a \u201cbad year.\u201d Olives are alternate bearing \u2014 a high yield in one\u00a0year, will be followed by a low yield in the subsequent year. This is especially\u00a0true for older trees. This makes want to hypothesize that it may well be the\u00a0relative youth of our trees that has resulted in a better crop compared to other\u00a0growers. But why the early ripening? Is it because of our strange weather\u00a0patterns and warm winters?\r\n\r\nThere are still so many things we don\u2019t know\u2014so many mysteries to be solved.\u00a0But, here we are, picking some of the olives early because they are black and\u00a0ripe and starting to fall. Normally this would not be a problem but, McEvoy\u00a0Ranch who mills our olives, is unable to press them until the 25th. So, we will\u00a0hold the olives from these trees in cold storage until they can be pressed and\u00a0take them up when the mill opens. Because they are so ripe \u2014riper than we\u00a0would normally pick\u2014this oil will be gold, not green and grassy and full of\u00a0polyphenols and antioxidants. We will save this oil for cooking oil and it will\u00a0be delicious. Even though it\u2019s not the olio nuovo, I am still excited and can\u2019t\u00a0wait to taste it!\r\n<h4 style=\"text-align: right;\"><em><strong>-Chef Becky<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear CSA Members, Yesterday, our crew began picking olives. We picked 5 1\/2 bins\u2014about\u00a03,300lbs. It\u2019s only October 15; that is a full 2 weeks earlier than when we\u00a0picked last year, which was about 2 weeks earlier than the previous year. And\u00a0while we have a big crop like last year, we are seeing some curious ripening\u00a0patterns [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1kn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5109,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5107\/revisions\/5109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}