Olive Adoption

RESERVE YOUR VERY OWN PIECE OF CASA DEL SOLE

If you choose to adopt an olive for the year 2007 the benefits are

• You receive a certificate & photo of your olive tree
• In December you receive your oil - this could be anything up to 2 litres (there is a guaranteed yield of 25cl if the crop is very small)
• Your oil is sent to you in the UK, beautifully bottled
• The bottle labels will be personalised for you.
• You will be updated throughout the year as to the potential crop

It only costs £50 sterling per year to sponsor an olive tree at Casa del Sole.

Email now to reserve your tree.

Your olive Adoption helps us plant baby olive trees. This is important to stop terrace errosion and ensure a healthy and continuous farming environment at Casa del Sole.

On a wider level, the more trees that are planted in Tuscany the better; our countryside is recognised by the EU as at high risk from industrialisation, depopulation and neglect.

Despite the fact that we get no grant from the EU we feel duty bound to manage our woodland and plant new trees.

Here's to a beautiful future for all our children.

 

Welcome 2008 Olive Sponsors!

All of us at Casa del Sole are delighted to bid a very warm welcome to the 2008 olive adopters.
This year will, without doubt, be better than last (which was a disaster because of the weather being in-conducive to olive growing.).
My apologies for not writing this first update sooner but in all honesty, nothing happens with olive trees until early May when they start to blossom.

The trees are all up to date on pruning and have had healthy amounts of organic fertiliser (thanks to the horses).
The year so far has been exactly what any olive farmer would hope for – mild and particularly wet. In fact, it’s been so mild that we are already seeing olive flowers on the more sheltered of our trees.
As long as there is no late frost in the next couple of weeks we are off to a flying start.

Richard has been busy clearing old terraces which have been overgrown since we arrived here 6 years ago – we have found a few olive trees underneath all the brambles and are busy nurturing them back to productive health.

Don’t forget you can visit your olive tree whenever you like (just drop us an email to warn us to be in). Olive sponsors also get a preferential rate on any oil purchases so send me an email if you would like to sample some oil from last year – before it runs out!

I’d also like to share with you a couple of farming developments here on the farm. I (Sarah) have finally got my proper ‘small farmer’ status which means that I am now a registered and professional farmer. It also means that I can apply for grants from the EU to help my farm become as ecologically friendly as possible. We are already strictly organic here but I was unable to apply for the organic produce label until I was a registered small farmer – which I have now done.

Not only this but, more excitingly, there will be real changes in the way our farm is run. We are planning to eliminate our carbon footprint totally over the next few years, making all our products 100% environmentally sound. The first step is to introduce photo-electric panels which means that we will not be draining energy resources. In the long term we aim to run all our machinery and cars electrically. In the mean time, the horses are our main ecological form of transport! Everything here at the farm is recycled already and, apart from petrol, we now use renewable energy and recyclable materials at home and in our on-line shop (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Casa-del-Sole-Tuscan-Shop-Italy)..

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A short lesson in olive oil production:

Our oil at Casa del Sole is organic so you can rely on the fact that no chemicals are used throughout the growing season or in the extraction of the olive oil.

However, this does have a few consequences.

We have to pick our olives at the first opportunity (traditionally from the 1 st November) because of a tiny 'olive fly' which buries into the olive at this time of year and lays an egg. This egg then develops over the next couple of months into a larvae which munches away at the olive. Obviously we cannot use a pesticide to discourage this creature so we must pick our olives early and when there is less oil content in the fruit as it has not matured on the tree for very long.

The bad news is that organic farmers never get a huge yield like commercial growers but the good news is that they do reap the oil when the acidity is low and the young oil is intensely flavoured making early harvest olive oil the most sought after in the world.

The yield of organic growers is normally two thirds less than commercial growers.

On top of this, organic growers cannot use the chemicals which commercial growers use to extract every last bit of the oil from the fruit which explains the high price of organic oil.

Interesting fact - the pulp from our oil (and other small organic producers) is of such a high quality that it is sold on to be reheated and chemically treated then repressed by large commercial companies to make up a part of normal 'Extra virgin olive oil'.

We at Casa del Sole believe that the extra work and smaller market is a price worth paying for our pure, unadulterated top grade oil.

Just taste one of the 'brand' oils next to ours to know the difference!