Here comes the fruit! Here comes the fruit!
We have a lot of fruit hanging on trees and growing nicely and starting to ripen. The heat and drought are not as difficult on our crops as most. Olives and Pomegranates and Guava are all dry weather trees and actually in some cases do better with dry hot conditions.
Our Olive Crop is looking very healthy and happy. We are planning our first harvest and also our VERY FIRST PRESS OF OIL with our new "OLIO MIO" Olive Press in late September. That is very exciting!
We are putting together a list of those who want to harvest olives with us. On a harvest day we will be starting at 6 am and harvesting until about 11 am. Genine will then have a wonderful lunch prepared for us all to enjoy and we will be moving the olives to our Press facility about 5 minutes away and pressing oil the same day. Anybody who wants to participate would need to commit the whole day. These are work days and the reward is the fun in the orchards and the lunch and those who work the full day will receive a bottle of fresh cold pressed Olie Nuevo as a gift at the end of the day if you stay for the pressing or later if you have to leave before the pressing but did harvest. The 6 am start time is a EARLY but that is required. Let us know if that is of interest by emailing me richmac@macalacompanies.com!
Pomegranates and Guava's and Figs are all doing GREAT. Lots of beautiful fruit. We have some Pomegranate Jelly and Spread still from last year and it is marked down now for the rest of the year. Go online to buy some or find a close by vendor or you can watch for our Orchard Market on September 20th from 2 pm to 6 pm and another in October. We also still have a few jars of our first production of Guava Jam and Guava-Pomegranate Jam available for sale at our online store. It is great! Genine will be making our first Fig Jam in the near future and hopefully before the September 20th Orchard Market.
We have great Oregano, Rosemary and Lavender growing and looking good. We do offer those for sale in our website as well as at Orchard Markets. Next one Sunday September 20th. Hope to see you then.
Big news - Rich and Genine harvested 2 bins of our estate grown "old vine Zinfandel" grapes in late July. We crushed about half of them and fermented and made wine. It is ageing now in a glass carboy. We think it tastes great and Genine has been slapping me away every time I want to take a glass with our dinner. We are really please with our work and our learning and our result. We are hopeful to continue to be able to make wine in future years and to be able to make enough to share with family and friends and harvesters. The other half of the grapes we harvested will become Genine's first batch of Grape Jelly!!
To a good harvest and production season!