A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
CONCLUSION.
In preparing for the public this brief treatise on olive culture, written from a Californian point of view, it was my object to enable agriculturists and capitalists, who desire to avail themselves of the unique advantages it has over any other culture, to form a correct idea of its general features, from the choice of the land most suitable for the olive tree to the marketing of its product.
With this in view I thought it better to avoid lengthy demonstrations, or superfluous details, such as abound in some agricultural publications, the greater part of which is generally filled with diffuse and extraneous matter, which causes the reader to glance hurriedly from page to page, and to reach the last without having noticed what there can be of real interest in them.
I also found it necessary to consult the works of the best known writers on olive culture, and to quote them freely, placing them side by side with my personal observations, so as to add the weight of their acknowledged authority to my own statements. I thus hope that this treatise, which combines the best foreign and home experience, and which I have endeavored to make brief, clear and concise, will be instrumental in helping, to a certain extent, the development of olive culture in California, for it presents advantages that may be looked for in vain in any other agricultural pursuit.
Columelle knew what he was about when he proclaimed the olive tree "the first of all trees," and Parmentier felt himself well justified in saying many generations after, "of all trees that the industry of man has made profitable, the olive tree deserves, without contradiction, the very first place." I, therefore, consider it unnecessary to dwell any longer on a point on which all the best agriculturists, ancient and modern, fully concur, and I will confine myself to passing briefly in review the main reasons, given more extensively in the previous chapters, that contribute to give it this universal reputation.
In the first place the hill, or mountain lands, dry and rocky, which appear to be the most propitious for the robust constitution of the olive tree can be bought in California at prices ranging much below those necessary for the culture of other fruit trees or vines.
The cost of planting on such lands and care of the trees during the first year will hardly reach $5 per acre; the purchase of one year old rooted cuttings will not exceed from $10 to $15 per acre, and the annual care will be less than $5 per acre until the trees come to bearing, in four or five years after planting the rooted cutting.
The machinery and appliances for pickling the olive and for making the oil are of an extreme simplicity. Both operations can be done in a very short time and they are so easy that no farmer, with ordinary cleanliness and care, can fail in turning out as good a product as obtained anywhere else; while this is far from being the case in wine making which requires special knowledge, as well as long and tedious care before the product is in a satisfactory condition to be sold.
The gathering of the olive berries can be done gradually from November until March. By allowing them to dry in the barn, weeks can elapse before extracting the oil from them, which will enable a farmer to attend meantime to more pressing work; but, if he so prefers, he can do it at once. Moreover if he has no oil crusher and press, he can ship his olives in sacks or boxes to any distance at a moderate rate of transportation, considering the value of the product under a small volume, thus avoiding the misfortune of becoming the prey of local monopolies. How different it is with grapes! They are to be picked hastily when ripe; they must be pressed within a very short time; they cannot remain long, nor travel far without experiencing damage and loss; and if they are to be shipped to some distance to avoid the tyranny of monopolies, or because there is no wine cellar near by, tbe cost of freight, drayage, brokerage, short weight, added to the cost of picking and delivering absorb a good part of the value of a product which sold last year at an average of $20 per ton, and which is most likely to sell much cheaper this coming season.
On an equal acreage, and when from eight to ten years old, the product of an olive grove will be worth several times that of a vineyard; and under the same volume the oil will be ten times more valuable than wine, so that it can be delivered in a more economical manner. While with a four horse team a farmer will deliver about 600 gallons of wine per trip, representing a maximum value of $100, he can, with the same team, deliver olive oil to a value of over $1000. What an economy this represents.
Much less cooperage, too, will be required. Whereas, for a hundred acres vineyard, room for 50,000 gallons might be calculated upon, 25,000 gallons will be all that can be expected from a similar acreage of olive trees, and as tin tanks and cans are mostly used, it will cost less. Moreover, oil can be made from November to March, and sold shortly afterward to the merchant, who will clarify it himself, so that by spreading over the time of making it, a maximum of 8,000 or 10,000 gallons of such packages will be sufficient. And all this can be done and stored in wooden buildings of very moderate size, while a wine cellar should be built with stones or bricks, or be exposed to the danger of having the wine damaged or spoiled during the summer months, if it has not been sold before that time.
The gathering of the olive crop, too, is a very easy and cheap work. The berries that have fallen to the ground are first picked, then the tree is shaken and the branches struck with long poles to cause the fall of the remaining fruit. The few of them that may be found a little moulded, by a too long contact with the earth, though good enough to make good oil, are generally set apart to be used only with the last pressures, when the lower grade of oil is made. Let us compare this easy and rapid work, where, nothing is lost, with the picking of grapes, or the product of most of fruit trees, which necessitates a certain number of hands at a given time, and requires special care, so as not to spoil part of it, while the fruit found on the ground is not marketable, if not entirely worthless.
When the oil is made, the residues, or marcs, are used for fuel, manuring, or feed for horses and cattle. There is, thus, not a farthing's worth of value in the product of the olive tree that is not turned to some use.
The bitterness of the fruit of the olive, of its bark and leaves, offers by itself a certain amount of protection against the attacks of insects and animals; and, when the tree is planted on hills, where it should be, far from moist places which engender most of the diseases of fruit trees, it has not to dread such terrible enemies as those that assail the vine, from the Oidium to the Phylloxera, which, alone, within the last twenty years, has brought down the French wine production from 85,000,000 hectolitres (about 2,000,000,000 gallons) to 25,000,000 (about 625,000,000 gallons) and which crops slowly and relentlessly on among our California vineyards.
During the excessively dry summers which are occasionally seen in part of California, when all the other agricultural productions are affected and diminished in consequence, the olive tree, this king of the dry soils, where it vegetates best, will continue to be loaded with fruit, just as in the seasons most favorable to other cultures.
The spring frosts, so disastrous generally to valley land vineyards, seem to have no effect on the olive. The tree is often affected and even killed in the best oil regions of Europe by excessive cold spells, which are absolutely unknown in our parts of California, so that its culture, which offers great danger there, and keeps it from being more developed, presents an unquestionable safety in Napa Valley and such other sections where there is no danger of such extremes of cold or hot weather, both of which the olive tree fears to an equal degree.
Finally, while an olive grove planted with one year old rooted cuttings pays, when five and six years old, quite as much as a vineyard of same age; twice as much when from seven to eight years old, and increases from year to year its annual paying power to $300, $400, $500, per acre, and upwards, until, when about twelve to fifteen years old, the tree reaches its full bearing capacity, on what basis shall we calculate then the cash value of such an orchard? Were I to mention between $1,500 and $2,000 per acre many people not fully acquainted with this culture would consider it a gross exaggeration. If such orchards are worth over $1,000 per acre in Europe, where olive trees are liable to be frozen at frequent intervals, why should they not be worth more here on account of the absolute immunity of those trees against such danger? Do not also protective duties insure us better prices for our oil as they do for our wines? Should import duties ever be abolished on both products, which would suffer most; the oil that pays only 25 per cent, on its value in the European markets, or the wine that pays 50 cents per gallon, which is more than double the value of the ordinary wines in France? We will thus see those prices of $1,500 and $2,000 per acre in California when the young olive orchards planted within the last few years shall have given the full measure of their worth. They will confirm by their development the careful demonstrations I have endeavored to make in this work.
By adding to what precedes the incredible longevity of the olive tree and the immense consumption that is enjoyed by its product in all the civilized parts of the world, it will be readily understood why Columelle, Parmentier, and so many other famous agriculturists of past and present generations have called it "The first of all trees," and why the Italians, whose oil production exceeds that of any other country, have popularized the proverb that we should never tire repeating in California; "An olive plantation is a gold mine on the surface of the earth."