Blog Sustainability Part 2

What we do with and for the land at IL Fiorello

We compost on site and that includes all the olive tree pruning, the material other than oil after milling olives, kitchen byproducts, and manure from local horse farms. The mass is composted all year long and then put on the Grove just after harvest and before the rain begins. The trees respond immediately with solid growth.

The bees on site belong to our beekeeper, Brittany Dye, Ms. Honey Bees, and her boss, Rick Schubert. They are using our land for queen bee propagation from April until June. The queens are sold to start new hives. We have assisted them by planting wildflowers for bee food. Bees can fly over 3 miles to forage and right now there is lots of food for them. They seem to like our olive blossoms, but do not participate in pollinating the olives. Olives are pollinated by wind.

About 85% of incoming olives become a usable by-product once the oil is extracted.  Only 15% of the mass produces olive oil. The material other than olives- the water, the skins, the tissue, and the pits are all used. Everything but the pits go into compost. The pits are placed around the new little olives trees for weed prevention. We distribute the pits around the organic garden as walkways. The pits can also be used in bio fuel generation to produce energy. More on this very exciting topic in future blogs.

Rodents are an issue on a farm and we have four owl boxes on site. Last year they hatched three baby Barn Owls, Olive, Olivia, and Oliver. They were huge and probably ate lots of gophers, moles and voles. This year there is another hatching, but we have not seen them yet. You can hear them hissing and screeching at night. Quite the sound. Looking at their owl pellets they too are eating the moles and voles.  We do plan to help bats by placing bat boxes on property. It is on the long list of very important things to do.

Sustainability and bio-diversity drive our Farm and our farming practices. Come talk with us about this wonderful process.