Spring Food

April showers bring May flowers, and weeds, and more weeds. Organic gardening is our goal, but oh dear, the weeds. It is a continuing battle. There are good weeds, and then there are bad weeds. It is a long story about land and weeds. Organic farming is expensive. Expensive is labor costs, and achieving our […]

  We are growing grape stakes and milk cartons! Looks that way but not really, soon you will see little green sprouts. To the Farmers, this means that grapes are going to be planted. The grape stakes and the milk cartons protect and support the young grapes. No harvesting or suckering is going on in […]

  This past Sunday, IL Fiorello Olive Oil Co., was host to the Napa-Solano Audubon Society. This is a biannual event and we hope to have many more. Beginning at 6:30 am, a group of intrepid birdwatchers gathered in our parking lot. With grove map in hand, bird list, and binoculars at the ready, we […]

  IL Fiorello celebrated Earth Day/Weekend, in a big way, with 650 people visiting our Farm on Passport Sunday! Thank you to all who visited, everyone had a wonderful sunny and delicious time. Thanks to Slow Food for a display and information, to Denise Revel, Girl on the Hill for her beautiful lavender, and to the […]

  It is finally Spring! Happy Spring! Spring is for seeds, chickens, eggs, plants, gardens, blossoms, and fun. Seeds are in the ground, seeds and plants are in the greenhouse, and baby chickens huddle under a warm light in the coop. They look as if they are under a grow light; each day they grow bigger and […]

  What do we do in January at an Olive Farm and Mill?     Celebrate the New Year and say thank you to all our guests, growers, and staff! The biggest job of all!  Clean the mill Certify all our oils as Extra Virgin, done and completed – all pass with flying colors! Make […]

This is the expectant time of year where we watch for olive blossoms, blossom set and the resulting fruit set. Flower bud sprouting initiates the process of inflorescence. Average flowering used to be around May 10 but clearly with a change in climate we are seeing inflorescence now in mid-April. This year this is a […]

Time to think about digging in the dirt, planning and planting your garden, and eating fresh vegetables. Today it is softly raining and we have not yet finished mowing the olive groves. Some of the flowering mustard is as tall as my tractor. Nick, our assistant miller and super helper, keeps the tractor working, filling […]

The drought is full on and everyone is making concerted efforts to save water. We are very lucky at IL Fiorello because the founding fathers of Solano County developed Lake Berryessa. We have some water, precious but present. We have water available from April through October, but from October to April we have no supply […]

IL Fiorello Olive Oil Co sponsored a growers meeting on Saturday June 28, 2105 we were joined by Marvin Martin, of MarvinMartin Olive Oils and a professional olive grower and master taster from Napa and Tom Turpen, Plant Biologist, from Davis, CA. The days discussion centered about olive fly in California and in Italy. We […]