Welcome to the blog. I'm travelling through Europe on a quest to find great Olive Oil.

One element of olive oil always fascinated me:

I knew 0 brands of quality olive oil. I remember going to the Olive Oil store in the neighboring town with my grandparents and getting 10 samples of the flavored oils, even the extra virgin olive oil tasted great. But I came to the same problem over and over again, I refused to buy it. This begs the question: why does no one have **store x** in their house even though their oil tastes great? Where is this oil coming from?

Actually the answer 9x / 10 is a company named Veronica Foods. They source oil from around the world and send to Olive Oil stores only…boring! Ask the owner of your local olive oil and balsamics store if Veronica Foods is their oil supplier. If not, reach out to me.

October 26th, 2022 Day 2 in Quesada, Andalucia, Spain

I passed out in a very very loud room last night full of Spanish boardgame enthusiasts. Just plain exhausted from the day of manual work and lack of sleep. Woke up twice in the middle of the night but managed to get back to sleep close to immediately.

7:15 alarm and drafted the day 1 sendout.

8:29 After not having eaten breakfast, I find out we don't come back at 11:00 today, but I was not prepared for that. Lived off Pistachios until 2:30 Lunch

Sidenote my water bottle got crushed by a truck yesterday but somehow survived. My mom said not bring it, I did anyway, and as predicted by her it didn't last past week one.

Back to Goat Sh*t Mountain to start the day.

Ayy got a pic of the goats today

Tbh I was considered to be the "unskilled laborer" as the two others have been working on farms for 15+ years. Carrying loads of sh*t was my job (sadly no pic or video of the grunts - a different kind of fun). Didn’t exactly have the efficiency in the digging for sh*t aspect, welp.

After 30 minutes BREAKING NEWS: we're going to the Olive Field, les go…

Starting with a "Jack can you climb" leads to 15 minutes of pruning (apparently shouldn't be done this time of year) 7 feet off the ground with tiny scissors. I'm not taking this risk again without a photo. This is the best I could do:

Given my lack of axe experience I was relegated to pruning with small shears (size of normal scissors) and gathering the piles of Olive Leaves (pictured here). Again, very humbling. I was told to not use the axe as I didn’t have the proper experience lmao.

Quick aside the most moving element of the day was the Organic vs Conventional farm. Not to say this applies to all organic or all conventional farms, but look at the soil of these two farms. One uses herbicides, one doesn’t.

Rice and Veggies for lunch

Took a quick snooze (Siesta) then Ice Cream for 2 Euros!

I was tired but for some reason opted into water. Major regret

Our puppy likes what he sees

But the other dog is cuter SHHHH

Is it me or do these peppers have way more seeds than peppers from the supermarket? 

End of day I sat down and did work at a restaurant while a move-in party was going on. It's so cool that everyone in town knows each other. I ended up meeting the [very gracious] niece of the head of the cooperative, who is friends with my host. I should be meeting him tomorrow.

I will admit it feels like Olive Oil related activities will pick up from here on out (instagram kinda spoils this part of the blog).

1 Olive Oil Takeaway:

Olives ripen faster in warm than cold weather. Tough to admit not realizing this as refrigerators are in about every household in America, but I'm not perfect.

Also my 6th grade Spanish teacher said to always lead with "I don't speak much Spanish" to have better conversation with a Spanish speaker. I didn't understand why at the time, but I now realize this is top-tier advice.

Also weird admission but for 2 years in New York I had lower back tightness from sitting down all the time (even with standing desks). Out here 1 week it's all vanished. Fascinating.

-Jack