"ality M, ;il , ti, 

 hard 



.[hills aiv , 



tlie olive. It good 



will 



description t,( !! 

 I'-rhaps, if tlie design be to pi \ ;ue 

 berries, valley land wc.ul.l 

 financial resnit- ihiin could 

 Uie foothills. In rich 

 more abundant an,i tlie tree grow:, 

 more rapidly, though the quality of the 

 tniu is not so pood as that from or- 

 in hilly -i.ua'ions. 

 < y; ar- from the time of plant- 

 . > Mr. Cooper has iu- 

 lormcd us, an :>live orchard will give a 

 crop, and there will be a small 

 yield i'or n year or two before the six 

 An orchard increases in bear- 

 ing capacity until a great age is at- 

 . There is scarcely a limit to the 

 life of the tree. There are specimens 

 believed to In- L'OUO years old. The root 

 a never wholly dies, and con- 

 st, intlv sends up suckers that, in a 

 state of nature, replaces the parent 

 stem should the latter decay. An 

 olive orchard, once brought to bearing 

 condition, will give a constantly in- 

 creasing revenue" during the lifetime 01 

 ier, and remain a source of 

 revenue for many generations. 



The olive is a much hardier tree than 

 the orange. It will stand ten or twelve 

 more degrees of cold. It can be plan tec 



anywhere in the Sacramento valley, or 

 in the foothills up to an elevation of 

 2000 feet or more, without the least 

 danger of injury from cohl.' And the 

 crop in this State eeems to be entirely 

 unaffected by frost. The blossoms ap- 

 pear about May 1st. 



An oiive orchard is much easier and 



much cheaper to establish than an 



orange orchard. Hooted olive cuttings 



Id ean be bought for 35 cents 



each, or there.! 1 .nuts, while a first-class 



orange tree costs at least |l 50. The* 



orange demands irrigation; the olive 



".one. The olive can be success- 



"wn on cheap land, while the 



calls for a deep, rich soil. And 



i'or oil or for pickles the olive can 



'Uiitoil on to pay a larger profit 



than the orange for many years to come 



Jifornia. 



.parntively few Americans re.il- 

 .>f ill-.- olive. It 

 of the tree's products as 

 nutriment that make il in;- "i 



Mirth than any otb"r tree l.nowii 

 to man. There is a fable, thai illustrates 

 how well ihr> ancient ' "in eks knew this. 

 Athens, it is related, was founded by 

 \vho i.U'eivd the privilege of 

 naming the city to thai one of the gods 

 raid bestow the most valuable 

 .11 man. Neptune smote the 

 ,rth with his trident, and forth sprang 

 e. But Athena gave the olive 

 id the city was named in her 

 \snp nation has ever hart a 

 appreciation of the horse than 

 ancient Greeks:, one may per- 

 ;coive from this story the very high nsti- 

 .1 y placed upon Ihe olive. The 

 Motion of olive oil and pickled 

 s certain to enormously iiv 

 i-ricK as fast as those products 

 are placed within the reach of the peo- 

 ple at. reasonable pn< 



An olive orchard at the age of ten 

 b'nild yield i average of twenty 

 gallons of berries to the tree. Any 

 quantity of pickled olives i an now_ be 

 sold at V"> cents a gallon in bulk. \\ ith 

 Ico tree to uie acre, as in Mr. Cooper s 

 i.iclnrd, the yield per acre would he 

 inn gallons, which, at 75 cents a gal 

 'Ion. would airnish a return of $1500 

 re. The cosl of picking is not 

 , ov ,, r in Even at as low 



lit price as >?, cents a gallon, the net re 

 llurn would be large. 



!,,,,/ hopes to see: large acre- 

 ,ae planted with the olive in. Vuba and 

 >utter counties next, winter. There arc 

 s< veral young oiive orchards 

 county, and one ot fifty acres near 

 AVvniMottP, in Hutte county, owned 

 l ..,- M. C. Gray, the Ptstnct-Attoruey of 

 tl" -it county. Mr. Gray's orr-b.Vt, it is 

 s i ha^cos. him a! oul to 



date I" " few .vcars it will be Sfth 

 $0,1100. for it will be paying 10 or a >~ 

 'cent on that amount, with a certain j 

 of a steadily increasing revenue as tot 

 years roll on. 



OLIVE CULTURE. 



An InU'rowUinr Itoi.u on the 

 ^gJ,sAflolpbe Fiamanf. 



The Spanish fathers domesticate^" the Solyvc 

 and grape -and wheat, on the lands 

 Wound the Missions they established in Cali- 

 fornia, more than a hundred years ago. Their 

 motive was to secure a supply of the bread, 

 wine and oil used in the Hacranientrt of the. 

 church, and out of this pious purpose sprang 

 three, leading material industries of modern 

 California. Mr. Elwood Cooper, seeking Cali 

 I'ornui for the betterment of his health, noted 

 the ancient olive trees shading the ruined gar- 

 dens of the old Missions, and was tempted to 

 li'y the commercial value of the olive. Tiio 

 world knows the success of his experiment, 

 and it has roused such intercut than many hun- 

 dred thousand olive trees arc now growing iu 

 this State, and California will soon divide 

 with the, slopes of the Mediterranean the pleas- 

 ures and profits of producing this luxurious oil. 

 Joaimin Miller relates that, stopping recently 

 in a wayside, farm-house in Alaineda county, 

 near Mission San Jose, he found the children 

 at lunch dipping their bread in u dish of olive 

 oil, and upon inquiry learned that it was 

 made on the place and was pre- 

 ferred to cream or butter by old and young. 

 So, two thousand years ago. did the children 

 at the foot of the Mount of Olives dip their un- 

 leavened bread in this sweet oil, and its use 

 amongst the Hebrews, in preference to the 

 grease of the prohibited pig, laid the founda- 

 tion of that majestic physical type which, in 

 the sens and daughters of Abraham, has sur- 

 A'ived all vicissitudes to he the puzzle of the 

 modern world, and the pride of its most an- 

 cient race. 



The ALTA notes with satisfaction the ap- 

 pearance of the literature of olive culture, in 

 a monograph by Adolphe Flamont, of Napa, 

 which he calls, "A Practical Treatise on Olive 

 Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling." In 

 this he has treated of the soils and situations 

 suited to its culture, with comparisons between 

 California and the lands in which the olive is 

 historic ; the methods of reproduction ; the 

 different varieties grown ; the care of the tree 

 from planting to production ; the cost of an 

 olive plantation ; the diseases and insect ene- 

 mies of tho tree ; the maceration of the berry 

 and manufacture of the oil and its uses anil 

 commercial value, and the pickling of the 

 berry. The work was originally written iu 

 French, hut the author fortunately yielded tc 

 the urging of friends and translated it. It U 

 written from a California standpoint, and but 

 few Californians who read it will hesitate, i? 

 their location he right, to devote some ncrei 

 to olive orchards. The work is published b^ 

 Gregoire &, Co., C Post street. 



O11VE Ct'LTUKE. 



Some 



\ 



.Interesting Fa-t8 From i 

 Practical Standpoint v, 7 

 Napa neglai*r^J-~//t > /<r/ 

 Olive culture is gradually attractfnt 

 more and more attention and is bouu. 

 to become one of the most profitable 

 fields for agricultural enterprise with 

 us. For tiiis reason Mr. Flamant'! 

 Treatise ou Olive Culture," just pub 

 lished. will undoubtedly prove of great 

 interest to those seeking leliable in* 

 formation on this most important sub- 

 ject. Whatever particulars we havf 

 been able to gather thus far in reier- 

 ence thereto were derived mostly trom 

 short paragraphs iu newspapers, which 

 were not complete, enough to do lull 

 justice to such a vasWftbject. But by 

 perusing Mr. Flamant 's treatise one haf 

 a full bird's-eye view of the whole emes- 

 tion. 



Such works as this are of incalculable 

 benctit to a country like ours, for, by 

 their clearness and thoroughness of 

 details, they induce boih labor and 

 capital lo join hands iu r.ow enter- 

 prises which seem to promise as good 

 results to their promoters, as they will 

 add to the prosperity of our flourish 

 ing State. 



following is the concluding chapter 

 of Mr. I'Tainanf shook: 



" In preparing for the public this brief 

 treatise on olive culture, written from 

 a California point of view, it was my 

 object to enable agriculturists and cap 

 Lkalists, who desire to avail themselves 

 1 of the uni me advantages it has over 

 . ,thef culture, to ,onu a correct 

 idea of its general features, from the 

 choice of the land most suitable for the 

 i olive tree to the marketing of its prod- 

 ucts 



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 tilled 

 with diifuse and extraneous matter, 

 which causes the reader to glance hur- 

 riedly from page to page, and to reach 

 she last witnout having noticed what 

 there can be of real interest in (hern. 



" I al.-o found it nece-s.iry to consult 

 tlie wo , writers on 



olive cm tur i,cm freely, 



:h mv per- 

 sonal observations, so as to ajd the 

 weight ol their acknowledged authority 

 's. I thus hope 

 atise, which combines tne 

 :eigu ami home experience, an. I 

 wnicn 1 have endeavored lurnake brief 

 (Clear and concise, will be instrumental 

 in helping, to a certain extent, the de- 

 velopment of olive culture in Cali- 

 fornia, tor it presents advantages that. 

 ' looked for in vain in any other 

 agricultural pursuit. 



' Coliimelle knew what he was about 

 when he proclaimed the olive tree 'the 

 rstot all trees,' and I'armeutier felt 

 himself well justiiied i 

 generations after, 'of 

 industry of man has made profitable 

 the olive tree deserves, wiiho.n contra- 

 diction, the very tirst place.' 1 there- 

 tore consider it unnecessary to dwell 

 any longer on a point ou which all the 

 beat agriculturists, ancient and mod- 

 ern, fully concur, and 1 will confine 

 myself to passing briefly in review the 

 mam reasons, given more extensively 

 in the previous chapters, that contrib- 

 ute to guc it this universal repu.a.ioii. 

 " Iu the first place, the hill or mount- 

 am Ian Is, dry and rocky, which appear 

 to be the most propitious for the robust, 

 constitution ol the olive tree, can be 

 bought in California at prices ranging 

 much below those necessary for the 

 culture of other fruit trees or viiu 



" The cost of planting on xi 

 and care of the trees during the tirst 

 tear will hardly reach $5 per acre; the 

 purchase of one-year-old rooted 

 tings will not exceed from $10 to ?13 

 per acre and the annual care will be 

 /less than $5 per acre until the tr<- - 

 f come to bearing in four or five j 

 alter planting the rooted cuttings." 



"The machinery and appliances for 

 picking the olive and for making the 

 >'il are of an extreme simplicity, tioth 

 operations can be done in a very short 

 time and they are so easy that no far- 

 mer with ordinary cleanliness and care 

 can fail in turning out as good a prod- 

 uct as obtained anywhere else; wiiilc 

 this is fxr from being the case in wine- 

 inaking, which re juirei special knowl- 

 edge, as well as long and ied;ou<-- care 

 before the product is in a satisfactory 

 condition to 1)6 sold. 



'The gatheritw.of the olive berries can 

 ,bt done gradually from November un- 

 lit March. By allowing them to dry in 

 the barn, weeks can e!ap-e before" ex- 

 tracting the oil from them, which will 

 enable a farmer to attend meantime to 

 more pressing work, but. if he .-o 

 fers, he can do it at "M6. .M""*' 

 if he has no oil ci sTu<.' 



n ship his olives in sacks or ooxes to 

 iany distance, at a moderate rule of 

 transportation, considering the \ 

 of the product, under a small volume, 

 thus avoiding the misfortune of K 

 ing the prey of to/al monopolies. How 

 ;di;ierent it" is with grapes! They are 

 t.i be picked hastily when ripe; they 

 'must be pressed within a very short 

 tune; they cannot remain Ion;- 

 travel far "without, experiencing 



aid loss; and if they are to be 

 .-hipped to some distance to as-oid the 

 tyranny of monopolies, or because 

 there is no wine-cellar near by, the cost 

 of freight, drayage, brokerage, short 

 weight, added to the cost of picking 

 and delivering, absorb a good part O f 

 the value of a product which sold last 

 year at an aveuge oi $20 per ton, and 

 which is most likely to sell much 

 :heapcr this coming season. 



"On an e-jual acreage, and when from 

 ight to ten years old, the product ot 

 nn olive grove will be worth severa 

 sthat of a vineyard; and unde: 

 fflb same volume the oil will bete 

 limes more valuable than wine, so th 

 t can be delivered in a more econom- 

 ical manner. While with a four-horse 

 team a farmer will deliver about 

 -Mlluns of -wine per trip, representing a 

 maximum value of sflOO, he can witt 

 the same team deliver olive oil to a 

 value of over $1000.. What an economy 

 this represents. 



" Much less cooperage, too, will be r< 

 quired. Whereas for 100 acres of vine- 

 yard room for 50.00t.> gallons might be 

 calculated upon, 25,000 gallons will be 

 all that can be expected from a sinula 

 acreage of olive trees, and as tin tanUs 

 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 tho time of mal.inu- it a max! 





ove 

 of 



f such pa 



