Sooner than you think

The third person I’ve asked for an opinion thinks the same as me. So do the previous two: two wet and unsunny summers followed by a proper winter and divided by a wind, wet and warm winter is just about the best recipe there is for something marginal to become gradually wearied. The absence of what it likes – sun – couldn’t be tolerated for that long. Knowing they’ve not succumbed to some weird ailment is strangely comforting. Just my judgement to blame. At least I’ve some peaches to look forward to.

I’ve managed a look at the olives, and there’s a sliver of encouragement: there’s one variety that’s doing way better than the other 5 – ie most are alive rather than most are dead. This may be a case of seeing the glass three quarters full rather than half empty, but bear with me a second. As the Dutch footballer Ruud Gullit (amazing footballer, good pundit, shite manager) famously observed, ‘the difference between successh and failure ish all little detailsh’.

Let me wind back the clock a couple of years. Having got a little ahead of myself for a change, by actually having planted most of the trees I had ordered that winter, I found that Spring’s adventures done. Someone mentioned an olive grove being the ultimate climate change fruit, the same weekend someone emailed to ask if I was interested in maybe planting an experimental grove. What I knew about olives could be counted on the fingers of one foot. Two months later and the olive grove was planted. It all went a little weird for a few weeks. After a piece in the Independent, the phone rang endlessly – there was CNN, all the broadsheets, R4 Food Programme, Radio New Zealand, and Richard and Judy. Yes, Richard and Judy – an wholly unexpected pleasure.

Built around an olive oil tasting with Gennaro Contaldo, Richard and Judy and the head food buyer at Harrods, the UKs first (since the Romans) olive grove was to be the topic of conversation. The train timetable meant I arrived early, mooched around the green room, nosed through researchers notes about all the guests left out for us, nibbled and sipped. Then the dash to the table while the ads were on. Handshakes and nervousness all round. Everything rattled along entirely easily: interesting questions, lots of laughing. Then Richard asks Gennaro what makes olive oil ‘extra virgin’. ‘Well…..why notta aska Marka’. Life stopped. Tumbleweed blew across the set, cars halted. It was a perfect the-piano-stopped-playing-and-the-saloon-doors-kept-on-a-swinging moment. A millisecond passed.

‘It’s all to do with acidity Richard, it has to be below 0.8% and the oil extracted by physical (rather than chemical) processes.’ Richard: ‘See Gennaro, the chap knows what he’s talking about’. I never had chance to meet or thank that researcher whose notes I’d read 9 minutes earlier, but just so the balance of karmic thank yous is retained I’d like to say here and now – thank you for saving me from making an arse of myself in front of 2million+ friends, family and strangers.

Why the confession? Hopefully it’s a window into how some things happen at Otter Farm. If I’d waited until I knew what I was doing, until I’d researched everything I could dig up about the varieties, a chance would have gone, a year would pass until I could do it again. So I did it. It reminds me of an interview with the great Tony Wilson who ran Factory Records going on about his philosophy of doing something and finding out why you did it afterwards. Just the kind of handy self-justification I need. And with rather convoluted and contrived coincidence, he was good friends with and used to work with Richard Madeley back in the day at Granada TV. I could’ve been an 80s DJ with links like that.

A year after I planted the grove, I heard about a strange new variant of a strange old Spanish olive that the Catalan government had thrown many millions of pounds at to improve. By all accounts it had worked – this olive grows halfway up the mountain, flowers late (dodging the frosts), produces early in its life, and the oil is of incredible quality. Why didn’t I wait and plant that one? I admonished myself. Cause I’m not like that I huffed back.

As luck would have it, last year a friend of a friend was passing one of the major nurseries raising this new olive on his way back from a holiday – as the few nurseries that raise them focus on the new, huge superintensive olive groves they normally only supply you with tens of thousands of seedlings. Fortunately the craggy-faced owner took pity on the pasty-faced English grower bending his ear on the phone and allowed the friend of a friend to load up a carbootful of the foot-high lovelies to bring home. The chance seemed too good to miss but having planted the best areas already with olives I had no idea what I’d do with them. A year later, I guess I’ve found out.

  • So the ones that are surviving best are actually the Spanish holiday souvenirs? Wow.

    Ah it's a salutory tale… but you know even at Kew, where the mediterranean garden has had the same man in charge for twenty years etc, and he has all that experience, they chose the same two years as you to massively expand the area planted with med stuff. I think it's been very unlucky weather for growing heat-loving plants.

    However here in mild-mannered London I am delighted to announce that what I'd been putting off – a depressing inventory of what I thought was for sure a huge heap of dead fuchsias from all the plants left outside this winter – I haven't lost one! Gary Rhodes is alive and well, and Lovely Phyllis is covered in new leaves. AND i just noticed that my banana plant is shooting, having died down properly for the first time over the winter. I feel quite excited. I have lost quite a few things this winter, but I'm glad that I've got all my fuchsias, I feel so much better now. That's three quarters full thinking, surely?

  • The spanish ones are small (maybe 30cm) and in pots still, whereas the rest are 8-10ft tall and planted out in the field, so the spanish have been nicely protected. The question is whether they'll fare any better in the wilds of outdoor East Devon when they get a little bigger….very happy to hear your fuschia/banana joy, although the thought of Gary Rhodes suffering cold outside isn't entirely without some enjoyment

  • Mark – I am becoming a little concerned that you may have be using the late, great Tony Wilson as a business role model… Still delighted that R&J were lovely.

    I shall be sending telepathic encouragement to your olive trees. Global warming can be so fickle sometimes.

  • he didnt have the best busines plan did he *penny drops*…and thank you for the encouragement, like you say, how fckle. I drive around as much as i can, get my food from south america and STILL it lets me down

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