June 05, 2014

It has been a while since we posted something but we have been keeping busy plus we had some life drama to deal with.

Unfortunately, our mother suffered a broken leg the same day she was released from the hospital following knee-replacement surgery. That resulted in another operation and a long stay at the hospital. Making sure she was as comfortable as possible and visiting her on a daily basis took up a lot of our spare time. We happily report all is now well and she is back home!

In between our daily hospital visits, we have been focusing on details regarding our Italian escape. Having an amazing resource like mature olive trees is a treasure. Why not cultivate what the ancients fought over! Our dream has expanded beyond just escaping - it has evolved into a new reality. We aren't just visiting, we have planted ourselves. Bringing our oil to market is part of that and we are quite literally watching our "baby" bloom.

First we imported a fifty litre drum of oil and offered it to friends. We wanted objective opinions because its hard to be dispassionate when its your passion! We bottled it ourselves and that torturous endeavor required cool heads and steady hands. Steff is more of a Zen-master label applier and I was mostly banished to a more "supervisory" role. We all have our strengths hahaha! The response has been amazing and we have now taken the formal step of setting up our label to meet government standards for retail sale.

After looking at thousands (no joke) of photos of olives and spending many hours strolling around shops and supermarkets in Toronto we drafted an idea for a label. We knew what sort of "look" we were going for and hired a local designer Kait Bos to help us with the finishing touches. Kait was great to work with and definitely helped us create a label we both love. The sisters proudly present:

Drum roll please ......da da dah dahhhh!