Today, we planted a tree in honor of Roger Van Duzer, one of the best olive farmers ever to manage trees in this area. Duzer passed away a few months ago at the green-ripe age of 82 years. You might recognize the Van Duzer name from a story on our website. It was his family (his father and uncle) who planted our own orchard way back in 1906.

This is where my story begins. You see, the ground in Loma Rica is very rocky (we call it Loma Rock-a) and the soil is quite shallow. To an olive farmer, all of that is just great. But, at some point, a farmer has to dig in that soil… Say, to plant trees.  Needless to say, it’s no fun. In the summer, the mostly clay soil dries out and hardens until it resembles concrete. In the winter, it’s just sloppy and extremely heavy. Winter is also the time when the rocks magically appear in places where there were no rocks. Let me reiterate that it’s no fun to dig in.

These guys were, however, creative and they also happened to have a most useful tool at their disposal; dynamite. The story goes that they dug small, shallow holes, inserted a quarter-stick of dynamite, connected the blasting caps and wire, then BOOM!. The next day, they returned to the orchard (then 160 acres in size) and commenced to planting the new trees. I can imagine that it was quite a sight.