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- [Presenter] The Willamette Valley is a great place to grow
just about anything,
but there's a new crop on the landscape
that summer bedding will be Oregon's next pinot noir.
- Olives are an interesting story.
I think it's a crop that drags you in, and it pulls you in,
and makes you very passionate about it.
- [Presenter] That's right, olives.
OSU Researcher Javier Fernandez-Salvador
turned that passion into the Ole project,
a program designed to put Oregon olive oil
on the gastronomic map.
- Mmm.
We want to make the crop viable and cost-effective,
so that we can grow the industry a little more.
Yeah, with this size trunk...
- [Marni] You almost can't even tell on this tree
that you lost anything, you know?
- [Presenter] But the thing is, this is a tree
that's native to the Middle East.
- [Javier] It's a region where it's very dry in the summer,
and not particularly cold in the winter.
So in Oregon,
we had the challenge of dealing with the winter.
You see where there's no leaves and it looks dried and ugly?
That's cold damage.
- [Presenter] Oregon's chilly winters can damage the buds
that become olives in the spring,
or kill the trees outright.
(branches snapping)
- This bottom part is looking great,
but this top, look at that.
- [Presenter] Case in point,
the ice storm of February, 2021.
- [Javier] Oh my God.
- [Marni] Look at that. It lost all this.
- [Javier] It lost all of its top.
- [Marni] It lost the top.
- [Javier] The idea of the project was to see
if there's varieties that are more tolerant,
and then to see if there are techniques that we can use
to establish the orchard faster,
so that it doesn't get hit by the cold as much.
(water gushing)
- [Presenter] Some of that work now happens
in OSU greenhouses and fields here in Aurora.
But it started in the early 2000s
with some adventurous growers.
- [Javier] How was the the storm?
- It was bad.
- This is the guy that fell down?
- Oh, there's quite a few of 'em, there's about fifteen.
But then you can see like this guy toppled over completely,
so we're just trying to support it.
- [Javier] Wow.
- [Presenter] Marni Redding is one of those early pioneers.
- I've been doing this for about fourteen or fifteen years.
There was a group of us that talked with each other
and communicated,
and it just felt like a fun project
to learn something completely new.
They were all fluffy and pretty
and now they look like they've had a hard winter,
and they have.
Two have died for sure, so far.
- [Presenter] Keeping these heat-loving fruit trees alive,
demands patience and a willingness to adapt.
- [Javier] That's what I would do.
- I have about seventy-five trees in my barn,
basically just to replace trees that I lose in the winter.
- Like sometimes, you see damage to a third,
half of your trees.
That's why it's so challenging in Oregon.
And over here, you start to get up the hill,
and they start to look fantastic.
- [Marni] Yeah, that's a great tree.
Look at that tree.
It's harder than it looks.
I mean when you come out here,
it looks like a really successful olive grove,
but I know know all the years that it's taken
to get it just to this point.
So it's a process, but I love bringing home my own olive oil
that's grown on the property,
and just trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.
I'll be curious to see what the yield is this year.
- [Javier] Yeah.
- [Presenter] Like Marni, winemaker and now olive grower,
Paul Durant,
has learned a lot of this the hard way.
- [Javier] Oh my, that is some trimming.
- Yeah, we really whacked them back, for sure.
- [Javier] Wow.
- In 2005, we planted our first few thousand trees.
Got super excited 'cause they did so well,
and then the real learning started to happen,
with a series of cold winters and incorrect varietals,
and all sorts of things.
But you have to just keep iterating around,
where can we borrow, beg, steal ideas,
and so we're spreading our trees out further apart now,
we're continuing to try things.
You know, just even this weed mat,
it's really put down not so much for weed control,
but for heat retention.
If we can get them to wake up
maybe even two weeks earlier in the spring,
that gives us two weeks more ripening in the fall.
- Another big problem for us here in Oregon
is our season is much shorter
than what it would be in California.
So it bears fruit later,
with the time where we're starting to get really cold,
so we have to harvest it quick.
- [Presenter] Growing olives is tough,
but experts used to say
wine grapes wouldn't do well here either.
And we all know how that turned out.
Could it be the same for olives?
- The reason why people didn't want to grow grapes here,
it's because of our rain,
but there are grapes that you can grow
with those limitations and still make a fantastic product.
The limitation is not so much the cold,
with olives,
that's the main limitation.
- [Presenter] That doesn't deter Paul Durant.
- For anybody that's in agriculture in Oregon,
it's a long-term venture,
and you gotta be thinking
what crop can be adapted into a changing climate.
And honestly, the olives are just at the beginning stages
of that.
- [Presenter] Okay, so does a change in climate
mean olives might thrive here someday?
- We don't know.
Our summers may be drier,
that's great for olives.
- Where do you wanna start Javier?
- [Javier] Here's good.
Will these make winters warmer?
We don't know.
It's not a crop where you're like,
oh, will I get a good harvest or not this year?
No, it's a crop
where you're like will I lose all of my trees this year?
So you probably have to ask the climatologist
and they're not gonna be able to predict it either.
- [Marni] Alright.
- [Presenter] After the icy winter,
a mild fall has given Marni Redding
just the harvest window she'd hoped for.
- So they're different varieties?
- Yeah. I have about five different varieties.
- So you blend them?
- Yep.
It's a Tuscan blend.
- Tuscan blend, right here in Oregon.
- I know.
- [Presenter] Scientists tell us our overall climate
is getting warmer,
but they're also seeing more extremes
in temperature and precipitation.
- [Javier] So are we going to find the next pinot
that will make Oregon oil famous?
- Look forward to it.
- If we didn't have those cold winters,
but we do,
so we're constantly struggling.
So why do we do it, right?
There's so many different flavors and tastes
and textures and qualities
that you can get out of an olive oil
that it just involves you.
So this is your 2020 harvest?
- Yes.
- [Javier] Wow. Look at the color.
- [Marni] Isn't that beautiful?
- [Javier] It's so vibrant.
The magnificent thing about Oregon,
is because of all of our limitations,
we produce fantastic oil.
Look at that greatness!
And that gives the growers an opportunity
for that really high-end, high-value niche market.
Like fresh-cut grass.
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I get a little bit of clover now too.
Then peppery, peppery, peppery, peppery.
And then the finish is very nutty now.
It's fantastic.
- [Marni] It really is. And that's why we do it.
- Yeah, this is why we do it. Exactly.
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- Great people just doing their thing
in their own northwesty way.
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