Olive trees make a comeback in Fallbrook

Before avocado trees covered the hills of Fallbrook, olive trees provided the major crop of the area. According to “Fallbrook Yesterday and Today (1869 – 1977)”, written by Harold H. Marquis, the planting of the then oldest existing olive trees in Fallbrook was in 1876 in Live Oak Canyon. Frederick E. Fox planted them along with a variety of fruit trees, a fan palm, mulberry and eucalyptus in the area where Live Oak Park is now located.

Farmers tried growing every kind of fruit and found that olives and citrus grew the best in the local climate and with the available water supply. Marquis wrote, “Olives became a principal industry, with up to one thousand acres in the area, providing employment and income for many.”

Dr. Charles Pratt owned the Loma Ranch with a large olive orchard on South Alturas Street in 1895. With its own olive oil press, the Loma ranch was a major producer of high-grade olive oil, bottling about 15,000 gallons annually from 1895 until 1919. An article on “The Olive Industry of Fallbrook,” [originally published in Village News Oct. 1, 1998 and contributed by the Fallbrook Historical Society, Don Rivers, President], includes Red Mountain Ranch as another early major olive grower in Fallbrook with its own processing plant. The ranch was originally homesteaded in 1887 in the northeast part of Fallbrook along Mission road at the top end of Live Oak Canyon.

Both the book and the article tell about a mobile olive processing plant that “was a ‘house on wheels’ with sleeping, cooking and dining facilities, that was hauled from ranch to ranch as the harvest progressed.”

The article adds that a canning company was located on Fallbrook Street between Main Street and Hill Street; its building later housed CalBrook Avocado Company and now Fallbrook Fertilizer, Feed and Farm Supply. (See sidebar on the ‘pickling’ of olives.)

There was also an olive oil processing plant in use on Alturas Street across from a 300-acre orchard on Olive Hill Road. Another large olive orchard occupied several hundred acres bordered by Stage Coach Lane to the east, McDonald Road to the west, Pepper Tree Lane to the south and Fallbrook Street to the north.

During the period of 1913-1915 olives were the largest cash crop in the Fallbrook area.

In Marquis’ book, the local newspaper quoted an olive fancier in 1914 who predicted, “with absolutely no cultivation for ten or twelve years, as much as $50 per acre has been harvested from these old trees. With cultivation, this could be developed to $100 an acre.” However water was scarce and imports of olive oil from Italy and Spain put an end to most olive cultivation for oil in the United States.

The history of Fallbrook’s olive production continued with Joe Smarr who bought the old Ellis hotel in Fallbrook in 1925 and a 160-acre ranch which included an olive orchard in De Luz where Daily Lake is now. (See sidebar for a description of the olive press.)

As Red Mountain Ranch changed owners through the years, new varieties of trees and crops were planted and watered by wells and reservoirs on the ranch before the establishment of water districts. Even though olive farming lost its profitability, the hardy trees survived neglect and continued growing on whatever rain fell on them.

Movie director Frank Capra bought the ranch in 1939 and planted avocado and citrus trees, besides having 105 acres of olive trees rehabilitated. He also put the olive oil press back into production.

Capra sold his Fallbrook Olive Oil for five years through the mail by advertising in magazines. The business went well until World War II ended and foreign imports, including Italian olive oil, flooded the market in the United States.

Capra stopped selling his olive oil after the war and then sold the part of his ranch with the reservoir on it to Fallbrook Public Utility District in 1949. He sold the rest of the ranch in 1977, but the Fallbrook Historical Society has several bottles of his olive oil on display in the Donald J. Rivers Interpretive Center (aka the Barn).

With the current water shortage that is wiping out many avocado orchards, some area residents are looking into alternative crops that require less water, including wine grapes and olives. These two fruits both thrive in Mediterranean climates which are very similar to the climate here in Southern California.

At least two Fallbrook residents are already producing olive oil from locally grown olives. Dr. John Piconi, a retired doctor and former winery owner, now grows his own olives and creates a special blend of olive oil besides his own wine and red wine vinegar from imported grapes.

A new Fallbrook Olive Oil company has been established by Jim Engelke, a landscape architect who planted his olive trees on two acres in the Red Mountain Ranch area. He has one acre of Tuscan varieties that are about 11 years old and an acre of Spanish olive trees that are three years old and not producing yet. Engelke said that with the proper pruning and watering, olive trees can produce three tons per acre which in turn produce 120 gallons of olive oil.

His oil, made with a blend of hand-harvested Tuscan variety olives, won a silver medal in the 12th annual LA International Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition in 2011. Much like avocados and citrus, olive trees produce a bigger crop every other year; Engelke was not able to make olive oil this year but plans on a good harvest in the fall. He has used a mill up in the Central Coast area which has its press in a semi-truck, similar to the mobile processing plant in use in Fallbrook a century ago.

New olive groves have been spotted on South Mission, De Luz and Margarita Glen as more residents are trying out the fruit that needs only 20 percent of the water used by avocado trees.

Remnants of the old olive orchards can still be seen around Fallbrook as well as the new olive trees that once again provide an opportunity for residents to produce an income from their land and develop a unique product for local consumption.

How to pickle olives

Oil was the main use of the olive crop but another was “pickling.” As anyone knows who has attempted to eat an olive directly from the tree, it is intensely bitter. This is due to the presence of a bitter glucoside, oleuropein. During processing this bitterness is neutralized, usually by treatment with sodium hydroxide (lye). The olives are immediately placed in a one to two percent solution of lye and water. This removes the bitterness. The lye was then removed with repeated washing with water. The fruit was then place in large barrels for 6 to 12 months to undergo lactic acid fermentation. During this treatment a 5 to 8 percent salt solution is maintained and sugar is added occasionally to keep the fermentation going. After the fermentation period the olives were graded and bottled in a dilute brine.*

How olives are pressed

In the large wooden barn was a round concrete circular table pressing from which an axle protruded upward. From this vertical axle ran a long axle on which turned a concrete roller that was pulled around the concrete table by a horse. The olives were smashed and the juice was collected and filtered. The juice was placed in settling tanks, where the oil separated from the juice. The oil was then washed with warm water then filtered again. After a period of a couple months was allowed for hydrolysis of the bitter principle then the oil was processed and bottled for shipping.*

*Information from the Fallbrook Historical Society at:

http://sd.znet.com/~schester/fallbrook/history/memories/olive_industry.html.