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<pre>Hi Everyone I am a new member, My name is Margie Carter. I first got into the
Olive industry in 1995. We had a cattle farm near Wagga Wagga which has 250
olive trees on it planted in 1930's they were covered in olive lace bug, scale
and sooty mould, we sprayed them with Supracide and because they were so over
grown we pruned them to scaffolding 10ft low. I still have the wood 10 tons of
it if anyone's interested. My First workshops was with Richard Withey from Yanco
Dept. Ag who sadly went to Southcorp because he knew alot about olives.
I started & ran a olive tree nursery from 1996 - 2003.PARAFIELD OLIVES. In the
meantime I planted 1500 trees originally for cutting material but they grew to
big trees and was picking olives in 3 years off the kalamatta and continued
picking and pickling and marketing the olives. Last year I sold the nursery and
2\3 of the farm including those olives I picked 25 different varieties. I sold
300 of the lecino 4ft tall and they were transported to another olive grove.
I travelled with Olives Australia to Spain and Italy in 1996.
In 2003 I planted my 'real' grove I had planned for years and finally got to it.
On the part of the farm we retained I planted 6000 pickling olives, mostly
Kalamatta and they got through last summer on 3 megalitres. I buy olives now for
pickling and market them in the Hunter Valley and Newcastle.
I am half way through the post grad. course at CSU Wagga Wagga on olives which
is excellent and have learnt mountains of information and recommend it to
everyone.
I've only pressed oil once and that was with Wagga Verdale as they were terrible
for pickling and I had been testing them for years and expected and good result.
The oil was beautiful and got 23% at 16C. Richard Withey liked Wagga Verdale but
it isn't planted anywhere.
I think that's about it, it's all I can think of at the moment anyway. Thanks
Heaps Margie. p.s. Will let you know of my website when it's up and running.

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