Experimental grove thrives

Compass Lake in the Hills has something special in common with Italy, Greece and Spain.
Green Gate Olive Grove is located in the Hills, and most of the parent trees in the 11-year-old orchard came directly from those European countries where olives more commonly grow.
Green Gate owner Don Mueller started his orchard in 1999. It was in Italy where he first fell in love with the fruit and the idea of growing his own.
Working in Europe for much of his life, he and his wife often vacationed in Italy. Their favorite hotel, a converted abbey, was surrounded by olive trees. Over the course of several years, the proprietress educated them about the orchard.
After moving to Panama City while retired, Mueller started looking for an appropriate place to begin his operation. He found it in the high, sandy hills at Compass Lake. The sand drains well, and the land is relatively high for Florida, so that the temperatures are little warmer for the trees.
Mueller started his grove as a hobby.
He experimented with different varieties for years, before settling on his current stock of missions, ascolana, arbequena, leccino, frontio, coratina and kalamata olives. The missions, from California, are the only domestic variety. Some are best eaten as snacks, others are bound for pressing into extra virgin olive oil.
The hobby eventually became a more complicated business. He opened the grove to the public in 2007, and today he not only sells his olives by the jar and on a pick-your-own basis, he also makes gourmet olive oils.
Getting to that point took some patience. Finding the right varieties meant waiting several years for each experimental tree to bear fruit — only to wind up rejecting about a dozen varieties because they weren’t suitable for the area.
Now in his 80s, Mueller also has to expend a lot of physical energy in tending his crop. He still climbs ladders at harvest and pruning time.
“You can’t just plant and walk away, that’s for sure,” Mueller said. “Especially for the first few years of a tree’s life, it’s very labor intensive. After they’re well-established, they pretty much take care of themselves, but there are still some things to do.”
While it is fortunate olives on the tree have a bitter taste that keeps deer and birds away, he does do constant battle with a different pest — grasshoppers.
They love to eat the leaves of young trees, he said, and he has to keep constant vigil against them.
The long cold snap last month worried Mueller quite a bit, but almost all his trees came through it fine. Some of the youngest trees suffered mild damage, he said.
Mueller says he’s not a particularly patient man by nature, but the olive operation is so dear to him, it’s well worth the years he’s spend perfecting his grove.
“I’m just very interested in olives and I like seeing things grow. I guess I’m a bit of a farmer at heart,” Mueller said. “The other thing is, olive trees are aesthetically quite beautiful. The bottoms of the leaves are silver, and the tops are green. In the wind, it’s like watching wheat waving in the field.”
As his operation was developing, he also found time to renovate a tractor barn into an Italian-style haven, furnished with a stone fireplace and in which he conducts some of his research and operations.
Mueller has about 300 trees on his spread, and has room for about 200 more.
He said he’s eager to share his knowledge with others, and thinks olives could join peanuts and cotton as a viable crop for Jackson County farmers.
“That’s part of what motivates me,” he said. “I really think farmers could make a go of this. It won’t be wildly lucrative, but it can be profitable.”
Last season, his trees produced two tons of olives, an overwhelming harvest, he said.
As olives typically alternate between boom and mediocre harvests, however, he won’t be surprised if the next season’s take is more like 400 pounds.
His methods of bringing added value to his operation is in curing olives for sale as snacks, and in making olive oil from his raw product. It is knowledge he’s happy to share with other farmers. One of his olive oils — made from a mix of missions and arbequenas — won an international taste test in 2008, and he has the medal to prove it. He brings 20 tons of pressure to bear on the olives in his cold-press process, and is willing to show others how it’s done.
He wants to reach out to the general public, as well.
Mueller said he’s more than willing to become a tourist spot for visitors, if the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce or the agriculture department wants him to pursue that.
“I’m definitely interested in hosting tour groups,” he said. “They don’t have to buy anything to visit. I just want people to know about it. I think the community needs to know that this is a successful endeavor in Jackson County, and to experience it.”
He was happy to report that the Florida agriculture department has now taken notice of his operation. A senior official with the department is due to visit later this month, he said.
That prominent visitor, like others, may encounter Mueller’s gentle-natured “security guard” and mascot when the arrive.
The grey and white bearded collie is named Chivas, in a nod to the animal’s Scottish heritage.

Olive facts
• Olive trees typically live between 500 and 900 years.
• Twenty pounds of olives typically yields a three-quarter liter of olive oil.
• Olives are extremely bitter on the tree and must be cured for consumption. They’re first cleaned of stems and other debris, then soaked in lye, then get a thorough wash in water. From there, they enter a brine solution. The process takes about 10 days. From there, those being used to make olive oil go into a hammer mill where they’re reduced to a paste. They go through one more process before entering the press, where the oil is extracted.
• Mueller sells his extra virgin olive oil and olives on his Web site, as well as inviting customers on the premises to pick their own olives from the trees. For customers who visit, he provides a sheet of information on curing, if they don’t want him to complete that process. His Web site is www.greengateolivegrove.com
• Mueller’s trees are usually at their most picturesque in late April or early May.