FEBRUARY 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


41


Canada's Mediterranean living up to its name Salt Spring


couple produces 100% Canadian olive oil


by SEAN MCINTYRE


SALT SPRING – The fresh oil dripping from their olive mill in December was a welcome sight for a Salt Spring couple that's long dreamed to create their vision of a Mediterranean orchard on British Columbia's coast.


“This has never happened in Canada before,” says George Braun, standing outside the prefab building where a top-of-the-line olive mill has just been installed. “We’ve never had 1,000 pounds of olives grown in this country before, and this is just the beginning.”


The journey began about five years ago, when George and Sheri Braun transplanted the first batch of nearly 2,500 seedlings imported from California to their 72-acre Gulf Islands property.


Then they watched and waited.


Olives can tolerate poor soil but require a warm climate and excellent drainage. The young trees do not thrive in bitter north winds and extended periods of sub-zero weather so there are few places in Canada where anyone can seriously consider planting an olive tree, let alone building an orchard with hopes to produce any significant quantity of olive oil. Apart from smaller farms on neighbouring Pender and Saturna islands, the couple was treading on virgin territory.


Giuseppe Levantino, a Sicilian who travelled to Salt Spring to install the Braun's Italian-made mill, regularly visits olive growing operations in Portugal, Spain and France. He never imagined adding Canada to his list of destinations.


“When we think of Canada, we think of cold and snow, but I’m very interested to be here in the north for the first time,” he says, watching his machine come to life as the first batch of olives is poured into the mill.


The small fruit clogs up the machine and Levantino jumps in with a few tweaks to keep things moving.


“Small fruit. Many pits,” he says.


The olives are dumped through a metal grate, washed


ABBOTSFORD DUNCAN


KELOWNA


WEST KELOWNA NANAIMO


PARKSVILLE SAANICH


SALMON ARM


31852 Marshall Place 5410 Trans Canada Hwy. 103-1889 Springfield Road 2565 Main St., Hwy. 97 South 1-1277 Island Hwy. S 587 Alberni Hwy.


1970 Keating Cross Rd. 1771 - 10th Avenue S.W.


604.556.7477 250.748.8171 250.860.2346 250.768.8870 250.753.4221 250.248.3243 250.652.9188 250.832.8424


“We really don’t know what we’re going to do yet,” Sheri says. “We will bottle it and figure that out; this is really history in the making.”


Close to home


The couple's lifelong dream originated during a trip to Europe as a young couple decades ago. In Spain, both were struck by the country’s iconic olive orchards. “It was literally love at first sight,” Sheri recalls. Though the Brauns


George Braun starts to process his crop of Salt Spring-grown olives to produce Canada’s first home-grown olive oil. SEAN MCINTYRE PHOTO


in a cold-water bath, split, crushed, ground, spun and compressed as the crop flows through a maze of pumps and pipes.


“Nobody could tell me when to expect a crop because nobody had done it up here,” George says. “We didn’t know if it was going to work.”


The Brauns and their team of pickers, which includes their children and two grandchildren, picked more than 1,000 pounds of fruit in early December, finishing


their work only a few hours before the onset of the year's first snowfall and weeks of cold weather.


In 2015, George and Sheri harvested 70 pounds of olives and extracted some precious drops of olive oil from a manually-operated olive mill on their property. Within the next few years, the Brauns anticipate their harvest may quadruple as the trees mature. They've also got plans to expand the orchard and produce more olive oil. When the dark green oil


100% Canadian Owned and Operated BEING PREPARED MAKES


THE DIFFERENCE Pre-order your Baumalight generator now for delivery in 8 weeks and get an 8% discount for planning ahead. Call or see dealer for details.


emerges from the mill, Levantino smiles. The Brauns release a sigh of relief. “This is handmade, hand- picked, 100%-pure, organic, extra-virgin, you-name-it olive oil,” Sheri says.


This year’s harvest of 33 litres is aging in stainless steel containers on the farm. Recognizing the historic significance of their first crop, the Brauns are weighing their options before they decide what to do with this inaugural batch of Canadian olive oil. Special commemorative


envisioned retiring to an olive orchard somewhere like the sunny Iberian Peninsula, family connections encouraged the couple to look closer to their Lower Mainland home. “Life happens, kids happen and grandchildren happen, and we didn’t want to be gone all the time,” Sheri says. California’s Central Valley is home to the continent’s premier olive-growing region and hearty farmers have been known to try their luck as far north as Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Having read that olive trees can thrive anywhere Pinot Gris grapes and arbutus trees are found, the couple chose to realize their dream on Salt Spring.


“We just started doing our homework and weren’t sure if it was going to work, but we decided to try,” Sheri says. “It’s been a big experiment.”


bottles are being designed and a sample of the finished product has been couriered to Australia where it will be analyzed and judged by an expert oil tester.


1-866-820-7603 or 1-403-462-1975


BAUMALIGHT.COM


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47