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Our Roots

ABOUT THE POLIT FAMILY

The Polit Family is proud to introduce our newest product, Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. We are a small family owned and operated farm that was established in 1983, on the fertile land of Colusa and Glenn County. We started out growing organic rice and shortly after, moved into milling, packaging and shipping. 30 years later, we ventured into growing organic olives for the production of organic extra virgin olive oil. Fresh from the groves, to our brand new, Alfa Laval olive mill; we are able to control every aspect of the process to achieve the highest quality organic EVOO. We hope you enjoy our excellent Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

OUR ORCHARD

Nestled in the Sacramento valley, our orchards hug the eastern foothills of the Pacific Coastal range in Northern California. The Sacramento Valley provides ideal conditions for growing olives. With our warm summers and mild winters our orchards thrive in a climate similar to that of the Mediterranean. The foothills provide a soil slightly higher in gravel content which helps with water drainage. Olive trees need water but their roots don’t like to be soaked for long periods of time.


Our orchard is comprised of super high density olive trees. These aren’t your grandfather’s knotty, gnarled ancient olive trees. A super high density orchard is exactly what the name implies. Our trees are planted in rows on a trellis similar to grape vines. Each tree is five feet apart with row spacing at 13 feet. We purposefully trim our trees to a height of 8 feet enabling our harvester to drive over the top of each row to pick olives. Imagine a taller, more bushy grape vineyard and you’ll have a general idea of Super High Density.

THE HARVEST

The exact day changes depending upon the olive maturity on the trees, but you can find us harvesting olives typically in mid-October. With so many trees it would be quite challenging to pick our orchard by hand. We use a mechanized harvester called an Oxbo. This type of harvester was originally designed for grape harvesting but as super high density olive trees became more prevalent, it’s design and size changed to accommodate olives. Standing at just over 14 ft. tall and 21 ft. long this machine is anything but small. It has the ability to pick olives at speeds of up to 4 mph. While 4 mph is somewhat uninspiring, consider humans move from a walk to a jog around 5-6 mph. Now imagine jogging through an orchard trying to grab olives off a tree…..it’s hard, we’ve tried. We also like that by using a mechanized harvester no olive fruit comes in contact with human hands or the ground along the journey from tree to mill. The added element of soil or other contaminants can adversely affect whether or not your oil is extra virgin quality or defective.

THE MILL

Once the olives are harvested we’re on the clock. We don’t want our olives to sit any longer than they have to. We’re lucky in that our orchards are 15 minutes away from our mill, giving us the ability to be pressing olives shortly after they’ve come off the tree.


As the olives arrive at our mill, they’re immediately unloaded onto a conveyor that elevates them through a de-leafer and into a stainless steel bin. The de-leafer not only removes a majority of excess leaves out of the olives but sticks/ twigs as well. The olives will then fall to the bottom of that bin and onto another conveyor where we will hand pick any remaining sticks and leaves. We can’t get everything but every little bit helps!


The olives keep moving up the conveyor through a refreshing H2O shower. We want our olives to be as clean as they possibly can be before they go into our mill. Once the olives enter the mill they won’t see the light of day until they’ve been pressed into delicious organic extra virgin olive oil! The olives get crushed, pit and all, into a guacamole looking paste.

This paste now must go into a Malaxer. What’s a Malaxer, great question! Without getting too technical, a Malaxer is a machine that prepares the pit, olive flesh, and water to be separated from the olive oil. We can control the temperature inside our Malaxer’s using water in an insulated jacket on the outside of the Malaxer. This allows us to bring the paste up to an optimum temperature for oil extraction without any degradation occurring to the oil itself.


The next phase in the evolution of our olives is a 2 phase horizontal centrifuge or decanter. This decanter spins quite fast, around 3000 RPM, sending the olive oil one way and pomace the other. Pomace is the byproduct of olive oil and has many uses. We actually can use it as fertilizer and spread it back over our orchards. The pomace can also be dried out and used as cattle feed. So there is little to no waste, which we like!


Now our olives are in an olive oil form but it still has a bit of pulp in it. From that first decanter the oil now transitions to two vertical centrifuges or polishers. These centrifuges spin almost twice as fast as the first decanter pulling even more pulp out of the oil. You can taste the oil straight out of these centrifuges and it’s delicious!


We then transfer the oil into our stainless steel working tanks. These tanks have a conical shaped bottom which allows any residual pulp to settle to the bottom. We can then purge the tanks of the sediment, this process is called racking and usually lasts around 6 weeks. After the racking period the oil is ready to be bottled and enjoyed by people all over the world!

MEET THE MILLERS

Organic Roots is a family owned and operated company. Each family member looks after a different aspect of the company. Nathan and Lukas look after the milling operations and are responsible for the award winning organic olive oil Organic Roots produces year after year.


Like the Black and White Cookie, two different flavors coming together to create one of the most delicious baked goods, so Nathan and Lukas completely opposite, work in unison to press some of the best organic EVOO California has to offer. They share a last name but go about their day to day completely differently. So much so that it benefits our oil production during harvest. Nathan is an early bird and runs the mill for the first 8 hours of the day while Lukas tends to be a night owl and relieves Nathan for the evening shift. The end result is a collaboration that is a treat for the palate!

THE TRIFECTA

That’s a lot of brotherly love going into our EVOO, however there is one more side to this olive oil story and her name is Nikkol. Sister to the brothers mentioned above, Nikkol plays an integral role in our oil production. She is onsite for both the morning and evening shift of the mill operation making her day longest of all. Not only does she oversee olive entry from the orchard to mill, but balances the books as well. One might even say she brings balance to her brothers during “pressing” moments, ha!

1983


Polit Family Farm is Established

8'


Height of the Olive Trees

4 mph


Speed Our Machines Pick Olives

6,000


RPM That Our Decanter Spins
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