{"id":1594,"date":"2014-01-17T12:48:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T17:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2014-01-17T12:50:19","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T17:50:19","slug":"first-olives-harvested-east-of-the-mississippi-since-the-1800s-georgia-olive-farms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/first-olives-harvested-east-of-the-mississippi-since-the-1800s-georgia-olive-farms.html","title":{"rendered":"First olives harvested east of the Mississippi since the 1800’s –Georgia Olive Farms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n<\/a>\r\nWe’ll visit\r\nGeorgia Olive Farms\r\non our Friday Farm Tour at\r\n\r\nSouth Georgia Growing Local 2014<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nRichard Villadoniga wrote for StAugustine.com 18 July 2012,\r\n\r\nLiguid gold rush<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\nThere’s a new gold rush taking place in Georgia, and it’s not up in\r\nthe mountains near Dahlonega as first happened back in 1828. This\r\ntime around, people are buzzing with excitement over a liquid gold\r\nproduced in Southern Georgia: extra virgin olive oil. You read that\r\ncorrectly — olive oil from Georgia. What was once an\r\nexclusively Mediterranean product is now being crafted with olives\r\ngrown in Southern Georgia, and to a smaller extent, North Florida.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nGeorgia Olive Farms<\/a>, a cooperative of about 10 regional olive\r\ngrowers, is based in Lakeland, Georgia, near Valdosta.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nJason Shaw, one of the company’s founders, comes from a\r\nmulti-generational family of farmers, but like most farming families\r\ntoday, the need to diversify is a must. (In addition to his busy\r\nschedule handling marketing for the company, he sells insurance and\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nis a state legislator.) Shaw spent a semester of college studying in\r\nItaly and upon tasting such wonderfully flavorful olive oil there,\r\nhe came back determined to plant olives on the family farm in\r\nGeorgia. What started as an agricultural experiment just three years\r\nago has flourished into a thriving business covering about 200 acres\r\nand a production level of 5 tons of olive oil being pressed last\r\nyear.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNancy Flagg wrote for Olive Oil Times 31 October 2012,\r\n\r\nOrigins of Georgia\u2019s Newborn Olive Oil Industry<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn 2000, Georgia was experiencing a severe drought. The Senate\r\nNatural Resources and the Environment Committee was studying aquifer\r\nwater sources and went on a field trip to southwest Georgia\r\nfarmlands. Committee member Mary Squires met growers who attributed\r\nlow crop yields not only to the drought but also to climate change.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhen one farmer remarked that they needed to find a crop resistant\r\nto climate change, Squires’ research gene was activated. As a former\r\nwarfare specialist in the Georgia Army National Guard, she had\r\nconducted many groundwater, air, temperature and soil studies. She\r\n“dusted off” her old research, plotted Georgia’s\r\nclimate, soil and water data and started looking for crops that grow\r\nunder those conditions.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nCome to the\r\n\r\nSOGALO2014<\/a>\r\nFriday\r\n\r\nFarm Tour<\/a>\r\nand visit\r\nSouth Georgia Olive Farms!\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We’ll visit Georgia Olive Farms on our Friday Farm Tour at South Georgia Growing Local 2014. Richard Villadoniga wrote for StAugustine.com 18 July 2012, Liguid gold rush, There’s a new gold rush taking place in Georgia, and it’s not up in the mountains near Dahlonega as first happened back in 1828. This time around, people […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,6,2484],"tags":[2761,3,2528,2529,2531,2527,2532,1786,2286,2530,2840,425],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-okra-paradise-farms","category-sogalo14","tag-agriculture","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-olive-farms","tag-jason-shaw","tag-kevin-shaw","tag-lanier-county","tag-mary-squires","tag-oil","tag-olive","tag-sam-shaw","tag-sogalo14","tag-trees"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-pI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1597,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}