Donna and I have fallen into fairly repetitive and predictable routines lately. After starting the day with pickleball yesterday, we changed things up a bit. We hopped in Midget-San and took a drive. It was a beautiful day – blue skies, not much wind and the temperature was a comfortable 80 degrees. Perfect for top-down driving.

We headed east to Ironwood Drive and followed it south through the desert to Queen Creek. It was a little over a 20-mile drive. Queen Creek is a town straddling the Maricopa and Pinal County line. It was mainly an agricultural town with cotton farms, cattle ranches and so on, but in the last ten years, its population has doubled as housing developments exploded. It was originally a small community at a train stop called Rittenhouse in 1919.

Our destination was the Queen Creek Olive Mill. The Queen Creek Olive Mill is a family-run olive farm encompassing 100 acres. They grow olives and press high-quality olive oil. They are the only virgin olive oil producer in Arizona. We signed up for their 11:30am Olive Oil 101 Tour.

This wasn’t really a tour, it was more of a presentation. We toured the Lucero olive oil facility in Corning, California and had seen how they operate first-hand. I posted about it here. The Queen Creek Olive Mill has an interesting story though.

Back in 1997, Perry and Brenda Rea visited Scottsdale, Arizona and were surprised to see olive trees growing in the valley. They got an idea – what if we could produce olive oil here in the Valley of the Sun? They found that olive trees flourish in this arid environment. They traveled to Italy to learn more about growing olives and pressing olive oil. Within a year, they left Detroit, Michigan and the auto industry to establish their farm on 100 acres of land in Queen Creek.

They started with 1,000 trees in 16 varieties. Now they have around 12,000 trees in those 16 varieties. Olive trees are native to the Mediterranean coast but are cultivated in many places. They are well-suited to the Arizona climate as they like heat and the dry climate prevents bacterial and fungal infections found in more humid climates. The heat in Arizona also precludes olive fruit flies – they can’t take the heat.

The older trees on the farm are grown in traditional spacing – 20 feet between trees with 20 feet between the rows allowing about 100 trees per acre. The trunks of these trees split into three to five different trunks and a canopy grows overhead after several years. Traditional trees must be harvested by hand.

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The newer groves are higher density. These trees are pruned so that only one vertical trunk grows. They are spaced about nine feet apart and the rows are about 12 feet apart. These trees can be harvested with machinery.

They irrigate the trees for one week, then allow the soil to dry for three weeks before irrigating again. The trees bloom in April and produce huge numbers of flowers. Most of the flowers are blown away over time by the wind and they pollenate the remainders. Only about 4% of the flowers become fruit.

They start harvesting usually in October – a little later this year as they waited for cooler weather. The youngest olives picked become robust extra-virgin olive oil. It has the strongest flavor profile with a pungent, peppery aftertaste. Next they harvest olives for their balanced extra-virgin olive oil – this is the oil that Donna favors. Lastly, they pick the more mature olives to press their delicate extra-virgin olive oil.

There are six types of vegetable oil made from olives. The purest are extra-virgin and virgin oils. To be classified as extra-virgin, the flavor profile must display three positive sensory attributes – bitter, pungent and fruity. There are nine sensory defects that can show up and if the oil has any of these defects, it can’t be labeled as extra-virgin. Extra-virgin has 0.8% free acidity. Virgin olive oil may have up to three defects and no more than 1.5% free acidity.

The other types of olive oil are refined lampante olive oil and refined pomace olive oil. Refined olive oil is made from stocks that are unfit – they contain too many defects and require a physical refining process (lampante) or they are chemically refined (pomace). The last two types are misleading and I think many consumers are ripped off buying them. The fifth type is labeled olive oil and it’s made by blending at least 5% virgin olive oil with refined lampante oil. The sixth is the same thing but based on refined pomace oil.

Olive oil is best when it’s bottled in a dark glass container. It should be stored away from direct sunlight and heat sources. It’s best when used within 12 to 15 months of bottling and most quality olive oils have the bottling or pressing date on the label or bottle.

We had lunch at the Olive Mill – we ordered from the Italian-inspired eatery and took our lunch at an outdoor table set among olive trees. While we waited for our food order to come up, we shopped around in their market. Donna noticed something interesting – they had extra-virgin olive oil in three-liter bags like you can find in a box wine. Three liter bags sold for $60 – a good buy if you can used that much oil in 12-15 months.

After lunch, we hopped back in the Midget and drove east on Combs Road a couple of miles to another well-known Queen Creek establishment – The Pork Shop. They are a butcher shop that specializes in pork – they’ve been at this location since 1979.

The Pork Shop started when the owner, Greg Combs wanted to find a way to market the pork from his swine farm. He was a third-generation pig farmer at the Combs farm established by his grandfather in the 1940s. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Combs Road led to the old Combs farmstead. He started doing his own butchering and added a smokehouse and sausage making to his operation. It quickly grew and now he no longer raises pigs – all of his pork comes from corn-fed pigs raised in the Midwest.

We shopped a bit in this interesting little market. Donna selected a few sausages and a smoked pork shank for pea soup. I snagged a pound of pork belly to slice for uncured bacon.

That pretty much sums up a day out and about. The forecast for the coming week looks very fine – mid 70s to 80-degree highs and nighttime lows in the 50s. The forecast for Thanksgiving day is sunny with a high of 75 degrees.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!