My Town Monday: Ontario, CALIFORNIA

I spent most of the weekend at a water polo tournament in and around ONTARIO, CALIFORNIA. Which was named after ONTARIO, CANADA by the two Canadian engineers (George and William Chaffey) who helped develop the area.

In NINE days, I'm heading to ONTARIO, CANADA.

Ontario, California is obviously calling to me as a My Town Monday post. Obviously.

So, early Sunday morning, while our water polo players slept in, Child #4 and I snuck out from the hotel room for a very interesting visit to...

The Graber Olive House

The Graber Olive House is famous for its gourmet olives. Crossing the threshold of the Graber Olive House is like taking a step back in time. Graber olives have been cured and canned here since 1894. The operation is still very much hands-on. To the point that government health inspectors always think they've arrived at a museum and not the actual canning facility!

Spanish missionaries planted the first olive trees in 1769 at the Mission San Diego de Alcala. The Franciscans then traveled north to establish more missions and they planted olive groves along the way. The Graber olive ranch is located about 250 miles north of Ontario, in Lindsay, at the foot of the Sierra Nevadas.

So, what makes a Graber olive special? Well, these olives aren't picked until they're cherry-red ripe. A tree might be visited 7 or 8 times before all its olives are removed. This ripeness factor results in a meatier, nutty-flavored olive. VERY delicious!

Here's the process:

This is the grading line where women stand at the conveyer belt, on the lookout for olives with bruises, lumps, broken skin. Olives that remain on the conveyer belt are sorted according to size. #16 is the largest Graber olive. At times, there's a waiting list for cans of #16 Graber olives. The grader was built in 1932.



550 concrete vats in the Vat Room soak the olives for 3 weeks in a secret brine. The brine is changed daily.




Women hand-scoop the olives from the rotating filling wheel into cans. There's a can under each hole. The women fill about 45 cans per hour. If the Graber Olive House switched to machines, they could fill about 1500 cans per hour. There are no plans to switch.



Olives are packed in 200-degree-Fahrenheit water. The Panema Paddle Packers slap on the lids. No photo. Sorry. I guess I forgot to take one. I am so not a reliable photographer. Neither was my mother. It's genetic. In fact, when my mother took a picture of me on my first day going to university, she inadvertently chopped off my head. Not a prophetic shot, as it turns out.



Child #4 is examining the label machine. A label is applied to each can. The labeling machine is from the 1940s. It's only operated during after-school hours. When the local high-schoolers are available to work.



The cans of olives are sterilized in here at a high heat (I forget how high) for 62 (I think) minutes. Child #4 was beginning to wane at this point in the tour. Which means I wasn't as focused as I could be.

Here's the Graber Olive House info:
315 East Fourth Street, Ontario, CA
1-800-996-5483

If you want to see the grading and canning process in action, call ahead to find out which week in October the plant will be running. It all depends on when the olives ripen. Besides the "plant" (now located in the NEW building which was built in 1921 and has one original wall from 1894!), the grounds include a one-room museum, a couple of gift shops, a picnic area, a video of the olive canning process, some very nice people AND OLIVE TASTE TESTING.

In addition to producing world-famous olives, the Graber Olive House doubles as a halfway house for abused animals. This is, after all, California with all her idiosyncrasies.

AND if you comment on this post between now and Wednesday, July 23 @ midnight Pacific Time, I'll send you a can of Graber olives. For real. I bought an extra one. Just for you bloggy people. I'd post a picture, but blogger is way slow and lazy tonight.

Thank you once again to Travis Erwin for spearheading My Town Monday. We're glad he's back in his leadership role this week. And that he'd didn't lose the family fortune in Vegas last week. Click here for Travis' post on Amarillo, TX and for links to the other My Town Monday participants.