A tree change has delivered a whole new direction for olive farmers Sue Sutton and Mark McColm.
While Sue Sutton and Mark McColm admit they didn’t move to the country to retire, they had little inkling that their decision to buy an olive grove would make their lives busier than ever before. As a long-term resident of the Sutherland Shire, Sue had worked in the NSW police force, both as a sworn officer and in administration. Mark lived on the NSW Central Coast and had spent many years in hardware and plumbing sales when they met in 2010. When Mark’s work took him to Orange in the NSW Central West and Sue’s workplace moved making her commute longer, it seemed the universe was sending them a message that the time was right to fulfil their long-term ambition of a move to the country.
“Sue kept working in Sydney, and on weekends we went looking for a place to buy,” Mark says. “We weren’t in a hurry and it wasn’t until the end of 2017 that we found what we were looking for.” That turned out to be a home on acreage at Moorbel near Canowindra, the central-western NSW farming community best known for splendid displays of hot air balloons flying over golden fields of canola in spring. The property was one-third of an olive grove that had been established by Michele and Terry Porter in 2001. Mark and Sue candidly admit they knew nothing about growing olives when they became the proud custodians of 400 trees at the beginning of 2018.
“Fortunately, the Porters had only moved into town and they were very generous with their advice,” Sue says. “There was bad drought when we took over, so we didn’t have a harvest for the first two years, and we kind of learnt as we went along.” They also joined the Australian Olive Association and took advantage of the webinars they offered during COVID, bought an Italian olive press and proudly bottled their first harvest in 250ml and 500ml bottles.
“When the lockdowns ended, we were excited to take our product to local markets,” Sue recalls. “One of the first was at the Moorbel Community Hall and we were a bit taken aback when one of our customers looked at our display and asked ‘is that all you’ve got?’ That was the trigger to expand our range.”
Mark and Sue were lucky that the market community provided many connections that have enabled them to widen their range. While their deeply delicious extra-virgin olive oil will always be their main output, they’ve also expanded into complementary products including caramelised balsamics, homemade dukkah and herb-flavoured sea salts. A chance encounter with another stall holder introduced them to a soap maker from Capertee and now they make a range of olive oil soaps scented with intriguing fragrances such as clove and star anise, liquorice and mint, and oak moss with ground oats.
Serendipity intervened yet again when the couple met a stall holder selling wooden honey dippers. “She explained that her father, Mick Muir, was a woodturner from Murrumbateman,” Sue says. “As we have lots of wood from the olive prunings, it was a natural progression to increase our offerings and make the grove more sustainable by getting him to make beautiful utensils from our wood.” Molly’s Grove hand-crafted olive wood products include vases and bowls, honey dippers and pots, rolling pins, garden dibbers, olive forks, spurtles for making porridge and nostepinnes, a Norwegian implement for winding yarn into balls.
“Olive trees must be pruned to keep them healthy and to stop them growing to the extent that they’d be impossible to harvest,” Mark explains. “So we have plenty of wood for heating our home and we have a chipper to turn it into mulch for the grove and garden. It always seemed wasteful to me just to burn the prunings, so now we save all the larger pieces for Mick to make into beautiful objects.” These days, Mark and Sue manage their own grove, as well as a neighbour’s of a similar size, and the olives are harvested and processed into extra-virgin olive oil by Billimari Olive Processing near Canowindra. “They have mechanical harvesters and can do our property in a day,” Mark explains. “They do most of the groves in the area.”
While Sue and Mark don’t sell table olives, they do hand-pick a small section of the grove for their own consumption. “It’s quite a painstaking business,” Sue explains. “You have to cut a slit in each olive, then soak them in a brine that has to be changed every couple of days. Finally, I bottle them in red-wine vinegar with peppercorns, chilli, lemon and rosemary. The whole process takes weeks. Fortunately, Mark has become an expert at judging when the olives are ready.”
While the pair admit the learning curve has been steep, they say they’re loving their tree change. Molly’s Grove products are stocked in local visitor’s centres and gift stores, and Sue and Mark are regulars at markets in Orange, Bathurst, Rockley and Tarana. “Our weekends are very full,” Mark says. “It’s enjoyable work as people are always engaged and interested in what we’re doing. Our weekdays are full too, maintaining the trees, labelling and packaging and getting stock ready for sale and dispatch. We’ve never been busier, but it’s a good kind of busy and we’re very happy with the way things have evolved.”
