3 columns wide x 5 inches deep
PAGE 3 - February 10,2010
The Newscaster/Nature Coast News
Dunnellon
OliveTree
Nursery Defies
Urban Legend
By Newscaster Photojournalist
Mike Moore
If you do a little research on ol-
ive production (Olea europaea), it will take
only a little time before you figure out there
is practically no information on olive culti-
vation in Florida. Here in our USDA zone
8 area, despite having several of the prime
factors for successful cultivation, fruit pro-
ducing olive trees are virtually unheard of.
Even if you specifically wanted to tend to an
olive cultivar, the closest real source would
seem to be California. Why is Florida invis-
ible on the olive production radar? Enter
Cary Cloud and his wife Jean of Dunnellon,
who are quietly and determinately trying to
bring an answer to that question.
On their small but intense cultivat-
ed 31st Street Dunnellon olive tree nursery,
the pair are successfully propagating and producing the same high quality olive products as
they do in California and Mediterranean countries like Spain, Italy, and Portugal. In fact,
they raise many of the very same European varieties of olive that go into producing the oil
or the green olives you have right now on your shelves and in your pantries at home.
Originally a literature scholar studying such greats as Faulkner, Cary Cloud says
he “fell into olive production on a whim” when he lived on St. George Island in the Florida
panhandle. There he took a lone olive tree that was growing well and successfully rooted
and grew his own grove of olive trees. His wife Jean adds, “that one tree turned into the
thousands and a love for the olive you see here all around us”, waving gracefully at the
many, many olive trees that occupy the nursery.
From that one lone olive tree the Clouds have grown their olive business in to a
national mail order company, yet they still do local festivals and markets like the Crystal
River Heritage Village show (www.theshoppesofheritagevillage.com). Look for them this
upcoming Saturday the 13th.
Florida may have a great-untapped market for small plot cultivation. The uphill
battle to gain acceptance may not be the weather, or the humidity, it may be the California
Olive Board and the well-established olive industry there. Florida may be primed to take
some of that industry away from California, just as Australia and Argentina have already
done. New acreage of oil and fruit producing olives are springing up all over the globe, in
part, no doubt, to the olive’s well-known health benefits. The lack of support for a Florida
based olive industry may very well have it’s undoing right here in our own Dunnellon back- Olive Tree Growers nursery in Dunnellon with the many hundreds of young cultivars getting
yard. “Florida will grow olives’, Cary Cloud says, we are doing it here everyday.”
ready to be packaged, planted and/or shipped. Jean and Cary Cloud operate the unusal and
unique nursery near Rainbow Springs park here in West Central Florida. Photo by Mike Moore
R&M
AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS
PUBLIC NOTICE
Rebuilt - Repaired - Resealed
TOWN OF YANKEETOWN
Complete Auto Repairs
A/C - Brakes - Front End - Exhaust - TuneUps
Notice is hereby given that Connie Asbell, Levy County Supervisor of Elections, will hold
Computer Diagnostics
a meeting to Test the Logic and Accuracy Equipment that will be used in the Town of
Oil Changes While You Wait
Yankeetown’s February 23, 2010 Election. The meeting is scheduled for:
4X4’s - RV’s - Trucks - Autos
Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Free Estimates
Foreign & Domestic
At the Inglis / Yankeetown Lions Club
352-447-0704
Visa - Mastercard - Discover
22 59th Street
Accepted
Yankeetown, Florida 34498
Fax Line 447-6040
All Interested Persons May Observe
Published 2-10-2010
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