It’s harvest time!

By Rachel Levin, Sunset associate travel editor

We’ve got a U-Haul, buckets, gloves, spigots—and coffee—for tomorrow’s early morning drive down to Santa Cruz. We’ll be happily picking olives alongside the folks at Valencia Creek Farms, who’ve been kind enough to sell us 800 pounds of their olives—and let us help out. With Sunset’s olive trees out of commission thanks to a serious olive fly infestation, we have no choice but to borrow.

Working on a bit of a time crunch, we’ll pick olives for only a couple of hours—and then cart our fruit over to Pietra Santa Winery, in nearby Hollister, for pressing. (Stopping along the way, of course, for a quick lunch at Cafe Sparrow, in Aptos.) After the press we’ll haul our oil back to a cool, dark corner here at Sunset, where our containers will sit for roughly 45 days. Stay tuned for more!