The year we moved into our house, we planted Olive trees along the driveway.  This year, there is an incredible crop of olives, our first time really.  We have had a few olives on the trees the last two years, but never enough to pick.  This year the trees are simply loaded!  Imagine how disappointed I was when our friend Jim (the person who gave us the trees) came by yesterday and after inspecting, told us we had a white fly infestation and the crop is lost.  You have to realize, this is a common issue for farmers. We lose crops all the time or the yield is horrible.  Let us all look back to just a few weeks ago and the sad state of our pumpkins.  This was our first year with a serious amount of olives, even Jim said the trees were loaded.  I was just talking to Connie yesterday about looking up the instructions for brining olives.  It was my hope to offer the uncured olives as an extra item for those looking to do their own.  Alas, it was not to be.  My suggestion - let's feed them to the meat birds?  They need more fat in their diet and olives are clearly loaded.  Hopefully, we can give that a try, and who knows, maybe we will have stumbled onto some fantastic new source of food for our chickens.   Farming is really all about living and learning.