"There is no comeback without a setback"

It is a good day to be at the rancho.  The last of the awards in the olive oil competitions was announced today, and Azul y Oro was awarded a Gold Medal in the California State Fair 2015 Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition, thus bringing our combined medal total for the 2015 year to three gold medals and four silver medals for both of our olive oils.

Our story is not really about the medals, though.  Our story is about believing in one's self and believing in one's product, and that passion for delivering an exceptional product, focus, and perseverance will eventually win the day.

Wouldn't it have been better to have won all Gold Medals and Best of Class Awards?  Wouldn't it have been better to have had a larger yield?  Definitely, but we have to leave some excitement, happiness, and goals for other years.

One has only to scroll through the blog posts of the last year to read the discouraging, heartbreaking setbacks that occurred in this pursuit of excellence.   It is a veritable log of trying so very hard, but then having a circumstance beyond our control ruin an entire year's work, and just when we thought things couldn't get worse, they did, and we nearly lost our entire crop of olives in 2015.  One cannot imagine the amount of times these ranchers dragged themselves into the house, tired, dusty, and dejected, only to learn of more bad news.  One cannot imagine how truly heart-wrenching it was to stand in the pouring rain and hail and watch our olive blossoms being pummeled to the ground.  It was a good thing it was raining so hard, it made the tears harder to see.

Toward the end of the year, just to make matters worse, the flu sidelined one member of the team one week before olive harvest.  The team member battled back and got through harvest, but then had a relapse but was nearly well enough (again) to participate in a family celebration in November, but had continuous health setbacks until just recently, although technically, the doctors might just call it cautiously stabilized.   The same flu nearly took another family member from us, who has also struggled for months to regain her health.  And sadly, we also lost an immediate family member who had been courageously battling cancer for four years.  Good health is everything.

All during this time, we kept focusing on any positive thing we could:  True, we'd lost a lot of our crop due to high wind and heat, but we still had a crop; true, we had to find a mill that would accept our very small yield, but we did find a mill, and an extraordinary mill, who also produces some of the finest olive oil we have ever tasted.  What's more, the people who run that mill are incredible people who value the pursuit of excellence the way we do and have been so enjoyable to know.  True, we had a terrible time finding bottles, but we pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat on that one, although the bottles will become an issue again this year.  True, we could have gotten all Gold Medals and Best of Class and Best of Show, but more than all the medals in the world, we are proud that we overcame so many obstacles and staged that comeback for which we so fervently hoped and toward which we worked so very hard.

Truly, there is no comeback without a setback.



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