{"id":2818,"date":"2020-04-02T06:10:08","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T06:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/?p=2818"},"modified":"2020-04-02T06:10:08","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T06:10:08","slug":"jim-and-donna-smith-at-oleo-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/biography\/jim-and-donna-smith-at-oleo-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"JIM and DONNA SMITH at OLEO FARM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PEACH FORECAST BOUNTIFUL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AT TOLAR FARM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Pete Kendall
Hood County News – April 12, 2004<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Oleo Farm in Tolar \u2013 \u201cJust a Cheap Spread\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TOLAR \u2013 So far, so good at picturesque Oleo Farm.

The peach trees have bloomed and the tiny globes sprouted. It remains to be seen exactly how many of the juicy treats will survive to plucking season this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGod and nature determine that,\u201d Jim Smith said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith knows something about both.

Oleo co-proprietor along with wife Donna, Smith is a semi-retired hospital chaplain who grew up on a Rio Grande Valley farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolar isn\u2019t the Valley, but there\u2019s one similarity \u2026 dirt.

\u201cWith today\u2019s fertilizers and mulches, you can do just about anything with soil,\u201d he said.

The Smiths purchased their Colony Road property in 1996 and planted their first peach trees in 1997.

Of the present 145, approximately 80 in the main orchard are fruit-bearing. By necessity, the trees are hardy. This is Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had 120 trees originally,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThe drought and grasshoppers ate us up. We put net, like from a formal dress, over all the trees for two seasons to keep them from being totally destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oleo has been blessed in recent years.

\u201cWe had a super peach crop last year while Weatherford and Fredericksburg were having trouble with the weather,\u201d Smith said. \u201cGod put a cloud over us one Sunday morning when it was supposed to freeze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re loaded with a lot of fruit again this year. We\u2019ll know for sure what we have June 10th when we bite into that first peach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Oleo, that would be the Sentinel. Unless you count the apricot, which isn\u2019t a peach but is almost as tasty in a fried pie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe season starts with apricots from the end of May till June 10th,\u201d Smith said. \u201cLast year, we sold fruit from all nine of the apricot trees. People picked them all in two days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sentinel is special because it\u2019s the celebratory first peach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first peaches always taste best,\u201d Smith said, chuckling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oleo\u2019s peach harvest is staggered intentionally. The longer they have peaches, the longer they get to market them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe set out 10 trees of each variety of peach,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThe Sentinels come off June 10th and the Harvestors five to 10 days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Redglobes will be ready around July 4th and the White Melba at about the same time. The Denmans come off July 10th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe last peaches will be the Bountys. We\u2019ll have them into August. Of all the peaches, the Bounty is the biggest. It will play out about August 10.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith is partial to the honey-dripping White Melba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very sweet and soft. They make the best cobbler and ice cream. You have to be careful you don\u2019t bruise them. Lots of times, they\u2019re difficult to sell in the markets because of that. People have to come pick them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDonna likes the Harvester. She thinks it\u2019s better to cook with and for jellies and preserves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when he resided in the Valley, where everything grows except Igloos, Smith was determined to cultivate peaches someday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt that time, nobody had developed a peach that could really produce in the Valley,\u201d he said. \u201cI said, \u2018If I ever live north, I\u2019m going to grow peaches.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe moved out of the Valley in 1968. I went to school in Lubbock. From there, we went to New Hampshire for five years and Illinois for three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe came to Fort Worth in the summer of 1978. I started experimenting with peaches there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name Oleo Farm was a natural to a Valley farm boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I was a kid on the farm, we always had plenty of butter,\u201d Smith said. \u201cOleo became popular because it was cheaper. We called it \u2018just a cheap spread.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we bought this place, we decided to have a little fun with the name. We called it Oleo because it\u2019s just a cheap spread.\u201d

Not.

It\u2019s a little bit of agricultural paradise.

\u201cThe soil drains well,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe work compost, mulch, most organic fertilizers, plus lava sand into the soil around the trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd there\u2019s irrigation. It\u2019s a drip system. I grew up with all this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Birds exterminate much of the insect population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have two purple martin houses and two poles of gourds for the martins,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThat helps a bunch with insects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Smiths will pick fruit to sell to produce stands.

But they\u2019d rather you load up the family, park and pick the peaches yourself.

\u201cWe encourage that,\u201d Smith said. \u201cFamilies have so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PEACH FORECAST BOUNTIFUL AT TOLAR FARM by Pete KendallHood County News – April 12, 2004 Oleo Farm in Tolar \u2013 \u201cJust a Cheap Spread\u201d TOLAR \u2013 So far, so good at picturesque Oleo Farm. The peach trees have bloomed and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2819,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions\/2819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}