We would like to extend a big welcome to all our new customers that have found us via the newsletter of Guy Singh-Waston of Riverford Farms last December. Ever since Guy wrote in his newsletter about Querubi we have had over 200 new customers who have ordered and then re-ordered our olive oil. Big thanks to Guy and to all of you.
 
The sudden surge in demand has left us without any 3 liter tins, but we will have another bottling session soon and a new batch of 3 liter tins will be available by the end of February.

The winter months at Querubi are usually relatively calm, but the lack of rainfall over the past 18 months (20% of what we usually have) has forced us to do a big revamp of the underground irrigation system. A big job, but we must be sure that the trees get sufficient water during the flowering period, if not we risk losing a big part of the harvest. Not only are we not getting any rain, but temperatures have been again abnormally high, the upside of which is that we all work in T-shirts in great sunshine. 

Less sunny in our view are the latest developments around the use of pesticides in European farming. EU proposals to cut pesticide use by half by 2030 have been voted down by the European Parliament by a large majority in last November and after the widespread farmers protest of the past few weeks, the European Commission has now withdrawn the proposal (the Sustainable Use Regulation – SUR). For us as organic farmers, this is a deeply sad development, the widespread use of pesticides has a devastating effect on the health of our soils and the integrity of our food systems and will eventually affect us all. Let’s all hope new proposals to the same effect will be discussed soon.
 
Despite this sad development, we will continue our work at Querubi based on our stringent organic principles for the long term. We and many other growers have shown that is entirely possible to produce high quality fruit without the use of chemical products and we hope that many of others will follow us. to provide you with healthy organic products. 

With gratitude, The Querubi Team