Olive Oil - Lilie
Ahigal de los Aceiteros, Salamanca, Spain
For four generations, olive trees have been part of Lilie's family. Some of the trees she works with today are around one hundred years old.
Growing up, she was always connected to the countryside. Her parents had a sheep farm, and from a young age she was helping at home and with the work of the farm. She later studied Business Administration and Management, returning to the village on weekends to help her parents with the sheep and the olive trees.
Before dedicating herself completely to olive oil, she also had her own sheep farm with around 500 sheep.
Sixteen years ago, she decided to change direction and focus fully on olive oil production.
She wanted to give more value to what her family had been producing, but she also understood that she needed to differentiate herself from other farmers and other olive oils. She decided to specialize in organic olive oil production and create her own brand.
For Lilie, having her own bottle and seeing her own brand in the market became much more than a business decision.
It was a way of giving back to her parents and grandparents for everything they had done for her.
"The greatest satisfaction is that my parents can see the result of many years of work."
Her work today combines tradition with innovation, sustainability and quality. Her aim is to give value to the countryside around her and especially to the olive crop and the oil that comes from it.
The most demanding time of the year is the harvest.
The olives have to be harvested and processed on the same day. Early in the morning, Lilie begins the work in the fields, using her own harvesting equipment and working with family members she hires to help. The olives are collected during the day, and then the work continues through the night.
From around five in the afternoon, Lilie starts the process of making the olive oil and can spend the night working on it. The aim is for the olives to go from the tree to the deposit within about 24 hours.When the olives arrive from the countryside, they come with leaves and small branches mixed in with them. The first step is to clean them.
Around 8,000 kilos of olives can pass through the process every hour, producing around 800 litres of olive oil. The process is kept at a low temperature, never going above 27 degrees.
For Lilie, the goal has always been to put value on what the countryside produces.
She wants farmers to understand that the value of their work is not only in selling what they grow. It is also in the way they work in the countryside and in the quality of the final product.
She is particularly proud of giving value to rural areas and showing that living in the countryside is something to be proud of.
She also feels that the legacy given to them by previous generations needs to be protected and given value.
The land has taught her patience.
Trees take time. You cannot hurry the process, and the result comes only after years of work.
That patience has also become part of her life outside farming. She says that the patience she learned from growing the trees is something she has also applied to raising her children.
For Lilie, one of the greatest satisfactions is seeing her parents look at what she is doing today and know that the work they invested in for so many years is continuing through her.
She feels proud that the work they started has not been lost.
"The countryside teaches you processes, time and patience."
There is also a local saying that connects the history of the area with olive oil:
"The abbey gave its name to our region, and olive oil gave life to our land."
For Lilie, the connection between the land, the people and what they produce is something worth protecting.
She believes farmers also need to defend the value of what they make.
"If we don't value what we make, nobody else will."
She would like farmers to work more closely together, creating associations and finding ways to develop and sell their products together.
After four generations of olive trees, Lilie's work is not simply about producing olive oil.
It is about taking what her family gave her, giving it new value and carrying it forward.