Graber Olive House
The Graber Olive House has been operating packing olives since 1894. The Southern California warm Mediterranean climate and breezes are very suitable for growing olives. This is the sorter machine used to sort them by size. Most of the machinery is original. All olives are still picked by hand and they have strict rules that the picker can only have no more then 3 olives in their hand at once in order that they not bruise the olives.
This is the filling wheel. Again the cans are hand filled. The machine just brings the can and olives to the packer. They have free tours of the olive processing and packing plant all you have to do is ask. Sometime around Thanksgiving is when they actually start the packing process so we are going to have to go back and watch.
In Part of the museum they have old photos of the Ontario area back around the 1900's and it is very interesting. Today they no longer grow olives in Ontario but they are grown up in the San Joaquin valley. They only transport them at night so that the olives are not subjected to the extreme heat of the day. The machine to the left applies the labels to the cans. They are very particular about their olives and you can taste the difference. They are quite unique.