Ten years after settling in Les Baux, with ten years of experience behind us and a clearer vision of the olive oil market, we decided to plant. This planting addresses a very simple and recurring need: to compensate for the lack of olive production that we hoped to control with pruning and irrigation. Our old varieties are too capricious. Our friends at Jean-Martin company having the same problem as us, the supply of French table olives for their culinary preparations, we decided to partner. This is how the Les Aulnes orchard (named after its pond) was born in Saint Martin de Crau. This project was and remains a challenge. We had to venture onto unknown and uncultivated land. Anyone who has not seen the ‘coussouls’ of the Crau cannot imagine it: very stony, arid terrain, red earth, a desolate landscape, yet teeming with flora and fauna in perpetual struggle with natural elements such as grazing herds, summer drought, and the mistral. Another difficulty was the existence of a true natural cement slab or ‘puddingstone’ ten centimeters below the soil surface. Few trees survive in the Crau. The olive tree is one of them, as the entire property is dotted with wild olive trees. We were certainly unaware at the time we embarked on this adventure. Neighbors are always distant in the Crau but offered good advice, especially regarding the equipment to use. It is well known that a lot breaks in the Crau. The planting was done in several phases, resulting in 65 hectares with typical local olive varieties, but also some ‘foreigners’ in the plot called ‘the garden’. Our first ‘real’ harvest took place in 2013. We produced beautiful table olives (Salonenque, Béruguette, black Grossane varieties) and extracted a very powerful olive oil.