This is an archived edition of our Field Report email newsletter. You can sign up at the bottom of the page!

Greetings from Fat Gold:

We’re pleased to announce that our Castile Soap is back in stock in the online shop! This soap is made from Fat Gold olive oil, filtered water, and food-grade lye; many of you have already become fans.

A bar of Fat Gold soap: a pleasant, cream-colored puck.

In the past, quantities have been very limited; we have a bit more of a stockpile now:

https://fat.gold/shop/

The soap’s return presents an occasion for a quick history lesson.

Both our Castile Soap and our Two-Ingredient Lip Balm are made by Jana Kinsman, an urban beekeeper and honey producer in Chicago. These days, Jana is our partner in production, but she played an important role in Fat Gold’s early history, too.

In the beginning, we leased a small olive grove right here in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a beautiful place, and it provided a crash course in farming.

If you knew us back then, it was likely—inescapable—that you’d be invited to pitch in. The promise of a sunny day in a romantic grove in the East Bay hills was never a hard sell… even though the work was real, and difficult.

The friend who worked hardest was Jana. For a couple of winters in a row, she came out to California for a few weeks in the grove. Lots of pruning. She was a huge boost: a generator of not only hard work, but also good cheer.

Here's Jana with her bees!

We love that our collaboration has continued with the soap and the lip balm, and we love the care Jana puts into these products. The ethos of extra virgin olive oil is simplicity, because the substance is so good all on its own. You’ve got a good thing here; why mess with it? Jana’s offerings fit that ethos perfectly.

Try out the soap and lip balm if you haven’t already, and pick up a tin of Fat Gold while you’re at it:

https://fat.gold/shop/


Here’s something totally unexpected and extremely fun. The “skronky post-punk no-wave trio” called OOF just released their new album, and its second track is titled: Fat Gold.

This is not a coincidence.

The song was inspired, in part, by one of our zines—the one with the diagram of the olive mill. It goes like this…

The malaxer
A tank
Where the paste will wait
Waiting for the oil
To find its mate
The malaxer
Leans in
To the class divide
Like likes like
When trapped inside

…and I am willing to bet this is the very first time the word “malaxer” has appeared in song lyrics.

Later, the chorus roars:

A thousand years of fire and dread
Went into the olive oil for your bread
A thousand years of blood and smoke
Went into the taste in your tasting notes

Go listen to the whole thing, and maybe buy the album to show the world that Fat Gold customers are patrons of the arts, too.

You could even be like us…

Yes, our car has a tape deck

…and load it into your Toyota’s tape deck. You could blast down I-5, speakers blaring: A thousand years of fire and dread! Went into the olive oil for your bread!


Fat Gold’s next harvest is almost here! We’ve officially relocated to the San Joaquin Valley, the hub of our harvest operation, home of the Fat Gold mill.

This will be our second season with the mill. Last year, preparing for the harvest, taking the measure of this new machine, we were—as you might imagine—a bit stressed out. Well… everything went amazingly great. So, this year, we are really just excited to begin.

Of course, we have ideas for improvements, plus a few experiments we’d like to run. The goal remains the same: to make the very best extra virgin olive oil we’ve ever made.

We’ll send a full harvest preview in October. Until then, enjoy the last fruits of summer. Glug your olive oil on everything. Fat Gold is not for hoarding!

–Robin, Kathryn, and Bryan