Peace and Plenty Farm brings saffron growing to Lake County
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – Lake County has long been known for pears, winegrapes and walnuts, but it may soon be known for another unique and ancient commodity – saffron.
Saffron is a spice that’s been used for thousands of years. Its origins appear to come from the Middle East, where it’s still grown, as it is in the Mediterranean. Today, major producers include Iran, Italy, Morocco and Spain, with minor producers including China, France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Tajikistan and the United States.
It’s also one of the most expensive spices – its nickname is “red gold” – due to the labor-intensive quality of its production, which has to be done by hand in a short timeframe in the fall. Saffron prices vary, but for the highest quality the spice is reported to cost several thousand dollars for a pound. It’s estimated that it takes 4,000 flowers to create one ounce of dried saffron, according to a University of Vermont report.
Bringing the crop to Lake County are Melinda Price and Simon Avery, who have spent the last two years joining the local farming community and creating Peace and Plenty Farm.
They said they are the only farm growing certified organic saffron on a commercial scale in California; they may actually be the largest producer in the United States, where saffron is uncommon outside of a burgeoning growing industry in New England.
Avery and Price purchased the seven-acre Old Gaddy Ranch at 4550 Soda Bay Road in Kelseyville in 2017. The couple said they had been looking to get a place in the country and become farmers.
“Both of us had had a similar dream of farming for years before we met,” said Price. “We knew that we wanted to farm.”
At that time, Price – who grew up in Stockton – had been living in the Bay Area and raising her daughter. However, her daughter recently had left home, and as an empty nester, she took the opportunity to look for a change.
Avery is a British-born ornithologist, hailing from north of London, who formerly worked as a field biologist with the Nature Conservancy. He’s managed land reserves of up to 40,000 acres, with experience not just in land management but in ecology, so he was equipped for farming.
Searching for the perfect crop and a farm
In envisioning their future farm, Price said they loved the idea of doing a full-on market garden, but the effort involved to sustain it would probably not go beyond 10 years.
While both Avery and Price are youthful 50-somethings, they wanted a crop that they would be able to physically handle for at least a few decades to come.
So they looked at high value crops – besides cannabis – that fit the bill. She said they looked at everything – hops, vanilla, mushrooms, wasabi – and did a lot of research.
Then one day as Avery was in his car listening to the radio, he heard a program about the University of Vermont working with farmers to add value by growing saffron.
“That was an ‘aha’ moment for sure,” Price said.
Based on their research, they felt saffron growing in California was a far better fit than for the colder climate of Vermont.
Price went to a conference in Vermont to learn more about saffron and then placed an order for more than 11,000 corms – the part of the saffron plant that goes into the grown, similar to a bulb or tuber.
Their plans were moving ahead quickly, but one part was missing. “We didn’t have property yet,” said Price, which meant they had thousands of corms coming in the spring of 2017 but no place to put them.
Simultaneously, Avery and Price had been looking at properties, primarily in Sonoma County. “We soon realized that to get what we wanted, we weren’t going to afford it there,” Price said.
In addition to price, there was the issue of not being able to find the appropriate soil, as well as concerns about water, she said. So they opened up the area they were searching for properties and the first place they found in an online search was the Old Gaddy Shack Ranch.
Once they found the ranch, that part of the process went quickly, too. They looked at the ranch the following weekend, arriving with shovels in hand to take soil samples.
They had a cursory look at the ranch’s 1850s farmhouse and the newer buildings, as well as the old barn, which has the “Peace and Plenty” quilt block which is part of the Lake County Quilt Trail. Price said the quilt block’s colors are all the colors of saffron.
“We kind of felt like we found the perfect place,” Price said.
Two days later they made an offer, which was accepted. “We didn’t look at any other farms up here. This was the only place we looked at,” Price said.
A fast first harvest
The couple purchased the farm in June 2017 and immediately set to work, including cutting weeds and preparing for their farming enterprise.
By September 2017 Price had made the move to the farm, and that same month they planted the saffron. In October 2017, they had their first harvest.
“It’s a quick one,” she said of that first growing season.
She said that saffron flowers once a year, in the fall. That first year was both quick and meager – the harvest yielded only about 25 grams of dried saffron. Still, that was enough to give them hope, and it showed them that the plants were healthy and responding.
In the summer of 2018, they had to dig out all of the corms due to rodent issues, after they lost several thousand plants to gophers, Price said.
“Lake County gophers love the taste of saffron. They’re quite gourmet, the gophers here,” said Price.
At the same time, the Mendocino Complex fires were burning, prompting tens of thousands of county residents to evacuate, including Kelseyville residents.
Price said all of their saffron was in boxes in a cool room at that point, so when they evacuated, they took the saffron, their 10 chickens, Ruby the dog and Kitty the cat.
The ranch, which is surrounded by pear orchards and winegrapes, was unscathed, said Price, and when they got back, they replanted the corms in slightly raised beds to help keep out the gophers.
The fall 2018 harvest, their second, was far better, with a yield of 325 grams of dried saffron, Price said.
“Harvest was really, really exciting,” she said.
Also, it was again a rather sudden process, with Price explaining that there were 8,000 flowers blooming in one day, blanketing the field in purple.
Harvesting is intense work. “It’s all done by hand,” she said, explaining that’s why the price is high.
She said they have to harvest very early in the morning, before the flowers open, as the longer the flower’s stigmas – which receive pollen – hang out in the sun and air, the less potent they are.
They can pick the field bare and new flowers will come up very quickly. Price said it was three to four weeks of picking saffron all day, every day.
Then, once the picking was done, they had to sit and hand-separate the stigmas from the rest of the flowers and dry them. Price said that process should happen the same day as they’re picked to maintain freshness and to the intensity of the taste.
She said they now have more than 55,000 corms in the ground due to the natural multiplying of the “mothers” and “daughters,” and those are expected to triple by October. They also will plant another 20,000 corms this summer.
Walking around the farm now, the saffron plants are still green. They’ll stay that way until June, when they will wither away and die back, to later regenerate and grow, Avery said. When they go dormant they don’t need water, and the ground will appear bare for several months, until September. Then the plants will start coming back, blooming and leafing in brilliant blue in October.
The farm’s sandy loam soil is great for saffron, said Avery.
An excellent crop and future plans
In six years the corms will need to be dug up, broken up and then placed in virgin soil, Price said.
The plants are doing better now thanks to the raised beds, which offer a measure of protection against gophers.
Also helping attack the gopher population is the couple’s little farm dog, Ruby. A mix of Chihuahua and terrier, during a walkabout of the farm Ruby did a full-on terrier vault into some high grass, looking for what her owners thought was a mole, another of her favorite snacks.
She eats more than her fair share of gophers – she scarfs up more of them than the 15-year-old farm cat Kitty, who has caught a few – and the couple jokes that she looks rather like a saffron plant herself, thanks to the white wispy hairs sticking out of the top of her head. Ruby seems pretty pleased with life on the farm, and she’s also featured in the farm’s Instagram feed.
Price said people have asked how their saffron compares to that grown in Iran and Spain. They recently had it tested by a Quebec firm.
Avery said their fingers were crossed that it was going to come out good, and they received an excellent quality rating.
The smell of it is deep, rich and fruity, with somewhat of a tomatoey tang. It’s unique, and since California saffron is a rather new crop, Peace and Plenty’s produce is setting expectations for fresh saffron.
Saffron that comes from overseas can be as old as two years before it arrives here. While it can keep indefinitely, Price said it’s best to use it in the first eight months after harvest.
Their saffron sells on their Web site for $25 for a tin that weighs a third of a gram.
Their operation is certified organic, a process that was helped when Suzanne Blavet, who sold them the property, assisted them with historic information on how the land was used and filling out the necessary paperwork. That helped them bypass the three-year waiting period for certification, Price said.
Price said they’ve sold their saffron to local chefs – including those who own Fresh n Bangin and Dancing Poly – and in the San Francisco Bay Area, to the Tartine Manufactory and to a chef from Chez Panisse for her personal use.
They also are growing organic, dry-farmed walnuts from 15 old but very prolific walnut trees that are the remnant of an orchard. They’ve had great success selling them, and have used the nuts for small batch cold-pressed oil.
They have many plans going forward, including selling their products at food fairs and having a small market garden and farm stand on site. Price said they are doing direct sales right now because wholesale selling won’t be viable until they have a much larger saffron crop. But she anticipates this year’s harvest will top a kilo and each year the crop is expected to triple in volume.
Other plans including planting a few dozen pear trees this year, as a homage to the county’s pear growing history.
Avery notes that the ecosystem around them is very important to their crop, and they are keeping some areas wild. They’re also planting as many nectar and pollen rich plants as they can.
This May they will be planting a field of 870 lavender plants, and they’re also gearing up to offering fresh seasonal produce. They want to eventually open a wedding venue and currently they have an AirBNB rental on site that is regularly booked.
Price said they’ve fallen in love with Lake County, have met many good people and already have made many great new friends. Besides that, they have friends from outside the area who now want to move to Lake County and farm.
They love the farm, and for Avery, as an ornithologist, hearing so much birdsong is a special treat.
“We feel so fortunate to be here. It’s just perfect in so many ways,” Price said.
Visit Peace and Plenty Farm’s Web site or Facebook page, or follow them on Instagram.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.