Versatile and valuable saffron

November/December 2022 California Bountiful magazine

Beginning farmers tackle
growing the labor-intensive crop

Story by Linda DuBois
Photos by Karen Pavone, courtesy of Peace and Plenty Farm

Several times a year, community members gather at a small Lake County farm to enjoy harvest dinners inspired by the world’s most valuable spice.

Bay Area chef Arnon Oren accents each of the five courses—from appetizer to dessert—with saffron. The spice grows on a half-acre plot on the 7.3-acre Peace and Plenty Farm in Kelseyville, which also includes a riparian area, vegetable and flower gardens, and fruit and walnut trees.

“Saffron’s a fascinating spice. It’s amazing how it can go so well with savory and sweet,” Oren says. The flavor is “kind of the aroma of hay and honey combined … sweet, but a sharpness to it.” He says it goes well with mild-flavored dishes like rice, potatoes or chicken and makes a good “background aroma” for seafood. “Last time we did saffron ice cream. It was really, really delicious!”

Saffron is the three stigmas found in a crocus sativus flower during its fall blooming season. Cultivated for thousands of years, saffron also is used medicinally and in cosmetics. Sources disagree over its origins, but most credit Iran or Greece.

A native of Israel, Oren grew up familiar with this spice common in the Middle East and parts of Europe. He’s cooked with it frequently throughout his career at fine-dining restaurants including Chez Panisse in Berkeley and now at his own catering business, Anaviv, and restaurant, Open Market by Anaviv, in Richmond.

His technique is to briefly toast it, grind it and put it in a warm liquid (such as water, milk or oil) and then add the liquid to a dish—unlike some chefs who prefer to add the actual threads so diners can see them.

Peace and Plenty’s saffron “is pretty special, really high quality,” he says. “The flavor is cleaner than what we get imported.”

Despite saffron’s many attributes, U.S. restaurants tend to shy away from it, Oren says, noting “it’s very expensive because it’s very labor-intensive” to grow and harvest.

Ambitious newbies

U.S. farmers tend to shy away from it, too. Of the hundreds of tons produced worldwide each year, Peace and Plenty Farm produced less than 9 pounds last year—and it’s the largest saffron grower in North America.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” says Melinda Price, who farms the land with her husband, Simon Avery. “It’s something people just don’t grow much here—and now we know why,” she adds with a laugh, explaining that every step of the growing and harvesting is done by hand.

She acknowledges they might have been a bit naïve when they tackled such a labor-intensive crop as brand-new farmers. Avery was a bird scientist and Price has been a Paris fashion model, caterer, schoolteacher and high-tech project manager. When the two began dating in 2016, they discovered they each had a longtime dream of farming. They decided to pursue a niche crop to set themselves apart and, after some research, determined saffron was a great fit.

So, in the spring of 2017 they charged ahead, buying 7,000 saffron corms (like bulbs) before they even had farmland. Their search led them to the Kelseyville property, which has the perfect sandy loam soil, a good water table and beautiful old buildings.

For over a year, Price kept her San Francisco tech job while Avery worked to transform the weed-covered plot into farmland. Their first big harvest came in 2019.

How it’s grown

Saffron grows all over the world but prefers dry summers since rain and heat can encourage corm rot.

Price and Avery plant the corms by early September. The approximate 20 flowers per plant bloom and the grass-like leaves grow to about 2 feet before the early November harvest. In spring, the perennial plant dries up and is dormant from May through at least mid-September.

Each corm creates around 10 daughters that feed off the mother corm and grow for about three years from the size of a peanut to approximately 4 inches when they become mothers themselves and their mother dries up, Price explains.

“We originally planted about 47,000 corms. Now we have probably close to three quarters of a million,” Price says.

The cultivation process has remained the same for thousands of years, she says. “You see the ancient Minoan frescoes of women bending over and gathering saffron and putting them in little baskets—and that’s what we still do. Even in, say, Iran where they’re growing tons and tons, it’s still all picked and separated by hand.” There’s no machine capable of plucking the delicate flowers without destroying the plant, she explains.

At the height of the five-week harvesting period, Price, Avery, interns and even community volunteers pick 60,000 flowers a day. The stigmas can start shriveling in the sun, affecting the quality, so they start at 2 or 3 a.m. with headlamps, collecting the flowers before the petals open.

“It’s pretty intense. You’re bent over upside down and it’s very cold. It was in the low 20s last year,” Price says. When they finish picking, they start over, getting any flowers that came up as they were harvesting.

They try to finish around 9 a.m. because they still have about 10 more hours of work—plucking the three stigmas off each flower. “It’s very focused work because, for the highest grade of saffron, you just want the top red portion of the stigma and not the yellow, orange or white part” that lacks the flavor intensity, Price says.

Making it work

Harvest isn’t the only challenge. Voles, ground squirrels and gophers “really enjoy” the saffron corms, Price says. “The first year, we planted straight into the ground and gophers took about 30%.” So, they dug them up and replanted them in wire cages. Even with such precautions, they still lose hundreds. “We have enough now that it’s OK, but we’ll have to figure out what to do.”

Another frustration: About a third of the saffron sold in the world is impure or even fake. It’s fabricated from the likes of corn silk, coconut fibers or horsehair, and lower-grade stigmas are often dyed red to appear higher quality.

To detect a fake, “put it in a cup of water, and if you get an instant flash of red, that’s dye coming off,” Price says. “Also, the shape of the little pistil top kind of looks like a crown. If it’s a straight stem, it’s fake.”

The other test is price. “If it’s $4, it’s not saffron or it’s very poor quality,” Price says. Small saffron growers she knows sell it for between $50 and $100 a gram. Peace and Plenty’s is $75—about 150 to 200 flowers’ worth.

Price and Avery sell saffron threads, extract and corms at their farmstand and through their website, where they also sell their homemade infused honey, shortbread and teas. Price says she continually experiments with infusing saffron into jam, pasta, soups, sauces, ice cream, popsicles and other items.

Orders have come from individuals, boutiques and chefs from all over the U.S.

A regular customer is Janell Pekkain, owner of Olive This Olive That boutique in San Francisco, who sells the honey, teas and jarred saffron threads.

“Customers are curious about

the saffron,” Pekkain says, “and they love hearing the story of the farm and their efforts.”

Linda DuBois