About Us
The Beginning
Jeff, 5th generation Californian farmer, got the idea to create a permanent open space with a long term agricultural use. After considering the options he explored the possibility of doing grapes. The land is fertile and rich, with plenty of sun, no shortage of water, and long, moderately hot summers - he was assured that a vineyard would be a success. So in 2005 he planted olives.
The idea was to grow the finest olives and produce delicious, fresh, and minimally processed oil for people in the Bay Area to enjoy. After a few years of tending the field, taming the weeds, and scaring off rabbits the trees began to yield some fruit and Frantoio Grove was born.
A New Page
Patrick, 6th generation Californian farmer, has been around the orchard since he was in high school - before the grove was even planted, but coffee roasting was a siren's call that kept him occupied until a few years ago.
He had the fortune of returning to the farm in 2020 to hunker down while the world was falling apart, but we had some weird weather that year and very quickly realized that the trees would not be producing a crop. Many growers around the state found themselves in the same boat with trees confused by the weather.
The "standard model" didn't have answers so we looked outside of that.
We found farmers on marginal soil or in areas with more extreme climates having luck with regenerative farming and biologically intensive management. The results were not just a return to normal yields, but bumper crops and (more importantly) across the board improvements in the quality of the produce.
So we went to school, and we learned that building resilience to climate change is also the next step in pushing the quality of olive oil forward: restoring soil microbiome, increasing soil organic matter*, and teaching our trees to get their nutrition from soil biology instead of soluble nutrients, are the key to helping our trees not only to become more resilient to our changing climate, but also produce the most vibrantly flavored and nutritionally dense oil.
