Producer

Located outside Esparto in the beautiful Capay Valley in central California, Brian and Gretchen Paddock operate a small family farm primarily consisting of organic almonds. The original orchard was planted over 100 years ago. In 2009 and 2010, all our six (yes, 6) children, many friends, and extended family gathered to plant a new, 1400-tree orchard. Each child has a role in our farm. Kyle and Bailey manage our website, Nicholas keeps rodents under control, Alicia writes our newsletter, Jessica created our logo (Brian and our two dogs, Roxy and Travis, are in the logo), Joshua also does rodent control, and everyone harvests, sorts, and packs. Brian is the operations and sales manager and Gretchen runs the nut house.

We choose to farm organically because our home is situated in the middle of our orchard, we drink the same water as our trees, and we do not want to subject our family to health concerns that “conventional” farming operations can present. We also strongly believe in being good stewards of our land, and therefore we grow our almonds using sustainable processes following national organic certification criteria. We practice regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is an approach to food and farming systems which aims to regenerate topsoil, increase biodiversity, improve water cycles, enhance our ecosystem, support biosequestration and recycling as much farm waste as possible.