Stewards of the Land

Landowners: Darro Grieco + Olivia Newsome-Grieco

Place They Call Home: Butte Valley, California

Conservation Easement Completed: 2018

Land Trust Staff: Please introduce us to your property, and share what makes it unique.

Darro: The property is about 396 acres of olive groves, established in 1913 by professors from the University of California, Berkeley. Together, they formed the Berkeley Olive Association and called this the Berkeley Olive Grove. It is now eligible for state and national listing on the historic registries. Over the past 17 years that I have been the steward of this land, I have had agronomists from Italy visit on two different occasions. They looked at this and said if they were to plant it today, they could not improve on what the professors did 100 years ago. This is natural agriculture for this terroir, with 65 trees per acre planted on 30 foot triangles. The low density in comparison to modern orchards ensures sufficient moisture and nutrients for the trees. The grove is non-irrigated and the olives are harvested by hand. We use goats to assist with understory management.

We have a very unique terroir here at the base of Table Mountain. There seems to be a naturally occurring soil moisture strata about 6 to 8 feet under the soil surface. In a number of years past there has been a water shortage, and when some of the irrigated groves in this area didn't have water, they couldn't produce a crop. Here, you almost couldn't tell the difference because the trees are accustomed to dry-farming and sustained by that subsurface moisture.

The nutritional value of a food at harvest is based on the air and the water that it gets, and whatever nutrients are in the soil. In this case the nutrients are just natural; it's whatever can be sustained and regenerated in the Grove. The olive oil that we’re producing was the seventh highest phenolic content olive oil measured in the world in 2020, and the highest outside of Greece, Cyprus, and Italy. [Editor’s Note: polyphenols contain antioxidants, and most of the health-supporting properties of olive oil are attributed to these naturally occurring compounds in the fruit and oil.]

Land Trust Staff: Please tell us about your land ethic. Who, if anyone, has influenced how you think about land stewardship?

Darro: I had no agricultural experience before this, other than gardening. I had read some of Leonardo da Vinci’s writings and notes and seen his sketches, and he actually had some sketches and notes about pruning olive trees. I found this really interesting, given that we think of him as one of the great geniuses of the world. And so I always ask myself when I'm thinking about how to improve on the work we’re doing here, “How would Leonardo have done it?” I always wanted to make it the best that I could possibly make it, so from the beginning, I began managing the Grove organically.

Land Trust Staff: What challenges have you encountered while trying to manage this historical Grove naturally?

Darro: Labor. I've used a labor contractor from the very beginning for the pruning and hand-harvesting. The challenge is that you have to harvest olives at specific stages of ripeness to create different styles of oil, and we have really struggled to find crews that could consistently work on our timetable. It’s challenging and costly to find these traditional services here, in comparison to a place like southern Italy. Our production costs per gallon are much higher than many other local olive oil producers, but our product is also vastly different. After 17 years, we’re now making a medicinal grade olive oil, and it turns out that this opens a very significant market. The organic food market is growing every year, and the nutraceutical or medicinal aspect of food is something that consumers are more aware of and willing to pay for.

“The reason for the Conservation Easement was to do as much as we could to preserve the nature of the Grove…Basically, it’s irreplaceable.”

Land Trust Staff: Why did you want to protect this property? What factors played into your decision to put a Conservation Easement on your land?

Darro: This is historically significant grove: this was once the largest planting of Mission olives anywhere. We sought out the Conservation Easement, and even though it took five years to complete, we were willing to wait. Mission olives are related to groves found in Australia, and are now known to be related to an olive found in Morocco as well. Probably what happened is when the olives originated, believed to be somewhere in the Middle East near the Black Sea, they migrated down toward the Mediterranean and then across the Mediterranean. From there, they probably went across northern Africa, and that's why in Morocco you find a cultivar which is very similar to the Mission olive. Spain was eventually conquered by the Moors, bringing the olive to southwestern Europe, and eventually, Franciscan monks from Spain came over and established missions on the Pacific Coast, along El Camino Real. These missionaries planted olives they brought from Spain at each of those missions, establishing Mission olives in California for the first time. Groves eventually sprang up in other places, and thrived in Butte County. We consider this the “California Mediterranean.” The Conservation Easement gave us a way to protect these 100-year old olive trees and this unique place.

Land Trust Staff: What benefits have you seen from the Conservation Easement? Does it play a part in your legacy planning efforts?

Darro: Our motivation for the Conservation Easement was to do as much as we could to preserve the nature of the Grove. These are 100-year old trees and you can’t just rip them out and replace them. That's it. Basically, this is irreplaceable.

Although the easement doesn’t guarantee that the olive trees would stay under new land ownership, it at least prohibits subdivision of the Grove and any commercial or industrial development. So we did the best that we could, but we worry more about succession than anything else.

I’m old enough that I should move on as the steward of this Grove, but when we sell it, we want to find a buyer who will value the entirety of what this property is. Someone who will be in accord with our values, and will carry on that mantle of stewarding this special piece of earth.