To say that saffron is a delicacy at $100 a gram would be an understatement.
Known for imparting its rich flavor and golden color to dishes such as Spanish paella, saffron has long been a popular spice among the upper classes.
Fake saffron is flooding the market, and its low price is achieved by dyeing horsetail hairs to look like saffron and artificially disguising the taste.
Most real saffron is imported from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries, primarily Iran and Iraq. There are only a handful of farms that grow saffron wild in the United States, the largest of which are located in backyards in the High Desert.
She is rooted in her hometown This saffron farm in Phelan is the largest in the United States, but the area it grows is more like a big backyard than the nation’s biggest producer of the red spice.
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The people behind the bulbs are Apple Valley and Hesperia locals Tara and Chad Phillips, who got into the business by chance and heartbreak, and this season they packed and shipped 11,000 boxes of the saffron bulbs, which are similar to garlic bulbs, in just six days.
Their new business is booming in the High Desert, with products like saffron bulbs, fresh saffron, and growing kits being packed and shipped directly from their garage, with community support from neighbors and the occasional stray dog.
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The couple purchased Phelan Ranch 11 years ago, and the small home is affordable, and they’ve grown to love it, as have the property’s many fruit trees.
Plans to move from the High Desert and start a lush farm quickly evaporated after their second child was in a dirt bike accident in 2021. He was hit by another rider, suffered a broken jaw, had cardiac resuscitation performed and was airlifted by helicopter to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for surgery.
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Chad soon left the trucking business, wanting to spend more time with his kids rather than exhausting himself on the road for 12 hours a day, sitting in the leather seats of his truck in a symbiotic relationship with sweat and mile markers.
With three mouths to feed and around 15 hungry livestock to tend to, Phillip and his family weren’t sure what to do next when, one summer night, they were camping with a family whose son had been hit in a dirt bike accident, when they met Saffron.
The two families shared a seafood paella under the moonlight of the High Desert — a first for the Philips — and with one bite of the smoked rice, the idea for their new business was sparked.
They first planted 60,000 bulbs and prayed for success.
“I paid the startup costs on my credit card and just started hoping and praying,” Chad told the Daily Press.
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Tara already had a following on her home growing Instagram account, but to her surprise, she discovered that the overwhelming majority of her followers were interested in learning how to grow the world’s most expensive spice.
“It’s easier than most people think. If you live in agricultural zones 4-10, you can plant and harvest saffron. It even grows under the snow.”
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Chad’s prayers appear to have brought prosperity and a more comfortable life to his four home-schooled children.
The Phillips watered the soil only once when they tilled the land, but haven’t watered it in the two and a half years since. The rare rains in the High Desert were enough to double the bulbs in the ground to about 420,000.
Each corm produces one to four flowers. The red stigmas of lilac flowers are the money maker, usually producing three expensive stigmas from one flower. The stigmas quickly become a spice.
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Tara said the spices are all handmade, which is why they are so expensive.
Saffron farms cannot be commercially sustained: all flowers are planted, harvested and processed by hand.
She’s Rooted Home only produces Super Negin grade saffron, which is the reddest part of the stigma, so the price is higher, but the product is premium compared to other farms that sell the whole stigma, including the yellow and white parts.
According to Tara’s calculations, it takes 324 flowers to produce one gram of Super Negin Saffron, compared to 150 flowers if the whole stigmas are used. Moreover, at Phelan Farm, one person picks an average of 1,680 flowers per hour, and it takes an hour to separate the 420 flowers from the stigmas.
As far as the Phillips know, there is only one other saffron farm in California, but theirs is the largest in the United States, according to Margaret Skinner of the University of Vermont, a leading saffron researcher.
The Phillips family can only sell online because they don’t have the time between homeschooling, caring for a toddler, tending to countless farm animals and tending to their farm to sell at the High Desert Farmers Market.
Their Best Selling Products Fresh saffron is $55 for half a gram, or $35 for a bunch of bulbs. Over the years, I’ve sold about 200 grams.
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Research supporting saffron’s medicinal properties suggests it may help with ADHD and dementia, improve vision and mood, and is rich in antioxidants.
Tara recommends looking into the work of Dr. Daniel Ament for more information. Dr. Ament and his researchers have studied the effects of saffron for over 20 years and concluded that it has properties that are strikingly similar to the antidepressant drug Prozac.
As for recipes, Tara Top 25 Saffron Recipes eBook You can purchase it on her website for $10. Dishes include:
- Paella
- Saffron Milk Cake
- caramel
- rice cake
- tea
- Ice cream
- Rice pudding with raisins and pistachios
- St. Lucia Roll
McKenna Mobley is a Daily Press reporter and can be reached atEmail:.
