Also known as: ChaffinOrchards
Chris Kerston lives purchased from UC Berkeley. Del added cattle first and then slowly began building from there. He and his family have continued his dream and now have over 40 different types of fruit trees and 4 classes of livestock. Chaffin Orchards has more recently built a reputation of excellence for its grassfed meats. The term grassfed refers to cattle that are raised their entire lives on open grass pastures. Chaffin’s animals are never confined to a feedlot and fattened on grain, and they never receive any sort of routine antibiotics or hormones. This type of ranching utilizes natural symbiotic relationships between grasslands and grazers. It’s a very low input system which makes it extremely sustainable. Some have even used this type of ranching to rebuild sensitive habitats that have been damaged. The outcome produces an extremely healthy meat for consumers, one proven to be very high in Omega 3 and other healthy fats. Go to Eatwild.com for more information about grassfed meats and their health benefits. The farm produces dry aged grassfed beef, grassfed lamb and goat as well as pasture raised broiler chickens and eggs. All of the animals help in some form of land management. The goats help clear overgrown shrubland that is a fire hazard, and they also help in pruning the olive trees. The sheep and cattle mow the orchard grounds and leave a nice tight grass carpet, and they keep out invasive plants like blackberries that would otherwise grow into the trees and start choking them out. And the chickens eat bugs, fallen fruit, and weed seeds in addition to softly tilling the soil. Keeping the animals rotating throughout the ranch has allowed Chaffin to leave the tractors parked most of the time, and it produces more crops per acre at an overall gain to the lands health. Individual frozen retail cuts of meat are available as are whole and half animals. Chaffin Orchards is also well known for its California-style organically farmed Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Those olive trees planted by UC Berkeley are now nearly 100 years old. As the trees age, the olives develop more delicate and subtle flavors. In addition to this, Mission olives are known for their soft, buttery flavored oil. Very few bottled olive oils on the market are made strictly from Mission olives. Often Mission oil is used to tone down sharper oils in a blend. However, what makes Chaffin’s oil really unique is how late the Albrechts harvest the olives. They don’t typically pick the fruit until well into December, when the olives are all overripe and full of oil. Waiting to harvest the olives this late is risky because they are more susceptible to being blown off the tree in a strong wind; however the finished product is worth the risk. The olives are so mild at that point that they make an outstandingly smooth oil with no sharp or grassy bite. Of course like all of Chaffin’s crops, the olives are farmed organically, and the oil is cold-pressed and unfiltered for a maximum antioxidant profile and health benefits. The olive oil is really something special; it is filled with local history, affordable, and delicious. Most people in these parts know of the farm because of their amazing organically-farmed fresh fruit. The farm has some type of fresh fruit in season year round, and Chaffin Orchards is one of the few remaining early members of the Saturday Chico Farmers Market with over 25 years of Saturdays and still counting. Many of their fruits are listed by Slow Food’s Ark of Taste as varieties that are endangered because they do not meet the needs of an industrial food system. However, these fruits are prized for their outstanding flavor. Chaffin Orchards does not employ any cold storage on their fruits. Many times the fruit is picked at first light the morning of the farmers market, and fruit is only picked at the peak of ripeness, even when this means having to return to the same tree over and over again. The ranch has also branched out recently producing a few value-added products like fruit jams, grassfed beef jerky, and now even a raw pet food. These products help to produce cash flow for the farm year around by extending the “harvest season.†The farm has also been giving tours in the past few years as many consumers seek to understand where their food originates. You can visit the farm’s fruit shed open 7 days a week during daylight hours. Chaffin Products can also be found at the Chico Saturday Farmers Market, and Chico Natural Foods also carries most of Chaffin’s products. For more information about the farm, go to ChaffinFamilyOrchards.com. Even better, tours of the farm are available by appointment by phoning 530-533-1676, and in touring you can hear the stories behind this family’s generations of farming and the sustainable practices that have become the farm’s mission.