The Farm

Alhambra Valley Ranch is a sustainable 58 acres family farm in Contra Costa County, California, on the northeast side of San Francisco Bay. Our natural products are grown on the urban edge, hand maintained and picked ripe, so they are fresh and close to our customers. We grow olives for oil and curing, grapes which we make into wine, and a wide variety of fresh vegetables and fruit in season.

Our Leccino and Frantoio olive trees are imported from Italy and produce premium olives for our cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil. We also cure olives; some in brine and others dry, hand-tended in rock salt. Our olive and olive oil products are found in local markets and the oil is also available here online.

Our vineyards thrive in several distinct microclimates of Alhambra Valley to produce Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Viognier, and Pinot Gris. These grapes are used in our own winery to prepare varietal and blended wines.

While the farm started with olives and grapes, we now grow a number of vegetables including delicious varieties of tomatoes, squash, onions, peppers, melons, cucumbers and other vegetables and herbs. At our seasonal roadside stand, we sell these fresh-picked. Our vegetables are also found in nearby local produce stores.

Here at Alhambra Valley Ranch, we truly use our resources in a sustainable manner. Most everything we grow is put back into the land except what we take out as food. We do not use synthetic pesticides, but instead rely on organic treatments and sprays and our team of rescue sheep, goats, and llamas to control the weeds until our crops become too tempting, and then we work the fields ourselves.

We also take the advantage of our natural predators to deal with our pests. We use owl boxes, hawk perches, and hedge rows of native plants to attract native pollinators and beneficial insects. We compost our vegetative wastes for soil amendments and are experimenting with using the co-generated heat for warming our greenhouse.

Alhambra Valley Ranch is an interface between urban and rural living. Visitors from the nearby San Francisco region cities are often surprised to discover a farm so close to the metropolis. Students from the city schools come to learn how food is grown, and enthusiasts from gardening clubs and academic institutions run experiments on ground cover soil fertilization and natural insect control. We invite you, too, to visit us.