Five Seeds Olive Oil Farm

Editor’s note: I met Diana and Mike Seder at the International Olive Sustainability Conference at UC Davis. In addition to discovering that they were neighbors of mine, I was impressed by their enthusiasm for learning about olive oil production. I couldn’t help but think their story was a case study of small-scale agricultural entrepreneurs. 

Olive grove photo credit Five Seed Farm

Located in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, Five Seeds Farm is a brand-new olive oil producer, with current distribution limited to family and friends. However, co-owners Diana and Mike Seder are already looking to the future, with plans for broader distribution to share their passion for high-quality olive oil in an educational, sensory-focused way.

Background

The Seders didn’t have previous farming experience when they bought their property in 2010. Initially, they planned to grow grapes, but as Diana says, “You really have to be farmers to do grapes well, and we are not that! But we can raise trees because they don't take quite as much management.”

The Seders started by planting approximately 55 olive trees in 2018, adding another 35 trees a couple of years later. Their first small harvest in 2021 was a revelation.

Mike and Di Seder and olives photo credit Five Seeds Farm

“After we tasted the first oil from that first harvest, we completely just fell in love with olive oil and the process of making it,” says Mike. “The product that came out was so different from anything that either of us ever really tasted. It was just remarkable.”

In the following years, the Seders continued to add olive trees—they now have approximately 400—and family and friends assisted with their second harvest in 2023. “The next significant harvest, which will either be this year or maybe next year because of the cycling, will probably be beyond what we can handle unless we get more friends!” says Mike with a chuckle. 

Five Seeds Farm grows three main varieties of olive trees: arbequina and picual, which hail from Spain, and koroneiki, a Greek cultivar. 

“[We have] more picual than anything else—we really like the robust flavor and fruitiness of picual,” explains Mike. 

Continuing Education

Barn and 2 year old trees photo credit Five Seeds Farm

As the Seders have expanded their olive orchard, they’ve also sought out educational opportunities, including classes at the UC Davis Olive Center and a week-long course at the University of Valencia in Spain, where they learned about tasting olive oil, milling, and grove management. “The constant need to learn has been one of the challenges that isn't going to stop, but we're in a better place today than we were when we started,” says Mike. 

Sustainability is an important value to the Seders, and they’re considering organic certification. “We might be there accidentally because we haven't been adding any chemicals or doing anything like that, but I think we want to be a little more thoughtful and planful about it as we look forward,” says Mike. “As we get into this industry a little bit more, we feel like that's the right way to go. We're not looking to be big commercial producers. You can't do that on 400 trees. So what we would like to do is to be as absolutely high quality as we possibly can be. We think there's a relationship between being organic and achieving that high quality.”

Room to Grow

Grace and Di picking photo credit Five Seeds Farm

Diana notes that Five Seeds Farm is in its “really early days.” At this point, they haven’t started distributing their olive oil beyond family and friends, although the Seders expect their next harvest will more than double due to the additional trees they’ve planted.

“We want to take this to the market slowly,” says Diana. “We want to do sensory education and really bring people into what olive oil is about, where we can actually have an intimate conversation with groups about olive oil. I think we would both really enjoy that. And then have people leave feeling like, ‘Wow, we didn't know that's what you did. We didn't know that's how you could use oil. We didn't realize that if you put olive oil on cheesecake, it's delicious.’”

“It isn't about making money,” says Mike. “We’re trying to create a high quality product that we really enjoy and we're happy to share.”