Meet the Producer Who Swapped Her L.A. Law Office for California’s Central Coast

Before becom­ing a farmer, Kathryn Keeler, the co-owner of Rancho Azul y Oro, had a high-paced, stress­ful job in the Los Angeles legal world, and wished for a dif­fer­ent, slower-paced life.

Her grand­fa­ther’s love of the California hills led her to fre­quently spend week­ends in the nearby Edna Valley with him, and they would explore the Paso Robles area.

Eventually, they found a prop­erty and the land became an inte­gral part of their fam­ily life. Over the next 10 years, Keeler split her time between work­ing in Los Angeles and build­ing the ranch. Finally, in 2015, the ranch became their new life and busi­ness.

Rancho Azul y Oro is now a bou­tique pro­ducer based in the hills of San Miguel on the Central Coast of California.

The name means ​‘blue and gold ranch,’ which Keeler told Olive Oil Times serves as a homage to her grand­fa­ther’s love of the land. Blue and gold are also California’s offi­cial state col­ors.

“If we were asked if we regret­ted our deci­sion to do this, we would do it all over again,” she said. ​“It’s been an amaz­ing adven­ture.”

While tran­si­tion­ing from city life to farm­ing, Keeler said she came across plenty of chal­lenges and had to learn a whole new set of skills.

“There are hard lessons, such as when a pre­vi­ous mil­l’s equip­ment broke, and our entire crop sat and did not get milled in time,” she said. ​“For every award, there are 100 losses, whether it’s non-deliv­ery of bot­tles, trac­tors break­ing, crew changes for har­vest or weather changes.”

“One has to remain flex­i­ble and focused to get things done,” Keeler added. ​“There are times when life on our olive farm is as fast-paced as life in the legal world, such as around har­vest.”

Rancho Azul y Oro earned a Gold Award at the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for a robust blend of Frantoio, Coratina, Mission, Manzanilla, Pendolino and Arbequina olives.

“[Winning at the NYIOOC is] a true honor,” Keeler said. ​“Due to the high regard with which this com­pe­ti­tion is held, these awards are a reflec­tion of past lessons learned, per­se­ver­ance through dif­fi­cult chal­lenges and improve­ments we have made.”

A typ­i­cal work­day can start at 4:30 am dur­ing the har­vest. However, the trees are pruned and cared for 365 days per year.

During the har­vest, the olives are hand-picked and sorted, with any that do not meet Keeler’s stan­dards dis­carded. She is vig­i­lant of the weather while trans­port­ing the olives from the groves to the mill.

The pri­mary aim is to mill the olives within 12 hours and it is not unusual for work to fin­ish by mid­night.

“The oil is picked up early the next day and we imme­di­ately begin prepar­ing our sam­ples for test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,” she said. ​“Doing it right mat­ters, whether you’re on a farm or in a law office in Los Angeles.”

“One should not go into olive farm­ing if they are not pre­pared to put in 110 per­cent of them­selves and plan to pro­duce the best olive oil in the world,” Keeler added.

The reward of the breath-tak­ing vis­tas and sun­sets with a glass of wine after a long day makes the ven­ture worth­while for Keeler.

She added that the ranch is also the ideal place to cel­e­brate spe­cial occa­sions, espe­cially since the whole fam­ily has been involved in its evo­lu­tion, from plant­ing the olive trees to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the har­vests and expand­ing and ren­o­vat­ing the ranch.

Like the legal world, she said farm­ing in California is a dynamic pro­fes­sion. Each year, she has to adapt to meet the state’s envi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges and the ever-chang­ing U.S. olive oil mar­ket.

“Our fore­most con­cern is grow­ing con­di­tions, the con­tin­ued drought and man­ag­ing olive tree dis­eases and pests,” Keeler said. ​“We installed addi­tional, more stream­lined irri­ga­tion this year and have honed our sched­ule for tree main­te­nance. Another major chal­lenge this year is sup­ply chain issues, as well as ris­ing costs.”

She added they placed advance orders for bot­tles in October 2021, as short­ages were antic­i­pated, but these still have not been deliv­ered. Keeler hopes the bot­tles will arrive in time for the 2022/23 har­vest.

Other con­cerns are whether there will be a short­age of labor, even though the fam­ily does most of the work.

“All of our sup­ply costs have risen dra­mat­i­cally, also ship­ping costs to our cus­tomers,” she said. ​“There is a price point beyond which cus­tomers are not will­ing to pay for pre­mium olive oil, so we are work­ing on ways to reduce our costs, the price of our prod­ucts and ship­ping in a way that is fair to us, as well as to our cus­tomers.”

Her tar­geted cus­tomer base is exclu­sively online, specif­i­cally peo­ple liv­ing in areas where there is no local olive oil pro­duc­tion. She added that Ranco Azul y Oro’s main com­pe­ti­tion comes from other pro­duc­ers in the area.

“From the begin­ning, due to our remote loca­tion, farm vis­its, tours and events would not be pos­si­ble,” Keeler said. ​“We have planned to develop exclu­sively online sales to this tar­geted audi­ence. We sell on sev­eral plat­forms and for each of the last two years, have been sold out before the next year’s har­vest.”

Keeler prides her­self on pre­sent­ing a unique expe­ri­ence and encour­ages cus­tomers to get to know the farm­ers.

After every har­vest, her team reviews the whole process and mod­i­fies it accord­ingly, espe­cially if some­thing did not go to plan.

“We review what the per­cent­ages of olive vari­etals were and develop our blend together, work­ing also on prod­uct devel­op­ment for the next year,” Keeler said. ​“We bot­tle and label our oil together and per­son­ally gift wrap each pack­age, and we get to know our cus­tomers.”

“Our cus­tomers share what’s going on in their lives with us, and we remem­ber them and their sto­ries,” she added. ​“They are not just orders to us; they are peo­ple.”

With the 2021 olive har­vest now in the rearview mir­ror, Keeler said the company’s mis­sion is to build on past foun­da­tions and con­tinue improv­ing its range of prod­ucts ​“to pro­vide excep­tional cus­tomer ser­vice to our exist­ing cus­tomers and increase our cus­tomer base.”

“Hopefully, we will have a suc­cess­ful har­vest and return to the 2023 NYIOOC,” she con­cluded.