Recent storms and strong winds knocked avocados off our trees at Patel Ranch. A lot of fallen fruit is too damaged to eat or sell, but some of it is still perfectly usable — and throwing that away felt wrong. So we're running our first experiment: turning the usable fallen avocados into homemade avocado oil.
You can see the reel where we kicked this off here: watch the avocado oil experiment on Instagram.
Why fallen fruit doesn't have to be wasted
On a working grove, windfall is a fact of life. Storms don't check whether the fruit is ripe enough to pick, and fruit that hits the ground doesn't go into a farm-direct box. But "not sellable" and "useless" are two different things. The flesh inside a sound fallen avocado is the same oil-rich flesh we ship in our boxes — it just needs a different job.
That is the whole idea behind this experiment. If it works, storm losses turn into something we can actually use in the kitchen. If it doesn't, we learn what went wrong for very little cost, because the fruit was already on the ground.
What counts as usable
Not every fallen avocado makes the cut. We sort hard before anything goes into a batch:
- Fruit with intact skin and firm, undamaged flesh is in.
- Fruit that is split open, moldy, or clearly rotting is out — it goes to the mulch pile, not the press.
- Fruit that is too bruised to eat fresh can still work for oil, as long as the flesh itself is sound.
Sorting is the unglamorous part, and it matters more than any other step. Bad fruit in means bad oil out, and there is no step later that fixes it.
How we're making our first batch
This is our first attempt, so we're keeping it simple and small on purpose. The basic idea is straightforward: scoop the flesh from the usable fruit, mash it, warm it gently to help the oil separate, and then press and strain it. No special equipment, no big batch — just enough to see whether the method works with our fruit.
We are not claiming a yield yet, and we are not selling this oil. It is an experiment, and the honest version is that we don't know how it turns out. We'll report what we get — good or bad — once the batch is done.
What we'll do with it if it works
If the batch comes out clean, the first use is our own kitchen: cooking oil and dressings from fruit that would otherwise have been wasted. That is the right scale for a first experiment. Scaling up — bigger batches, consistent quality, anything beyond our own use — is a question for later, after we know the process actually works with storm-fallen fruit.
The bigger point is about how a small family farm handles losses. Every grove loses fruit to weather. Finding a use for the usable part of that loss, instead of writing all of it off, is the kind of practical, low-cost thinking that keeps a rebuilding grove moving forward.
Keep reading
- Why We're Stumping 1,200 Avocado Trees to Bring Our Grove Back to Life
- Fall Garden Update: Carrots, Beets, Radishes and Brussels Sprouts Wake Up at Patel Ranch
Taste it yourself
When the harvest is in, we ship hand-picked Hass avocados from our De Luz grove straight to your door. See what's available in the shop.