Daniel Vesely delivering organic avocados to Berlin. Photo by Greggory Moore. 

How did a couple’s private search for a weekend mountain getaway lead to local restaurants hooking up with a San Bernardino orchard for organic produce? It’s all about being open to possibility.

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It was summer of 2010, and Daniel and Jana Vesely were expecting their first child together and hoping to acquire a suitable property so that they could easily take short respites from their Downtown Long Beach condominium.

“We wanted it to be really close,” says Daniel Vesely, noting that they were considering the Mt. Baldy area. “We didn’t want to drive to Big Bear.”

It was while looking at one cabin that came pretty close to fitting the bill that the seller was considerate enough to turn them on to a ranch he thought might be a good fit for them—even if it wasn’t what they had in mind.

“It was something completely different,” Vesely says. “It really didn’t have a cottage to speak of, but it totally reminded me of the mountains that I spent time in [what is now] the Czech Republic. It was 112 acres of very rugged terrain, and a 12-acre valley with grown-up trees, a running creek…It was beautiful.”

But it was not until after they acquired the property that they realized it harbored more than they had bargained for—in a good way.

“So [after] we bought it, we realized there was an orchard,” Vesely says. “It was neglected, it was very small—about 300 trees. Some of them were partially burnt by a fire in 2003. Nevertheless, it was an orchard; it was producing peaches and figs.”

The couple decided that if they were going to grow produce for sale, they wanted it to be certified organic, and decided to go the route of California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), which includes certification by the USDA. Usually a lengthy process, the prior neglect of the property turned out to be in their favor.

“It is relatively difficult and economically challenging for established farms to be certified as organic, because in order to be certified, basically you have to be organic for three years without being able to claim you are,” Vesely explains. “You have to kind of be ‘clean’ for three years, and then you get the CCOF certification. That may be cost-prohibitive, because [the prospective CCOF farms] have to absorb all the costs related to [going organic], while having to sell as if they are not organic. […] Because it had been completely neglected […] we had it organically certified within three months, rather than three years—because there had been nothing going into the ground, no chemicals used for the last 15 years.”

Now an organic producer, Vesely took the straightest line possible to getting his produce on the market, directly approaching various vendors—a tactic that led to his becoming a walk-in vendor for restaurants in Long Beach.

“I started [by approaching] retails stores like Top Valu [Market], but it was too hard to break in. I’m too small for that,” he recounts. “[…] Then one weekend I brought [to Long Beach] 200 or 300 avocados, more or less at risk, thinking I would walk around here and ask restaurants that are health-conscious or organic—or just have a need for quality avocados. […] I walked around and gave the owners or managers between two and a half-dozen avocados to taste, and they loved them.”

This season, Cold Creek Orchard supplied avocados to Agave Grill, Zephyr, Steamed, GreenHouse Coffee, and Berlin. Vesely says Cold Creek is also able to supply peaches (Zephyr is already signed on for some of those), figs, apples, pears, and honey; and that in the future they will consider growing vegetables.

“This was really a pilot season for avocados, and it [succeeded] beyond my expectations,” Vesely says.

But Cold Creek Orchard has yet to become a profitable venture. “I’m sinking a lot of money into it,” Vesely confesses, although hopeful that increased demand for his produce will reverse that trend. The fig trees are currently fruiting, and in three months the apple trees will be doing the same.

And then there’s Cold Creek Range, an on-premises tactical laser-tagging range that gives players 12 acres of raw mountain terrain to safely go to war…and then barbecue, or even camp out overnight.

All from a simple search for a little weekend getaway. And whether it’s fate or chance or a story of attempting to make the most of opportunity, the result is one more independent provider of organic produce for a city that increasingly values that kind of thing.

For more information on Cold Creek Orchard, contact Daniel Vesely directly at [email protected].