Flower Farmers of Frog Creek

from Ojai Magazine. Summer 2022

Eating for the Season

the Flower Farmers of Frog Creek

by KIT STOLZ

“I modeled this farm on a day that I would enjoy.”

It took “a saint” to make her lavender farm in Upper Ojai possible, said Christel Rogero. “We bought this 7 acres in 2003,” said Rogero, a teacher, speaking of herself and her husband, Larry, who works in renewable energy. “But it didn’t look anything like this.” Rogero turned to gesture at her driveway, a neatly landscaped courtyard built around a fi re pit, with a view of the Topa Topa Mountains to the north, and a log-cabin home on a stone foundation to the south. On the other side of the house, down a short slope and across a wooden bridge over a barranca 20 feet across and 12 feet deep, was a field of lavender. In early spring, the neatly trimmed mounds were dormant, not yet ready to sprout new growth. “When we first moved in, my husband and I each brought a Weed Eater from our home in the valley at the time, and we went to work,” Rogero remembered. “We worked all day cutting weeds and then lay down on the porch, because it was July, and it was sweltering. Then we looked at what we had done, and we had cut out one tiny little square in 7 acres of tall weeds and we thought: What did we get ourselves into?” For help, they eventually went to a longtime resident, Jim Hall, who has lived in Upper Ojai for the last 34 years. At the time he helped support his farming and ranching habit by doing heavy equipment work for his neighbors, even though he had lost both his arms as a young man in an industrial accident when he was up in the air splicing a 16,000-volt Southern California Edison power line. “I just love that man with all my heart and soul,” Rogero said. “He came over here with a big tractor to knock down the weeds, and he told us where to plant. There’s never been animals on this part of the property, he told us, and it’s never been farmed. It’s the fluffiest dirt around.” Plant something beautiful” he told us. So lavender came into my mind, because it’s drought-tolerant, it outcompetes weeds, and it needs almost nothing.” Interviewed at his home in Upper Ojai, in a backyard overlooking a verdant fi eld of young hay, Hall insisted he’s no hero, nor a saint for that matter, but does believe he’s alive for a reason. He said that at least seven times in his life he should have died — four in Vietnam, when he was leading a platoon as a young man, and three after being nearly electrocuted, because when he was in the hospital

after being shocked, his heart repeatedly stopped beating. “This is going to be hard to explain, but when I needed help with things, there was somebody there. I’m going to say it was a blessing,” he said. “So I was willing to share what I had, and … I’ve helped people up here do a lot of different things.” At Christel and Larry Rogero’s Frog Creek Farm about 2 miles away, Hall used a tractor to clear a large fi eld behind the house. The Rogeros planted 1,200 lavenders, of three varieties, to share with visitors during June and July in the summers.

“It was a rookie move,” Christel Rogero said of the decision to begin with over 1,000 plants. “It’s a lot of work, and it happens mostly during the hottest time of the year. We ended up taking out every other row. It was a decision to reduce our water intake and reduce labor. With the water situation now, I won’t plant any more lavender. In fact, we’re taking out our grass.” Rogero said a well supplies the farm, but the house still depends on Lake

Casitas for water. “Every time I drive by Lake Casitas, it breaks my heart,” she said. “We do water the plants from the well, but still, with climate change I want to be as sustainable as I can.”

Every year in June and July on the weekends, the couple opens the farm for a “U-pick” operation for visitors, typically from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Christel Rogero said they don’t advertise and don’t take reservations. “It’s an Old World culture to operate a U-pick farm, but people love it,” she said. “It brings families together.

**Christel Rogero with her niece**
Photo by Kai Morgan

“I’ve had wedding proposals out in the field. I’ve had baby pictures taken, and baskets and baskets of lavender all around. People love it, and they love to dress up to do it. So to see people in beautiful dresses is kind of part of the experience.”

The Frog Creek Farm was for a time part of the annual Lavender Festival in Ojai, and Rogero sat on the event’s board.

“When I was on the board we used to get a lot more people up here,” she said. “We had buses coming, and more people than I could handle. I couldn’t even staff it. I have this little 15-by-20 shed for baskets and supplies, and we had hundreds of people in there on those days. So when COVID came along, we knew we had to manage people better.”

Rogero said the U-pick method of harvesting was an evolution: They didn’t plan it. At first, they held annual harvest parties.

“We’d invite 50 or 60 people, and make it a fun afternoon for everybody,” she says. “Then it turned into, “OK, I’ll sell lavender at the farmers’ market [in Ojai on Sundays].” That’s a lot of work over the week in advance of the market — harvesting, packing, designing, then turning around and packing it all up again. So it dawned on me one day: Why don’t I have people come here and let them enjoy it for what it is? It’s so pretty.”

**Elli Connally at Frog Creek Farm. Photo by Lacey Connolly.**

During the height of COVID, Rogero said, the farm became all the more popular. “The phone was ringing o the hook,” she said. “I think people, especially people from the city, just wanted to be outside and enjoy it. There was more of an appreciation, and more of an affinity for the experience. I could see it in their faces. I think it’s going to happen again this year.”

Next door to the lavender field, closer to an entrance o Sulphur Mountain Road, is a separate part of the property called Topa Vista Farm, open mostly on weekends. The Rogeros have rented it out to different organic vegetable farmers over the years, and enjoy its produce, but aren’t involved directly in its operation.

“It was always just like Jim Hall said: We’ve got to grow something great out there, because that is untouched land. And we knew that we wanted to eat out of it,” Rogero said. “Larry and I are vegetarians anyway, so to eat like this, o our land, is just the best of the best.”

Hall still works for Larry and Christel, but not nearly as much as in the past. “I’ve known them for a long time, ever since they first started that place,” he said. “I have a deep admiration for those two. I did a lot of work for them for years, but not so much anymore. I’ll go in there maybe once a year and help them some. They don’t need it like they did at the beginning.”

“We’ve never made any money at this,” Rogero said. “But we are happy for people to come out and enjoy the experience. It helps us and it helps them. I know I just love the countryside, and seeing the flowers in all their variety, and I love that I can picnic out there — that scratches my itch for a good experience. I think that is a good day. So that’s the way I kind of modeled it. I modeled this farm on a day that I would enjoy.”