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Seventy years ago, Don Christopher planted 10 acres of garlic as an experiment on a Gilroy farm he bought with money from his father. Since then, Christopher Ranch has expanded to 7,000 acres farmed every year across Santa Clara and San Benito Counties, employing 900 full-time workers and producing over 110 million pounds of garlic—over a billion cloves—a year.
“People keep coming back to us, said Don’s grandson and Executive Vice President Ken Christopher, “and I think that’s because of our integrity, our dedication to our products, our first-in-class food safety programs, corporate social responsibility and philanthropy. We think that is the winning message.”
The Christopher family immigrated to the United States from Denmark in the 1890s, farming hay under patriarch Ole Christopher. Moving to the Valley of the Heart’s Delight, a nickname for San Jose based on the fragrant fruit crops of the area, they became heavily involved in the prune industry.
Born in 1934, Don had little interest in the prune business. In his early twenties, he moved to Gilroy and, with help from his father Frank, bought land in 1956 to start his own farm. With steady growth over the years, Christopher Ranch became the region’s largest garlic grower.
“He learned that the real money in garlic wasn’t just growing it,” Ken said, “but also packing it and shipping it, being in control of the entire vertically integrated process. Instead of getting pennies on the dollar, he commanded top dollar. So he was able to expand and to grow.”
Christopher Ranch’s main crop is an heirloom garlic varietal from the Piedmont region of Italy, which Don trademarked as “Monviso” after the nearby mountain range’s highest peak. The company is the only commercial grower in the United States to use heirloom garlic seeds.
The garlic bulbs, as sold, have a robust heat and spiciness due to the longer cultivation time, unlike those grown by growers more interested in faster crop yields, which produce bulbs with higher water content. Christopher Ranch garlic has the highest Brix values in the industry, Ken said, a measure of flavor, high nutrient density and improved storage life.
It is why, in interviews for BenitoLink’s Eat, Drink, Savor series, chefs almost invariably cite the Ranch’s products as their kitchen staples and frequently design dishes around them. In the case of Joseph Elmhorst’s Steak Stop food truck, Christopher Ranch garlic makes an appearance in almost every menu offering.
“Christopher Ranch garlic is what garlic tastes like,” said Elmhorst. “It’s got the right flavor profile, and it’s grown right here locally. Why wouldn’t we use it? We confit it in its own juices, roast it off, and spin it into an aioli. That’s the whole secret to our Garlic Bomb sandwich.”
Growing garlic from seed is a seven-year process, Ken said, that begins with plantings in colder climates, such as Washington, Nevada, and Oregon, before the bulbs are transplanted to California to finish growing.
“What that does,” he said, “is give the garlic a lot more robustness, a lot more strength for when you transplant from a colder environment into California. Once the garlic reaches California, it’s going to finish out much larger with higher yields.”
Garlic, Ken said, is also a rotational crop that can be grown in the same field only once every four years. To grow 7,000 acres of garlic, the company has to either own or lease another 21,000 acres to keep production steady. (In between garlic cycles, the land is leased to farmers who plant crops such as corn, tomatoes and lettuce to recharge the soil.)
In certain circumstances, such as in the organic garlic fields in Paicines, Ken said the company uses an innovative weed-control method with AI-controlled “pyro tractors”. These robotic tractors fire streams of fire into the ground to kill weeds, and because the garlic is planted deep underground, it survives the singeing and regrows after watering.
After harvesting, the garlic is placed into 2,000-pound wooden bins and transported to dry storage. To ensure a year-round supply, much of the garlic is moved to specialized cold-storage buildings, where, according to Ken, the temperature is lowered to 32°F and oxygen is removed, causing the garlic to “go to sleep” and remain fresh for up to a year.
When it is time for processing, the garlic is “cracked” using rubber rollers that break the bulb into individual cloves without damaging them. These cloves are then sized and sorted: large cloves are typically sent to restaurants as peeled garlic, while smaller or imperfect cloves are diverted for use in jarred products like chopped, crushed, minced or roasted garlic.
The harvest, according to Ken, typically occurs between the second week of June and mid-August. Every single one of the over one billion bulbs must be harvested by hand because there is currently no technology that can account for the unique shapes and “personalities” of individual garlic bulbs.
By the 1980s, the company was the county’s largest garlic grower, and business was booming, thanks in part to the accidental discovery of a faster way to peel garlic.
“We had a crew cleaning one of our facilities,” Ken said. “There were a few cloves in the bottom of a plastic bin, and they’re cleaning using compressed air hoses. They fired the compressed air, the garlic whipped around, and the skin fell off almost like magic.”
After showing the discovery to Don, the company’s internal fabrication shop created the first commercial industrial air peeler, which has become such a time-saver and industry standard that others now produce versions readily available for restaurant and home use.
While fresh garlic bulbs remain the company’s principal product, with Costco alone purchasing 300,000 pounds of bulbs a week, this innovation opened the door to the more consumer-friendly jarred products.
“That innovation really changed the operation,” Ken said. “Before that, it everything was just fresh garlic. Since then, we’ve advanced the technology to where we can produce between 500,000 and 600,000 lbs of peeled garlic every single week, every week out of the year.”
This represents 50% of all domestically grown garlic and up to 25% of total US garlic consumption, with the company maintaining a comfortable 3-5% annual growth rate. Christopher Ranch is also the nation’s largest provider of shallots, primarily grown in San Juan Bautista.
Christopher Ranch is also one of the most generous local businesses, heavily supporting the construction of Gilroy’s Christopher High School, later providing laptops for every student and canceling the student lunch debt for the entire city. Don also personally funded the building of the high school’s sports complex.
Every year, the company offers scholarships to students to ensure they’re going on to not only four-year universities but also trade and technical schools. And the Gilroy Garlic Festival, which Christopher co-founded in 1979, has raised over $15 million for local causes and projects.
Workers also benefit from an on-site preschool built in 1992, the first private partnership with a Head Start program, which teaches pre-K and essential English language skills to ensure they are on equal footing with their peers when they enter kindergarten, Ken said.
“We’re the country’s last family-run commercial-scale garlic farm,” said Ken, “and we are intent on being an anchor for our community. I’ve learned through my grandfather that you can change lives, and it’s not that hard, with drive and focus.”
For more information about Christopher Ranch and a product catalog, visit the website.
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