There are some people whose imagination and creative drive need many outlets. Nan McEvoy, granddaughter of Michael de Young, founder of the San Francisco Chronicle, continued to work for the Chronicle Publishing Company and headed the board from 1981 to 1995. Always committed to public service, she also served with the original Peace Corps, John D. Rockefeller’s Population Council and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
When the Chronicle board’s by-laws dictated that she retire at 72, she started an entirely new enterprise and in the process put California’s olive oil industry back on the map. Her intention was more prosaic. “I wanted a wonderful place in the country where my grandchildren could experience the outdoors as I did during my childhood summers on a ranch in Oregon,” Nan explains.
After she had purchased her 550-acre property near Petaluma, she learned that it was zoned for agriculture. There were doubters when Nan proposed to plant olive groves on land previously only used to graze cattle. “The county extension agent wasn’t sure I’d have success with the trees, because it’s cooler here along the coast than it is in most olive-growing regions,” she remembers. “He may also have guessed that I didn’t know anything about olive trees.”
But success was what she was aiming for, and success is what she achieved. On the ranch there are now 18,000 olive trees, propagated from the original 3,000 trees brought from Tuscany, and McEvoy is the nation’s largest producer of organic, estate-grown olive oil. In keeping with Nan’s iconoclasm, the skink on the McEvoy Ranch label is a tribute to her grandchildren, who delight in finding the little lizard-like creatures in the gardens on the ranch.
The olives are picked when they are still green by workers with special pneumatic combs. They go immediately to the ranch’s frantoio (olive mill) where they are crushed by the massive granite wheels of the state-of-the-art Rapanelli stone and blade mill, the only one of its kind in the United States. No heat is used in this gentle process, so the full flavor and purity of the fruit is preserved. The result is a green-golden oil with a peppery finish. The oil is certified organic, extra-virgin and is estate grown, pressed and bottled. It consistently wins awards and raves from chefs.
The whole lifestyle of the ranch is supremely important to Nan. Her aesthetic is reflected in everything there, from the rock walls built without masonry, to the organic vegetable and fruit garden, to the whimsical Chinese pavilion used for entertaining. “Almost everything we eat is grown here except for the meat and fish,” she says.
Nan McEvoy delightedly says that she grew up with a “don’t-fence-me-in philosophy, and it becomes who you are. I’ve generally done whatever I set my mind to.” But the ranch has an added dimension, besides Nan’s determination. “It’s magical. I don’t precisely know what it is that makes it magical, but I recognized it the first time I drove by.”
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