As Santa Ana winds blew across Pauma Tribal Farms, leaves on the rows of olive trees gently rustled, revealing their silver undersides on a cool December day.

Although electricity was cut off to parts of the Pauma Reservation in North County to prevent wildfires from sparking in the high winds, staff happily cleared brush and showed off the 90-acre farm that includes an olive tree grove, grapevines, and a produce garden.

Preparations for the olive orchard on the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians tribal lands started in 2016, with the first trees planted two years later.

While there are only a few other olive oil producers in the county, San Diego is well-positioned for growing grapes and olives. Both thrive in the dry, warm to hot summers of the county’s Mediterranean climate, and olive trees are especially drought tolerant, meaning the lack of consistent rain does not negatively impact them.

“What’s really cool about this is it’s an opportunity for the tribe to diversify their agricultural crops and grow something that has less water uptake,” said Damian Valdez, olive orchard supervisor. “And it is something that we can grow locally here, instead of importing from other parts of the world.”

In 2020, Pauma Tribal Farms started growing tomatoes, squash, greens, and other produce to provide tribal members with community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes. It was an effort driven by the increased need to keep tribal members, especially elders, safe from coronavirus.

“When Covid came around, we had a couple elders cruise out and get sick,” said Edward Calac, a tribal member who supervises the vineyard. “It was super scary for anybody to even go to the grocery store, so we started this plan [to grow food for the community].”

Although the CSA effort is relatively new, generations of Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians have been involved with agriculture through growing oranges, avocados, and other crops, Calac added.

What began as a small agricultural initiative has grown into a robust effort to restore traditional foodways and medicine, enhance economic opportunities, and promote environmental sustainability for the tribe.

Last year, the farm produced enough olive oil bottles to distribute to tribal members, and they hope to produce enough to start selling to the general public.

Meanwhile, the vineyards—where varietals including grenache noir, errante noir, and viognier cover 6.5 acres—are also maturing, with the first commercial wine production anticipated in the coming year, pending regulatory approval.

Tribal Health

Pauma Tribal Farms is poised to make a lasting impact on tribal members’ health, culture, and economic independence.

Aside from helping to insulate the tribe from the spread of coronavirus at the height of the pandemic, the farm has had other community health impacts.

With its 1.25-mile walking path around the perimeter lined with traditional medicine plants like elderberry trees and aloe, the farm has become a hub for cultural reconnection and health promotion.

Each year, the tribe hosts a 5K walk on the farm, and tribal members are enjoying the organic, flavorful fruits and vegetables.

While commercial strawberries are among the most pesticide-contaminated fruits available in supermarkets, according to the Environmental Working Group, the ones from Pauma are grown using minimal natural fertilizers.

“From eating our food to eating the food from the stores is night and day,” Calac said. “What I see from the tribe is people wanting just to eat better, because it is Pauma food. It’s coming from us. It’s really prideful having the farm down here.”

Through the CSA program and selling Pauma Tribal Farms’ locally grown whole foods to the casino restaurant, Calac said the tribe also hopes to reduce diabetes rates amongst tribal members.

“There’s a high, high rate of bad food and diabetes, so we want to bring this food right here from our land and put it in the casino, and have our elders and our people be able to come and eat what’s from the land,” he said.

For Calac and his brother Jezreel Cuero, a member of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians who supervises the produce garden, working on the farm has also had a positive impact on their mental health. Both brothers have recovered from addictions and said reconnecting to the land through farming has inspired them to continue along the path of sobriety.

“I was an alcoholic for a lot of years, so I stepped away from that to figure things out, and then I started my own permaculture garden,” Cuero said. “Had no idea what I was doing, but I just started planting trees, and I’m up to like 40 now.”

Economic Growth and Longevity

Although the farm is currently only providing food to tribal members and the restaurant at Casino Pauma, staff have big plans for what future harvests can mean for the tribe and its economy.

Because tribal governments cannot collect revenue through taxes on land, sales, or income—unlike state, county, and local governments—tribes rely on income from business operations to fund public programs on their reservations.

Historically, research shows casinos are the top driver of economic mobility among tribal nations throughout the United States.

A 2015 paper from researchers at UCLA, San Diego State University, and Taylor Policy Group found gaming has allowed some tribal governments to become fiscally independent. Native nations reinvested gaming revenues into their economies, leading to improved housing quality on reservations, decreased unemployment rates, and an increase of women in the labor force.

When guests travel to reservations to visit casinos, it also significantly increases customers at other local businesses.

A 2024 paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that after Covid-19 stay-at-home orders were lifted, there was roughly a 200% increase of foot traffic to businesses near reopened casinos.

Four decades after the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act created the framework allowing casinos on tribal lands, tribes like Pauma are looking for new ways to draw visitors.

“We wanted to do a different economical growth besides the casino and try to diversify our portfolio on different kinds of branches of income,” Calac said.

Someday, he hopes Pauma Tribal Farms will become its own tourist destination.

Last September, the farm hosted Dine in the Vines, a tasting menu that used fruits and vegetables grown on the farm.

Throughout the evening, guests were served five courses, including a smoked rabbit and acorn soup, quail and dandelion greens salad, sumac-braised bison short ribs, and kóšaat páahay, a dessert course comprised of pumpkin crème brûlée, elderberry bread pudding, and fry bread with prickly pear purée. The meal also included a course served with viognier wine produced with grapes from Pauma Tribal Farms by Mia Marie Vineyards in Escondido.

“It was a wonderful night. It was super beautiful,” Calac said. “We just keep getting asked to do it again.”

Currently, the farm distributes 15 orders per week, which include a variety of about six fruits and vegetables. As staff start farming more of the property and the yield of crops continues to increase, they plan to start selling to the local community.

Soon, the tribe will break ground on a convenience store, where surplus fruits and vegetables will be available for sale when it opens in December. Eventually, they hope to open a tasting room where guests can try olive oils and wines produced by the farm.

“I want to see this thing go far, because I want to eventually take this home to my reservation,” Cuero said, adding that he wants to continue “growing knowledge and sharing it with our other communities, trying to push everybody towards that way of life.”

» paumatribe.com/farms