Festival celebrates berry king of Cambria: the olallieberry

When most people yearn for berries, they think of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, even blackberries.

But the olallieberry is king in Cambria, where a festival devoted to the treat will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 5, in the gardens of the Cambria Historical Museum, at the corner of Center Street and Burton Drive in East Village downtown.

According to event sparkplug and founder Gayle Jenkins of A Matter of Taste, the second annual Olallieberry Festival will feature eponymous pies, crumbles, jams and jellies, plants, cake pops and candles. Italian zeppole, sandwiches and other foods, beer, cider and wine will be available. Jill Knight will provide live music. Craft booths and a kids’ craft corner will be open.

Most similar celebrations in other areas honor a substantial local crop. But the North Coast doesn’t have a comparably substantial harvest of olallieberries. So why tout them at a festival here?

Jenkins said she pushed for a berry-honoring event because many of her lovely childhood-vacation memories include olallieberries in Cambria.

It’s also because many products made and sold here all (you should forgive the phrase) are jam packed with the tart berry.

And lots of visitors know that.

Among those popular edibles are pies, cakes and other desserts, entrée sauces, spreads, sandwiches, scones, muffins, preserves, salad dressing, syrups and more.

Recent conversations with John Linn of Cambria provided some background for the local legend.

In 1979, the Linn family planted on their Santa Rosa Creek Road farm one acre of olallieberries and a similarly sized area with both boysenberries and red raspberries.

The family’s initial concept was a U-pick farm.

When the less-well-known olallies proved to be the hit, Linn said, the family replaced the other plants with the more popular berries.

Fast forward through the establishment of Linn’s Farm Store, Main Street restaurant and Bridge Street shops, including the Easy as Pie take-out, plus commercial accounts that include supermarkets and other retail outlets elsewhere.

Some Linn’s recipes feature other fruits, but the fragile olallie is still the farm’s trademark product (except at Knott’s Berry Farm, for which Linn’s makes special boysenberry preserves and more).

Other farmers also grow olallies in Cambria now, including Patsy Garoupa, whose jams are sold at A Matter of Taste and served at several upscale restaurants in the area.

So, if Linn’s farm has slightly less than two acres of the berry plants, producing only about 10 tons a year, where do all those other olallieberries come from?

From other growers, such as the Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville and from farms in Fresno and elsewhere, Linn said. “We’ve gone high and low, all over the place, in order to supply ourselves … I think we’ll be adding more plants before long,” but even then, the demand will far outstrip the local supply.

Outside purveyors usually provide flash-frozen berries, which works best, Linn said, because frozen olallies actually make better products. He said even Linn’s own berries wind up in the freezer before being processed into the products that have helped make olallies Cambria’s trademark berry.

North Coast olallieberries are more tart than those grown in hotter climates, he said, and that’s the taste profile that Linn’s prefers. So purveyors often pick slightly underripe berries for Linn’s to match their recipe requirements.

By the way, the olallieberry is a cross between the youngberry and loganberry. And olallies are not the prickliest berry plants, Linn said. That honor goes to the boysenberry.

This story was originally published May 1, 2018 at 12:21 PM with the headline "Festival celebrates berry king of Cambria: the olallieberry."