Originally published in the Napa Valley Register on August 28, 2022.
You can always tell a lot about someone by meeting their friends. Afterall, true friends are those who celebrate with you, pick you up at your lowest, and support you when you get the crazy idea to start a farm or ranch.
If ever you have the luck to enjoy an Oktoberfest at the ranch of Sean Canavan, and his partner Vio Minderman, you will find it is surrounded by all their incredible friends. Sean started Channa Ranch when he and Vio moved to the 8-acre property Sean bought in 2018 in the Capay Valley.
But we do not need to meet Sean Canavan’s friends to know what a wonderful person and rancher he is. Many Napa Farmers Market shoppers have likely had friendly chats with Sean on a Saturday morning to buy his chicken, pork, duck, guinea fowl, or eggs. It is also likely that Sean shared a few helpful hints on how to cook the food he sold you.
Sean spent most of his career as a celebrated chef everywhere from a Michelin star restaurant in Berlin, Germany, to Lespinasse in New York City. But it was when he moved back to California to cook in Larkspur that he started shopping at the Marin farmers market and befriended all the ranchers and farmers. Thus began his journey to becoming a rancher.
Sean’s interest in farming started at a very young age. Growing up in industrial Germany (what Sean proclaims is the ugliest part of Germany), there were not many opportunities to experience agriculture. But when he visited his mother’s hometown in Southern Germany, he was able to spend his summers picking potatoes and bringing cattle in from the pasture.
Speaking with Sean, you can tell these are some of his fondest memories, and the reason why he always wanted to become a rancher. But in the Germany Sean grew up in only farmers’ sons became farmers, and so Sean became a chef. Never forgetting the desire to farm. It was not until a life-changing event that Sean realized he could work in the kitchen the rest of his life, or he could try to make ranching a reality.
Sean spent years looking at ranch land in California, but it was not until he visited the Capay Valley that he found his perfect piece of land. Everything came together for him to buy his perfect ranch.
Channa Ranch is a dream in motion. It has come so far from the neglected property it was, to the small ranch it is now. Starting a ranch from scratch is after all no small feat, and I have watched as Sean and Vio tirelessly support each other in reaching their dreams. Be it Vio milling corn Sean grew in a test plot, or Sean helping Vio, a pastry chef, open a specialty donut shop in downtown Vacaville.
Sean mostly raises animals for meat or eggs and milk, and grows some plant crops. Sean’s birds are all raised in mobile coops and his pigs get all sorts of good food and the comfort of digesting in a cool mud pit on a hot day. But Sean’s hopes and ideas for the future are still being tried every day.
As a chef, Sean has the knowledge of what is good food. He wants to raise his animals in a humane and sustainable manner, but he wants to raise food that is culinarily the best. It is why he is always trying new breeds of animals, be it Bresse chickens, quail eggs, or Friesian milk sheep.
Sean is now a rancher, but he will always have his experience as a chef to bring perspective and work ethic. When I asked him how cooking compares to farming and ranching, he told me they are the same because the work and the learning never stops. He can work 10 hours or 16 hours in a day, and it will never make a dent in the workload. The difference with ranching is that he can do it on his own terms and time.
“It’s not easy, hasn’t been easy, and isn’t getting easier”, Sean says when talking about ranching. But in the evening after the chores are done and all the animals are fed and watered, he can sit on his porch and know there is no place on earth he would rather be.