We began with one crate of walnuts

In 2019 a family orchard in Baramulla had a harvest it could not sell at a fair price. We bought the whole crate, packed it by hand, and posted it to twelve friends abroad. Every one of them wrote back.

That is still the model, only larger. We buy directly at the farm gate — no auctions, no brokers, no blending of Kashmiri saffron with cheaper Iranian threads, which is the quiet plague of this trade. Payment goes to the grower in advance of the harvest, so nobody has to sell early at a loss.

Everything is graded, sorted and packed in our small Srinagar workshop. Kraft pouches, glass jars, cotton cloth and jute twine; the only plastic in the building is the tape on the outer carton, and we are working on that too.

Then it flies. Tracked, insured, customs-cleared, to more than sixty countries — often reaching a kitchen in Lisbon or Melbourne within a week of leaving the valley.