Market Watch: Cuyama, the perfect hideaway for Pink Lady apples

The Cuyama Valley is just 30 miles northeast of Santa Barbara and two hours from downtown Los Angeles, but it's a world of its own, rimmed by stark, rugged mountains, sparsely populated and little known. At the extreme southern end of the valley, the location where Cuyama Orchards grows apples is particularly remote, surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest, with only bobcats and bears as neighbors; it has no telephone lines or cellphone reception, and when it rains hard, the adjacent Cuyama River floods the only incoming road for a week or more.

By David Karp

November 18, 2011