For five generations, the LaGrande family has been committed to providing the best rice possible. Every kernel comes from family farms within the Sacramento Valley, never more than sixty miles from where we mill and package.
Family Values
We understand the role that small, local family farms play in feeding the world — we come from one. Our family moved from France to Montreal and eventually settled in the Sacramento Valley in the 1850’s, just north of the Sacramento River Delta in one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world. This region also happens to be one of the few regions able to grow both short and medium-grain rice, known as “sticky” or sushi rice.
LaGrande Family History
Today’s LaGrande family first put down its roots in the Sacramento Valley in the mid-nineteenth century, with the arrival of the French Canadian LaGrande, Fortier, Spooner and St. Louis families.
Edward LaGrande left Canada around 1850 and traveled to the United States.
Elizabeth Fortier came with the Fortier family from Deux Montagnes, Quebec to the northeast Sacramento Valley, where Edward met Elizabeth.
Elizabeth and Edward settled in the foothills of the coastal range, west of the town now known as Willows, California. There they started their family, which eventually grew to three daughters and five sons, one of whom—Joseph Herman, or J.H. LaGrande—became the patriarch of our family.
Tradition holds that J.H. LaGrande and Adeline Spooner were introduced by siblings at a barn dance. J.H. was a tall young man destined to be taller—in his prime, he was a formidable physical presence. “Little Adeline,” as she was known to her sisters, was quite the opposite. Tiny in stature, but large in heart and spirit, this local beauty captured the attention of young J.H. LaGrande. The stories of their courting period are few, but we know they were married in Willows, California on January 25, 1905.
J.H. and Adeline wanted some independence. That same year, they heard about some land available southwest of Maxwell in Colusa County. They secured it and moved there from Willows in 1905. We still hold this land today—on LaGrande Road.
