Salute to Idaho Agriculture: Magic Valley’s Caviar Farm

FILER, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) —Have you ever wanted to try caviar? Well did you know a local aqua ranch in the Magic Valley produces the delicacy?

“Our caviars are recognized as some of the best produced, farm-produced caviars in the world.”

Idaho Spring Foods in Filer is serving up something special. They’re the processing portion of the Blind Canyon Aqua Ranch which raises sturgeon and rainbow trout, mainly for their eggs.

They’ve been in the Magic Valley for over 40 years and have been producing caviar since 2005. According to Gary Lemmon, production manager at the aqua ranch, what makes the Magic Valley so special is the water.

“It’s about the availability and the quality of the water. And the quality of the water in our case for sturgeon caviar produces a really clean, well-flavored product. We’re very fortunate to have this water resource that we have.”

Sturgeon can take more than twelve years to raise for harvest and Lemmon says the window to harvest the eggs is small, only about two to three months. If that opportunity is missed, they have to wait two years until the fish are ready for harvest again.

“So to harvest that caviar, we also at this point are harvesting the fish, and so we have that meat product as well as the caviar product.”

The aqua ranch started raising its fish thanks to the conservation program through the Department of Fish and Game and the College of Southern Idaho.

“That’s where we are able to get our brood stock and we’ve now been spawning our own fish, our own brood stock since 2000, so it’s been a long-term project.”

With that brood stock, they have developed their source, and now spawn two to three sturgeons per year to keep up with production. In a full year, Idaho spring foods can produce up to one ton of caviar that gets distributed across the country.

With agriculture being a main economic driver in the Gem State, the company says they’re proud to be part of it.

“It’s just important, you know, you go to the bigger cities, and they don’t have that food production, somebody needs to have that base production. That’s what we provide here in the Magic Valley.”

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