On the afternoon I speak with Shannon Warwar, it’s too windy to sit outside by her lavender field, which is nonetheless a fragrant testament to how far her family’s Moorpark farm has evolved since she and her husband, Greg, bought the 23-acre property in 1999. While most of Warwar Family Farm’s acreage is orchard dedicated to lemons, avocados and mandarins, it’s Shannon’s more recent venture into herbs, spices and botanical products that has allowed her to forge deeper connections with her community and the land itself.
The transformation began four years ago when a visiting friend from North Carolina posed a simple question: Why not make some money from the herbs growing in Shannon’s kitchen garden? That suggestion sparked what would become a thriving side business at the Ojai Community Farmers’ Market, where Shannon now offers an expanding array of dried herbs, custom spice blends, teas and botanical products.
She started by growing the basics—chamomile, mint, parsley, dill, five varieties of thyme, several varieties of oregano, marjoram, basil—which she dried and packaged in distinctive jars with handwritten labels. Those labels are a touch that has become one of her signature selling points. “People are always saying ‘Oh my gosh, your jars are so cute,’” she says. “That attracts people to come in, but then they see what we’re doing.”
And what Shannon is doing is helping people appreciate how easy it is to support local farming by buying most everything at the farmers’ market or from local farms. “You don’t have to go to the grocery store and buy a jar of McCormick spice,” she says. While deeply appreciative of her customers, Shannon hopes to inspire people to treat farmers’ markets less as a novelty and more as a consistent way of shopping.
Her own business has grown organically, driven by customer requests. “I began by only selling single spices and teas and tea blends,” she says. But when shoppers asked about Italian seasoning blends, Shannon realized she already grew all the necessary ingredients. She began developing and testing recipes, expanding her product line based on community feedback.
Her lavender field, originally planted to provide year-round forage for her honeybees, has become another source of botanical inspiration. Shannon has branched out into creating products like lip balms, soaps and candles using elements from the farm—not just lavender but also lemon zest for citrus-scented candles, mint for teas and beeswax from her hives. The lip balms featuring farm-grown fragrances like mandarin, lemon, lavender and rose are especially popular.
Perhaps the most significant evolution at the Warwar farm has been the transition to organic practices, a three-year journey that reached completion in October 2024 and is now awaiting certification. The decision stemmed from what Shannon describes as a mounting sense of cognitive dissonance: “We felt like such hypocrites because we would buy organic food at the grocery store or at the farmers’ market, but we were spraying our food to sell,” she says.
The catalyst for change came through Shannon’s beekeeping experience. After repeatedly receiving notifications about pesticide spraying in the area and simultaneously losing healthy hives, she and her husband decided it was time for a fundamental change in their farming practices.
The transition hasn’t been easy. Without conventional pesticides, managing weeds and pests requires significantly more time and labor. However, the rewards have been profound. During their first organic spring, the farm experienced what Shannon calls an “epidemic of ladybugs”—a welcome sign of returning biodiversity. “We realized, ‘Oh my goodness, they have food to eat now.’ We’d been spraying, so the ladybugs had nothing to eat before. Little by little, we started seeing so many beneficial insects and bumblebees that we hadn’t seen in years.”
Midway through our interview, Shannon explains that the Arabic word warwar means “songbird” (Shannon’s husband’s family is from Nazareth). Like its namesake, the farm has become a symbol of natural harmony as it has transitioned to organic. Where once there were rows of “clean dirt” devoid of life, Shannon now delights in finding earthworms with every shovelful of soil. “The earth is healing,” she says. “All of the good bugs and insects are coming back.” She hopes by telling their story she can encourage others. “Try to grow organic if you possibly can. Or at least buy organic at the farmers’ market!”
While the herb business may not be booming by conventional metrics, Shannon remains undaunted in her commitment to providing her community with responsibly grown, high-quality products. She’s found creative ways to reach customers, including setting up a small retail display at Hannick Hair Studio in Thousand Oaks, where owner Anne Hannick offers space to support her. Here and at the Ojai market you can find Shannon’s botanical products as well as produce like Gold Nugget tangerines that, while delicious, are deemed too lumpy by the packinghouses that buy most of the farm’s orchard produce.
“Even though maybe I’m not making a ton of money on this, I really believe in it,” Shannon reflects. “I feel like it’s doing a good thing for the community. In my small world here, I’m offering something that’s responsible and good and something that’s good for us.”
The Ojai Community Farmers’ Market is every Thursday 2–6pm at 414 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai. For online ordering or Farm Day hours, visit WarwarFamilyFarms.com.
