Tara and Chad Philipp had never tasted saffron until they took a camping trip with a family they’d recently met. Around the campfire, their new friends cooked a big pan of paella. The Philipps fell for the sweet, musky flavor of saffron — and were intrigued to learn it was the world’s most expensive spice.

On the way home, Chad Philipp researched how to grow saffron on their 3-acre plot in the Mojave Desert, east of Los Angeles. His wife was keen to build a new business so he could stop driving a truck and spend more time with their children.

“If I get something in my mind, I get obsessed with it pretty quickly,” he said. “I was like, ‘We’re going to do this.’ ”

A few months later, in 2021, the couple put $20,000 on a credit card to order 60,000 corms, the bulb-like stems that produce the saffron flower. And this past November, they harvested 250 grams of saffron, which they’ll sell for a whopping $100 per gram — as much as 10 times the price of high- quality imported saffron.

The Philipps are part of a resurgence of interest in growing saffron among small farmers in search of a cash crop, and among cooks and backyard gardeners seeking the thrill of growing the spice.

Today, farms are growing saffron in California, Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania and Vermont. Martha Stewart (of course) has saffron planted on her farm in Katonah, New York. And the Philipps have sold more than $1 million worth of corms to 24,000 customers.

Saffron’s fragrant, crimson threads have played a key role in many of the world’s great cuisines since ancient times. They add a golden color and subtle bass note to Indian sweets, Moroccan tagines, Spanish paellas, French bouillabaisse and tachin, a classic Iranian rice dish layered with meat and dried fruit. Today, Iran is the largest producer of saffron in the world, but because of trade restrictions, shoppers in the United States will find the spice imported from countries like Spain, India and Afghanistan.

In 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. imported 175 metric tons of saffron. But domestic production of saffron is so small — a tiny fraction of the saffron sold in the United States — that no one compiles data on it. One reason: Saffron from abroad is far less expensive, because the labor needed to painstakingly harvest each flower and remove its three delicate stigmas by hand is much cheaper than in the United States.

It may come as a surprise that saffron grows at all in the United States. But Americans have been cultivating it since the colonial era, when it was traded on the Philadelphia commodity exchange at the same price as gold.

Saffron has several advantages. Corms planted in September would bloom by November. The two-week harvest season was intense, but the plants needed little attention the rest of the year. And saffron corms replicate themselves underground. A farmer who plants 1,000 corms may have 4,000 the next year.

Still, harvesting saffron is backbreaking work. First, the tiny flowers are picked on hands and knees in the dark; saffron crocuses are best harvested before the sun rises and the flowers open. Then each stigma must be meticulously removed by hand.