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Pampore, Kashmir · late October to mid November
The Kashmiri saffron harvest, by hand
Every thread of Kashmiri saffron starts as a purple flower picked at dawn and opened by hand the same day. These are our growers' fields and homes, photographed during the harvest.
The fields
Saffron fields of Pampore, at first light
Pampore and neighbouring Lethpora, on the karewa uplands south of Srinagar, have grown saffron for centuries. For most of the year the fields look bare — then, in the last weeks of October, they turn purple almost overnight.
The crocus flowers open at dawn, and the harvest is a race against the sun: an open flower fades quickly, and the threads with it.
When it happens
- Aug
- Sep
- Oct — harvest
- Nov — harvest
- Dec
The crocus flowers for a few weeks from late October into November. Outside those weeks there is nothing to pick — which is why each year's harvest is so small.
Picking
Picked by hand, flower by flower
There is no machine for this. Families walk the rows in the early morning and pick each flower by hand into wicker baskets, before the day warms up.
The season lasts only two to three weeks, so every morning counts.
Separating
Separating the threads at home
The baskets come home, the flowers are tipped out, and everyone sits down around them. Each flower is opened and its threads are pulled out by hand, the same day it was picked.
It is slow, careful work — and it is why real saffron costs what it does.
The stigma
Three crimson threads to a flower
Each crocus holds just three red stigmas. Those threads are the saffron; the purple petals and the yellow stamens are not.
It takes well over a hundred flowers to make a single gram of dried saffron.
The saffron
Dried, sorted and sent to you
The threads are dried gently, sorted by hand and packed in small runs. We buy them directly from the families who grow them — no traders in between.
What reaches your kitchen is exactly what came out of those flowers.
Why real saffron is precious
- crimson threads in every flower
- 3
- crimson threads in every flower
- flowers for a single gram
- 100+
- flowers for a single gram
- weeks of harvest a year
- 2–3
- weeks of harvest a year
- traders between us and the grower
- 0
- traders between us and the grower
Taste this harvest
The saffron in these photographs is the saffron we sell — bought straight from the families who grow it, and checked by hand before it is packed.