FALLBROOK -- With a dog named Olive, and living off Olive Hill Road in Fallbrook, James and Stephanie Frazer may have been destined to start a business selling organic olive oil and other Mediterranean dietary staples.

The couple's new business, in some ways a return to Fallbrook's first commercial crop in the late 19th century, has met with success at local farmers markets. Plans for a store in Fallbrook or Bonsall may not be far behind.

"I did some research on Fallbrook, and I read that in the 1800s, they had olives here before they ever had avocados," Stephanie Frazer said Thursday.

The health benefits of olives and other natural Mediterranean foods attracted the couple, she said, and led to the formation of their Olive Hill Co. last year.

"We were reading about people living to be 100 years old on this Mediterranean diet, and we already used olive oil a lot," said Frazer, a self-described entrepreneur who also runs a high-end pet sitting and dog obedience service in Santa Monica.

The Frazers sell their extra-virgin olive oil and other Greek products at three farmers markets every week -- in Bonsall on Sunday, Valley Center on Thursday and Vista on Saturday.

Besides selling the purest olive oil they could find in California, their booth also offers pickled garlic, organic olives, feta cheese and capers -- the beginnings of a killer Greek salad, Stephanie Frazer said.

"It's pretty simple, with the ingredients we have here," she said. "All you have to do is go buy the lettuce a booth down."

The Olive Hill Co. gets its organic oil and olives from a farm in Central California, and imports some of the other items from Greece.

Stephanie Frazer said there were olive oil producers in San Diego County, but none of them held to the chemical-free standards she and her husband were looking for.

Besides the various San Diego growers, the Temecula Olive Oil Company produces its own oil and has a retail store in Old Town San Diego.

"Even though it's more of a high-end, gourmet food, we do really great -- especially in Bonsall," Stephanie Frazer said. "I think these days, with the economy, the one thing people are willing to spend money on is good and healthy food."

On Thursday, as the Frazers sold 17-ounce bottles of olive oil for $16 to customers in Valley Center, Stephanie Frazer said she enjoys the people who frequent farmers markets.

"That's the reason we stuck with it -- the atmosphere, the people, the vendors," she said. "The only problem is, every time I start setting up I get hungry."

Nearby, her husband passed out samples of Greek feta cheese made from sheep's milk.

"This is absolutely the best feta cheese I think I have ever tasted," said Roger Booth, who had just bought several items from the Frazers' stand.

"I couldn't resist these two items -- Greek onions and Greek beans," he added, holding up two tin cans. "I can hardly wait to get home."

James Frazer said he and his wife would like to open their own "brick-and-mortar store" some day.

"We're just waiting to get bigger," he said. "Right now, with just three markets a week, that's what we're working toward."

In a 1998 article, former Fallbrook Historical Society President Don Rivers wrote that olive farming began there in the late 1800s, when farmers were limited to minuscule supplies of water and Mediterranean crops made sense because they are more drought-tolerant.

One, the Loma ranch, had its own olive press and bottling plant, producing around 15,000 gallons of oil annually until 1919, Rivers wrote.

Stephanie Frazer said she is not ruling out planting an olive orchard.

"But the problem is that it takes so long for an olive tree to produce good crops," she said. "I also heard that in the 1990s, there was a big problem with the Mediterranean fruit fly, and that's why it's almost impossible to do olives without pesticides here.

"One of the first things we thought of when we moved here was an olive grove," she said. "We're not ruling anything out, ever."

Contact the Olive Hill Company at 760-304-2061.

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at 760-740-3516.

Related links:

Fallbrook Historical Society article on early olive farming

Mayo Clinic page on Mediterranean diet

Previous stories:

Olive oil brings old building to life