Authorities are investigating the sudden deaths of a Central Coast couple who pioneered California’s coffee-growing motion from their Santa Barbara County farm.
Jay and Kristen Ruskey, house owners of Good Land Organics and co-founders of Frinj Espresso, died Sunday at a house in Cambria, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Division confirmed Friday.
Authorities haven’t launched how the couple died. Autopsies have been carried out Thursday and toxicology outcomes are anticipated in just a few weeks, mentioned Tony Cipolla, public info officer for the Sheriff’s Division.
“Presently, the deaths don’t seem like suspicious,” Cipolla mentioned.
A GoFundMe created to help the Ruskey members of the family with funeral prices, memorial preparations and different bills had raised greater than $133,000 as of Friday afternoon. The couple has three kids: Kasurina, 19, Sean, 16 and Aiden, 16, in response to the fundraiser.
The Ruskeys helped develop greater than 65 espresso farms from Santa Barbara to north of San Diego that develop 14 styles of espresso. Jay Ruskey was lauded as the primary farmer to promote domestically grown espresso in California.
Jay Ruskey established Good Land Organics within the early Nineteen Nineties, rising unique fruit at a farm in Goleta. The couple launched their espresso model, Frinj, in 2017.
The couple’s espresso enterprise took off after Jay Ruskey tried a number of instances to plant espresso timber in 2002 with a aim of studying the very best practices for rising espresso in Southern California.
“I’ve all the time been captivated with crop adaptation,” Ruskey advised The Occasions in 2024. “I used to be working with the UC Cooperative Extension Service to plant lychee and longans when Dr. Mark Gaskell, a small berry crop skilled, gave me 40 espresso vegetation and inspired me to strive planting them aspect by aspect with different vegetation.”
In 2024, Frinj Espresso filed for Chapter 11 chapter, claiming about $215,000 in property whereas itemizing greater than $1.8 million in liabilities, the Santa Barbara Unbiased reported. The corporate regained its footing in the beginning of the yr and, in January, it was the primary California-based espresso grower to ever compete within the Dubai Espresso Public sale.
