At a glance
Naughty Squirrel Farms is a California cultivation brand founded in Calaveras County in 2015 by owner-operators Scott Balch and Jennifer Smith. The business connects Balch's wine-grape and Proposition 215 cultivation background with Smith's agricultural-business, beverage-brand and regulatory experience, operating farm sites in Calaveras and Lake counties.
Two lifelong friends built the company
The founders are lifelong friends, not spouses or a couple. The official biography says Naughty Squirrel Farms is the doing-business-as name for cultivation companies founded by both owner-operators. That distinction corrects a recurring description error and better explains why the brand represents more than one farm property.
Scott Balch brought field experience
Balch is a retired firefighter who farmed wine grapes for 15 years while also cultivating cannabis under California's Proposition 215 framework. The company credits his work with experienced advisers and his attention to procedures for the farm's operating discipline. His background ties the cannabis project to traditional specialty agriculture rather than a post-legalization lifestyle launch.
Jennifer Smith built the brand and compliance side
Smith spent her earlier career in the alcohol-beverage industry working with brands including Jack Daniel's and Budweiser. She holds a degree in Agricultural Business and focuses on compliance, regulatory development and political outreach. Her stated goal is to make the brand legible to both new and established cannabis consumers.
The operation spans two counties
The brand identifies farm operations in Calaveras and Lake counties. That regional footprint matters because the California State Fair awards classify entries by cultivation method and growing county. It also means broad phrases such as “one foothill farm” are incomplete: the company publishes distinct roles and histories for the two sites.
Calaveras combines outdoor and mixed light
The Calaveras property is a 512-acre parcel with natural water resources and a pre-existing traditional vineyard. The company describes plans for both outdoor cultivation and mixed-light greenhouse production. It does not support the simpler claim that every Naughty Squirrel product is exclusively sun-grown, nor does the public site provide a current canopy size or production total.
Lake County serves as a test plot
The Lake County property became a refuge when changing local rules disrupted the founders' original path. In its 2022 farm description, Naughty Squirrel called the site a test plot comparing organic production with conventional salt-based cultivation, using the same strains to examine terpene expression, THC production and yield. That is a brand-described cultivation experiment, not a published scientific trial.
Flower is the verified product focus
The public site presents Naughty Squirrel as a small-batch artisan cultivator, and its documented competition entries are flower. It does not publish a dependable current product catalog, package-size list or populated retailer directory. Pre-rolls, extracts and other formats therefore should not be attributed to the brand without a current package or retailer record.
Awards document specific cultivars
At the first California State Fair Cannabis Awards in 2022, Lemon Vuitton won an outdoor gold medal for myrcene and the Golden Bear for that category, while Venom OG earned mixed-light gold for limonene. In 2023, Lake County-grown Dirty Skittles received outdoor silver for caryophyllene. These chemistry-category results are precise evidence behind the site's general “award-winning” language.
Hospitality is separate from retail availability. The website also advertises an event space, Airbnb accommodations and farm-to-table dinners. Those hospitality claims come from the farm itself, and current booking, access and cannabis-consumption rules were not independently confirmed. The empty retailer page likewise cannot establish where flower is sold today. Buyers should use a licensed California dispensary menu and verify the cultivator or distributor on the package. Explore more California farms in the High Rise brand directory.