Happy Equinox!

Tuesday 5:04pm marked the beginning of Fall and the moment where day and night stood as equals. Now the night takes over. All hail the night! Think about how your life changes with the shortening of the days. Many people’s emotional states change. Activities shift to those that can be done at night. Some of us must daily increase the rush to do what must be done in daylight…including farmwork. This week, it seemed sudden that outdoor work needed to be done by 7pm and could start not much before 6:15am.

The Rain is Coming!!

In the Mediterranean California area, the Fall Equinox marks the final warning before rainfall. We have 3 weeks to prepare for the first significant precipitation event (1”+), and this year it might be a doozie. The rule is to have bare ground covered, road drains cleaned out, firewood and equipment/tools protected…before October 15. Here we go.

The foreshadowing of the Super El Niño is coming from Peru where massive rains where rains never occur have caused mayhem. The weather forecasters have never seen anything like what is happening with ocean temperatures, but when they have seen things approaching this, the outcomes have a high degree of certainty: big, big storms for Southern California, probably as far north as the Monterey Bay.

Heat

Some will recall the heatwave a couple of weeks back and the surprise at little apple harvest loss: I spoke too soon. The apple trees did okay, but still the rain of apples happened. The fallen apple cataclysm was small, perhaps only 200 pounds, but still enough to worry about waste. Those apples on the ground sure do make good juice. Also, folks picked up a bucket of Roxbury russett (the oldest USA apple) and half a bucket of Bramley’s seedling that got distributed through the Community Orchardists. That leaves buckets of grounder Galas to deal with.

And FIRE

Even with the near-term probability of rain, the danger of fire is still great. Another heat wave is hitting now. Occasionally, we smell smoke or smog fills the air from conflagrations far away. Way above the Farm, CALFIRE is doing a 2-acre prescribed fire to help maintain a shaded fuel break. Now that the Two Dog Chardonnay is harvested, we have turned our attention to working with the Very Admirable Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association. Their Proposition Q-funded burn program plans to once again put Good Fire on the ground at Molino Creek Farm where they will help to restore coastal prairie and increase wildfire safety for our neighbors downwind in the fireshed.

Meanwhile, The Work

It has become pretty much impossible to keep up with the time sensitive work. The harvest gets ahead of us and any equipment or infrastructure that needs attention doesn’t quite get it in time. We lined up a big group to drive deer out of one of our 20+acre fences only to realize that the 8 months of time we gave ourselves to repair the fence wasn’t enough. Thanks to the group and Sylvie’s leadership, the deer were driven out, but the fence work still needs finished (or the deer will be right back in). And, there’s the other 20+acre fence that also includes a herd of deer…

Molino Creek Farm is now at the Saturday Aptos Farmer’s Market as well as the Saturday Market in Palo Alto. There are lots of tomatoes headed to the happy people who so strongly support our farm: YUM and Thanks!

We sent our second batch of apples to the Palo Alto market last week- they are quite popular. More and more apples coming, more each week.

Down below the Farm, on Cotoni Coast Dairies, two types of vegetation control are on display. The heifers are giving birth at the hardest time of year for the poor cows: the fall, when there are no more high protein seeds to support the lactating mothers…but, the return on the sale of the young promises to be better for this risky and stressful timing. Contrast that with the work around the BLM parking lot: the mistakenly large swath of fence placed way outside of the parking lot means that some poor federal employee gets lots of practice with the weedeater…the cows look at all that wasted food and say ‘dude!’

Two Differently Beleagured Vegetation Control Agents: off season cows and BLM worker

Wildlife is Here

The annual return of the Golden Crowned Sparrows just happened right on time. They are so punctual – a new bird song is here…the sound of winter. Simultaneously, the last of the swallows left, though the barn swallows have been gone a little while already.

An odd bird behavior observed- please comment. A pileated woodpecker flew the longest straight path available across the farm from the SW to NE, 40 feet up, calling the entire time. What was it saying?!

Less odd is the bird commotion related to the run-over walnuts. Ravens, juncos, and many others feast on nutmeats.

The Angels of the Night, foxes, are keeping us alert with their odd vocalizations.

Gray fox on the Farm, photo by Holly Frank

Golden-crowned Sparrow Returns to Central California

Bold markings on this golden crowned sparrow indicates a ‘powerful’ individual.

Weary Willie’s distinctive call is waking up our neighborhood for the first time in five months. Last week, following an unusual big early storm sweeping in from up north, the first Golden Crowned Sparrows arrived here in Davenport from their migration to British Columbia or perhaps Alaska.

Nicknamed ‘weary Willie’ for their call – “I’m so weary,” – this sparrow is our wintertime friend here, with ~20 bird flocks returning to exactly the same small shrub patches they inhabited last year here at Molino Creek Farm. Well, at least SOME of the birds return, and some of those with their young which were born perhaps as far north as the ‘Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.’ Way up north, the a male feeds his mate as she incubates eggs. Between flying back and forth, making a nest, feeding each other, fledging and raising young, they’ve been very busy since they left. I’m fascinated with them because of their social structure and their tendency, like me, to be ‘home bodies.’

Bruce Lyon, a professor at UC Santa Cruz has been studying flocks at the UCSC Arboretum. He finds up to 50% (or more!) of the birds returning in fall migration. He has confirmed what many have noted – ‘high site fidelity’ – with the Arboretum birds. Bird banding makes all that possible; I wish I could recognize individual birds well enough to do that from memory.

Individual birds are recognizable, and their plumage can tell you how high on the pecking order they reside. Lyon has also noted that the size and color of their golden crowns, the patches of yellow on their heads, varies with their status in their flock. The bigger and more striking the yellow, the more dominant the birds…including yellow patches on females that are dominant over duller males. Taking the time to distinguish and even name individual birds in our flock is fun and helps me to understand a little of what is going on in the yard.

In many years, I have noticed that the birds ride the first winter cold fronts around Fall Equinox, perhaps taking advantage of the winds to help carry them. I also wonder if they migrate more during the darker moon phases that intersect with those cold fronts, though in 2023 they arrived during Full Moon. I understand that many birds migrate mostly at night to avoid predation. A small group of us sometimes place bets on first rain date as well as first golden crowned sparrow arrival dates. This year, they came right on time…

Welcome back Golden Crowned Sparrows!

I’ll keep track of arrival and departure dates (with a few notes) from various years here, starting this fall:

Arrival: 9/21/15- first posted this post on that date.

Arrival: 9/21/21, full moon, day before Equinox, directly after N Cal atmospheric river event

Arrival: 9/20/22, right after a big unusual winter storm swept down from up North and brought the first significant rainfall to our area. Moon phase: waning crescent.

-whoops, missed 2023-

Arrival: 9/22/24, curiously a bright night shortly after a full moon, not really associated obviously with a big storm from the North (not around here anyway)

Arrival: 9/19/25, following the remnants of Tropical Storm Mario and a scare about a lightning swam (that moved offshore)

Arrival: 9/20/26, waxing moon, not associated with an apparent major local weather event, though an unusually cloudy and even drizzly couple of days.

The Work! The Heat!!

The idyllic weather, where we gazed at the bluest of sky in our short sleeves with a slightly cooling breeze, transitioned to the roasty-toasty wilting, apple roasting, bird panting, killingly-hot heat wave that has been repeating ‘round this time since 2019.

Hot Heat. Painful Heat all the way down to the Coast. Satellite images illustrated a blog of hot air advected northward from one of the many tropical storms spinning northward into the tragically warmed Californian seas. Lightning scourge lit up the Channel Islands, a few strikes onshore north of LA and into the Transverse Range and then, luckily, the ‘instability’ dissipated and the thunder subsided. One more such storm is lined up. Before that, the Central Coast will cool.

The last heat wave was ‘only’ 94F and set the sunward apples to scalding. This heat wave will undoubtedly cause one of our Great Drops with sunscalded apples; hopefully, with the farm reaching 100F we won’t see the 30% loss we did when it was 105F 3 years ago. Farming was hard enough before the Oiligarchy set us up for this climate crisis.

Yes…Panting Birds

The rubbing of antlers makes for oak bark scar. Luckily, we left 2 other post 2020 fire sprouts…

Deer Rubber

The bucks are scoring. They are scoring trees with their antlers. Deer particularly like the young oaks, which probably bend right…trunk diameters flossing into their itchy-est nooks. Smoothly silvery bark scars green and brown, bug-eyed ecstatic deer head tossing forces shred through bark down into wood, guaranteeing a scar that will last years as the tree works to heal.

2026 is (another!) mast year for coast live oaks

Acorns, Anyway

It is a Mast Year among the coast live oaks. That is, acorns abound on the oaks as thickly as the apple trees are festooned with apples. Jays and acorn woodpeckers squawk and cackle with glee, instincts driving their fanatical carbohydrate-gathering forays. Back-and-forth from tree to storage spots they bolt and flap. Into granaries go the woodpecker nuts. Into secret ground holes, carefully memorized, go the jay nuts. We await the giant flock of band tailed pigeons’ attention turning from cover crop grain to the oak harvest. The acorns are about to drop to turkey and quail level: they will focus on the roadways where vehicles grind the nuts into more easily gathered portions. With the right conditions, this will be a third year since the 2020 fire where a mast of acorns creates a carpet of woodland oak seedlings – trees for future generations.

It is a particularly celebratory acorn year as the first coast live oak saplings that we’ve stewarded since 2008 have created acorns. As 300-year-old Molino Oaks fall apart, a new generation is taking their place and the acorn harvest continues as it has for hundreds of human generations. We learn how to cherish oak trees, care for them, and help them proliferate across our beautiful farm. We look forward to nut-creation from the Oregon oaks and Valley oaks we planted years ago in the hedgerow…when? Will some of those be ‘sweet?’

Sunset on the shortening days of late summer 2026

The Work

How do we keep up the intensifying work through the heat waves? Luckily, they don’t last long. The harvest is upon us and the work to keep up with it is unending. 11,000 pounds of apples will need to go into picking bags and buckets in the next 8 weeks. 10,000 pounds of winter squash will need to go into boxes in a short while. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of tomatoes go into buckets to be sorted and boxed. Peppers, galore, as well! And, Two Dog Farm is looking to harvest Chardonnay very soon! The shortening days make for the appreciation of every hour of sun for the work that needs done.

Apple Bounty

Did I say 11,000 pounds of apples? What does this look like? I will put more photos on our website post (go ahead- follow us!) where we also print this news (and more!). It is dizzying what that many apples looks like on that many trees.

The Fuji apples, which did so well last year are at it again. The Gala apples, which skipped last year are bending under apple weight. Many other varieties are weeping downward from the prolific fruit. Perhaps not as many as last year…the Wickson Crabs…but still…many!

According to The Prophecy, we will create 350 gallons of juice: 300 to sluice into fermentation bottles (so that it lasts). Will we have enough fermentation communitarians for this grand experiment, which is only beginning…many trees just getting big enough to contribute!

Shortening Days, Abbreviated Working Hours.

Summer at Molino Creek Farm

Only a bit on recent Farm highlights and then off on a tangent about production….

Fall color on one of the Community Orchard’s apricot trees

Fall is appearing across the farm- the wannuts and apricots are changing color! Tomatoes are also changing color- but for the ripening….lots and lots suddenly coming on.

Bodhi reports regular Great Horned Owl activity and another owl, with a screechy-noise…that is a whiny underaged great horned owl making its terrible youngster noise. He also reports the oddity of Bonny Doon skunks and opossums in the middle of the road on the night after full moon- whatsup with that?

Sylvie spotted an amazing coast garter snake wandering the grounds as well as a huge praying mantis in her beans.

A Praying Mantis in Sylvie’s Beans – Photo courtesy of S. Childress

Folks are taking home giant, 1 pound lemons as well as the last of the Persian limes and oranges….testing the first of the lamb haas avocados (are they ripe, yet?).

The hot weather broke and then we got cool weather, even drizzle. The apples are growing big- two more weeks before the harvest begins!

– The Aforementioned Tangent –

Recently, I’ve been wondering how to quantify the sum total of what is produced and processed on these Molino Creek Farm acres in terms of food, poo, and biomass. Here’s a summary.

Coyote Poo? Full of Chardonnay grapes…etc

Poo

One hundred thirty seven acres of land rich with wildlife makes a lot of poo, every year. The assimilative capacity of the land for animal excrement is astounding – otherwise, we’d be up to our neck in it! A pigeon makes 25 pounds of excrement a year, and I assume smaller birds some fraction thereof. Our farm has around 30 wild, naturally occurring pigeon-sized birds (band tailed pigeons and mourning doves) throughout the year. We have 140 California quail, say half pigeon sized. And, there are easily 80 goldfinches and 400 other small birds, mostly juncos, sparrows, towhees, etc…say one quarter pigeon sized. Bird feces on our land per year: around 6,000 pounds- 3 tons!

Furry animals vary on poo production. We have 10 deer year-round; a deer makes 1200 pounds of poo a year. A mouse makes 20 pounds of poo per year and a low estimate for our part of California is 10 mice per acre: 28,000 pounds of poo! (The whole wild world of the North Coast of Santa Cruz County smells like rotting mouse poo after the first rains.). Add in 50 squirrels (40#/year) and a low ball 200 gophers (30#/year) on our farm, and you get 8,000 more pounds of animal poo. So, our 137 acres of critters makes around 54,000 pounds (27 tons) of animal poo per year. That’s 4 dump truck loads! All of this poo gets assimilated into the land and helps to grow what we see around us.

Black Beans? Nay! Deer Poo – oh, so fresh…

Non-Animal Production

Our farm is a mixture of natural areas and cropland – each has its own story to tell in terms of production.

In terms of produce, within the 6-8 row crop acres and the 3 acres of orchards, we can make 12,000 pounds a year of a combination of apples, citrus, and avocados, 6,000 pounds of dry farmed tomatoes and 10,000 pounds of dry farmed squash…along with a few irrigated crops like peppers and onions. In the winter, the 25 acres of crop lands make another average 4,000 pounds/acre of biomass in cover crops: 100,000 pounds of biomass that gets tilled into the ground for extra fertility and soil building.

In the wildlands, there is still more production going on. Our 20 acres of redwood forest puts on around 1800 pounds of dry mass per year per acre, so 36,000 pounds. An additional 60 acres of shrubland and grassland makes another 330,000 pounds of biomass per year. So, wildlands are growing 366,000 pounds of dry biomass annually. Not all of that biomass represents sequestered greenhouse gases, but certainly some of it is. As our redwood trees get bigger, and as we help to protect them from catastrophic tree-killing wildfire, they will sequester more and more carbon.

Imported Additions

Farms often import soil amendments, and Molino Creek Farm is no exception. Some years, we bring in a couple of dump trucks of compost. Many years, we are adding feather meal or some other form of organic fertilizer to help grow food. Recently, we imported what looks like charcoal – ‘biochar’ – from the disposal of dead trees from the surrounding conservation land’s efforts to reduce future wildfire impacts. These inputs are not cheap and it takes time/effort to spread them where they need to go. And so, we like to rely more on cover crops than imported additions, but still our soil tests tell us we need to add some more nitrogen. Total pounds of inputs on average – around 35,000 pounds.

I would be remiss if I didn’t add that we do also import diesel fuel to run tractors, around 200 gallons per year. Our well water for irrigation is pumped via solar power to tanks and then gravity fed through water wise drip systems. The groundwater has to be seen as another ‘imported addition.’

Teeming with Life

The bounty of living things, the manure it creates, the human-captured or wild productivity, and the minimal imported farm additives is fascinating on this small farm. Another small farm has been popularly featured in the film “The Biggest Little Farm.” The film helps people understand what is possible with careful farm management working with wild creatures, growing organically. What do we compare these small farms with? City land? Conventional, large scale agriculture? Wild lands in parks?

I visit all of those other land use types and rarely do I see the kind of bounty that I’ve experienced on small farms that allow nature space and work with nature in the crop lands. If you haven’t visited Statton Island’s rice farms near Davis, California in November and December, you are missing a breathtaking experience – more birds than you would imagine could land in one place…big birds: cranes, geese, and many more.

I’ve also experienced the devastating effects of ‘other’ types of farming. A recent drive across the pesticide-reeking Central Valley had almost zero bugs smashed on my car, contrasting with 20 years ago where it was thick with insect spattering…what happened? Huge crop fields up the Salinas Valley are seemingly lifeless, just like farmers like…so they don’t have to worry about insect damage or bird dropping contamination.

How you spend your grocery money…who you support and why…can make a big difference in wildlife conservation. Why not make wise choices?

Midsummer 2026 On the Farm

Molino Creek Farm grows cut flowers- like these beautiful asters, available at Palo Alto Market on Saturdays

Fire History, Redux

Monday was the 6-year anniversary of my first break from fire fighting mayhem, when I got to go to the beach for an evening, cool down, and breathe fresh air…then right back to the fire watch. Today is the 6^th year anniversary of our first visit by firefighting professionals for that CZU Lightning Complex Fire maelstrom. After a call to 911, CALFIRE came with a helicopter to put out a conflagration down in the Molino Creek canyon where a few old growth redwoods remained. Satisfied that the spot fire was out, they left us to our own patrols, again. It would be two weeks before the evacuation order was lifted.

Another Tropical Storm – Lightning?!

We’ve got our eyes on the possibility that the remnants of Tropical Storm Iselle will spin our way with lightning and “erratic” winds sometime in the next couple of days. It isn’t quite as hot as it was prior to the storm in 2020 (back then, it was 105F) – the heat wave only got to 92F today, probably a bit hotter tomorrow and the next day. Please, let it not get hotter than that! 20 percent humidity – dry, dry air, drying out the vegetation, preparing it to burn.

The Timber Fire- across the Monterey Bay down in Big Sur

Other Fires

The fire to our South, lit by a camp stove accident, The Timber Fire, has been burning for 17 days…now at 19,000 acres and 20% contained. We watch and sometimes smell the smoke, which makes for pretty sunrises and sunsets. The warm weather accompanies clear views, so we get to see the smoke plume spike skyward miles away, down in Big Sur. The smoke then spreads inland, a broad gray smear stretching East.

we chip away at mowing- first over the hurried water lines, so they don’t melt in the ground

Fire Work

Iselle is the third tropical storm to threaten a repeat of 2020 – we expect more this super El Niño year. That anticipation makes for consistent scuttling to prepare for the fire – there’s never enough time and the work seems never to end. A few blades of dry grass can damage irrigation risers, and a patch of high grass at the base of one of our hedgerow oak trees will scorch the poor thing, robbing us of shade and windbreak. Fire hoses still need testing and stretching, people need training on portable pumps. But, we are making progress. The rains are still at least 7 weeks away and we hope they come heavy enough to put the fires at bay.

Fear of fire keeps us mowing. The latest focus is to create a 100 foot buffer around the solar panels, which we would prefer not get scorched from flames. The mower makes a huge cloud of dust as it hits gopher or ground squirrel throws. The grass it leaves behind is chopped fine and lies thickly 3” deep rather than the 3-4 foot tall, aerated fuel that would throw flames 8+ feet or pitch heated smoke uphill in a wind-fueled roiling flame cloud.

Critters

Fox continues to entertain. Sylvie’s midnight jaunt to the orchard irrigation helped her encounter a friendly fox. Gently speaking to it, the fox calmed then rubbed its face on the ground, scent marking. We regularly hear fox barks. An emergency vehicle’s siren set off a pack of coyotes below the farm last evening – they sang on and on, way after the siren had gone into the distance.

The 8-strong flock of turkeys roams about leaving droppings and enormous fleshy footprints. They don’t make the gobbling noise much.

The deer have lost the velvet on their antlers and now they rub tree bark off on favorite mostly somewhat flexible tree trunks, mainly coast live oaks. I haven’t heard their antler clacking jousts, yet – looking forward to hearing that! The 3 deer that shelter inside one of our ‘deer exclosure’ fences are grazing on tomatoes. Many of the branches are chopped off. One can watch them graze for hours on tomato plants. Neil and Levi from the 2 Dog Farm Crew helped a bit to patch the very holey fence but then Neil had to go to urgent care with his face puffed up like he’d been in a fight- poison oak is thick along that fenceline, in places! There’s still a lot of patching to do.

Turkey and California ground squirrel prints

Molino Creek Farm’s Really Truly Dry Farmed tomatoes – famous the world over!

Harvest!

The harvest is ON!! Two Dog Farm is taking dry farmed tomatoes to market. Judy reports that Molino Creek Farm’s first avocado haul to the Palo Alto Farmer’s Market was a Big Hit – “creamy and flavorful.” People rarely get to taste avocados that have been left on the tree long enough to develop to their full potential. Those Bacon avocados had been growing and ripening for 19 months – and they are a relatively quick variety to ripen. The Lamb Haas are just starting to maybe get ripe…some Community Orchardists are testing the first ones that look like they might be ready. Those won’t get to the market as Community Orchardists will mop up even 200 pounds of fruit, which it looks like we’ll get. Two Dog Farm and Molino Creek Farm are busy harvesting a wide array of crops and cut flowers in their irrigated fields.

Meanwhile, we wait for the Really Big-time Harvests. Despite the deer browse, Molino Creek Farm’s tomato patch is burgeoning with fruit, spurred onto ripening with the heat waves. And, our apple orchard has never been so loaded with fruit. The trees droop with thousands of pounds of apples. Looking down the rows, I wonder if I’m looking into opposing mirrors- an infinity of fruit! Each variety is starting to get its signature color. I polished up one last Saturday and it shined a dazzling array of hues: beautiful! We soon get to taste the wide variety of our 50+ types as they ripen one at a time. It appears that the first boxes of Galas will get to market in 2 weeks and we’ll have to start the cider press going at the end of September, a month early. Boxes of gala apples will spur that pressing but so too will the Russian quince, which is getting ripe fast.

Oh WOW – The Bounty!

Oodles of Apples – Gala (left) and Fuji (right)

The apple understory – Iberian comfrey, reduces weed competition

Anniversary Time!

This week, we ‘celebrate’ the anniversaries of the Lockheed Fire (Aug 12, 2009, 7:16pm) and the CZU Lightning Complex Fire (Aug 16, 2020, 3:30am). Both fires took big bites out of the Molino Creek Farming Community, but the second was worse. At one point, we had seemingly hundreds of fire fighters at the Farm during the Lockheed Fire, which burned a little over 7,000 acres including 270 degrees around (and through) the farm. It was 10 days before we saw any professional support for the 86,000-acre CZU fire but at one point we had 5 people helping out- mostly it was just 2 and then 3 of us. That fire burned right through the farm and all around it, destroying a duplex and a single-family house and all of those people’s stuff…as well as fences, water lines, a Collective garage full of tools, and a family’s storage shed. Generosity poured forth from a large community of kind friends and we quickly had a great big pot of money to do repairs, so we have hardened our water system and fences against the next fire. And still, we scuttle around to prepare for what might be a fire like even tomorrow. It is a stressful time of year, especially with the climate change driven storm systems that keep creeping from the tropics into California, dragging Zeus and his lightning bolts around. Somehow, we charge on…just a bit more polish on fire hydrants and water risers…must still test fire hoses…must still learn the portable pump…and there’s so much more vegetation to clear!

Group gathering on every Saturday afternoon. Photo by Ingo Bork – https://newphotoaccents.com/

Ripening Apples

During our regular Saturday working bee last Saturday, some first-time-visitors chomped into the Gala apples and said ‘yummy!’ The sugars are developing. Mike Eaton donated a brix meter, so we can get all scientific about the harvest this year (thanks, Mike!). The pomaceous orbs are swelling fast and developing their characteristic colors. It may be an early harvest year….we’ll see. Normally, Gala apples aren’t really, really ripe until the second week of September. The birds ate all of our first crop of Gravenstein apples close as they are to the forest edge and there weren’t really that many anyway- next year those trees are looking likely to make their first big crop. Due to uneven watering in early Spring, we have many trees starting to blossom (again) as we get the ground much more wet to accommodate water needs for ripening fruit.

One of the many kinds of apples we grow. Photo by Ingo Bork, see: https://newphotoaccents.com/

Avocados

Saturday was a Big Day last week- we harvested 400 pounds of Bacon avocados! That was a Big Surprise – those delicious fruit were hiding in the foliage and bucket after bucket emerged as careful eyes spotted and picked them….just in time! We sold our first case of avocados at the Palo Alto market right when we were picking this new batch and 70 pounds of those are going to market next Saturday. Community Orchardists made it possible for a bunch of schoolchildren to eat locally grown organic guacamole at the Pacific School for the next week or so as Mike and Charity delivered around 100 pounds of fruit. Everyone is raving about the taste of these things: we’ve done well! And, this is only the beginning…the trees are very young. Next up – lamb and carmen haas…and after those…pinkerton and reed. We’ve got avocados coming on through February!

More Ripening Fruit

The stupendously, luxuriantly beautiful Two Dog Farm winter squash patch is showing its colors. Bright red-orange red kuri and the more subtle butternut squash fruits are poking out between the wilting leaves. And, the dry farmed tomatoes are starting to get so laden with fruit as to seem out of balance with the number of leaves: shiny, pale green fruits will start to blush orange, soon.

Birds!

It seems we have a new raptor- a sharp shinned hawk- on the farm. This one is terrorizing the quail, buzzing the band tailed pigeons, and making the other birds all a titter. Speaking of band tailed pigeons…the flock today approached 100 birds, the most I’ve seen on the farm. The feast of the cover crop seed is helping feed a lot of birds and the birds in turn are making that seed into fertilizer for the future as they spread their guano around and about. The quail have been having clutch after clutch after a rather late start. There are little fluffy ones about- barely able to walk.

Other Items

Judy’s sunflowers are looking nice. There are other flowers in her patch as well as bright displays in the Home Garden because of Sylvie’s proclivity for growing things. The black walnut trees scattered around the property are starting to be laden with almost ripe nuts. There are heavenly scents coming from Citrus Hill where oranges and limes are starting to blossom. I got to see a fence lizard a little over half out of its shedding skin. The coffeeberries are ripening and attracting fruit eating birds. While much grows dryer and dustier, some of our mowed fields are showing new signs of life as native bunchgrasses with their deep roots grow long, green leaves.

Apples ripening and propped- what more could you ask for? Photo by Ingo Bork https://newphotoaccents.com/

The Noise!!

Even on our country Farm, weekends are a noisy affair. Neighbors with ‘regular’ weekday jobs fire up their yard engines and the consistent droning of weedeaters, saws, etc., wrecks the peace…but that’s not all. Day job people fire up their World War Two era fighter planes, take off from the Watsonville Airport, head up the coast, and roar overhead doing loop-d’-loops. And then there are the crotch rocket motorcycles and revving sports-mobiles whining and growling through Bonny Doon above and along the Coast Highway below. Saturdays and Sundays are the best days to practice the meditation of detachment, trying not to be distracted by the hope of the peace of weekdays which nevertheless start with ceaseless dog barking just to keep us on our toes.

The setting sun quiets the human cacophony, but other disturbing sounds emerge. The foxes have decided to start their very own nightly chorus. And they are teaching their young. Regular fox yowls are hair-raising enough, but add in a mess of young fox kits attempting creative, attention-grabbing songs, and that will set anyone on edge. They must have recently imbibed whatever the fox equivalent of coffee might be, because this new ‘chorus’ has been going on for hours and hours, night after night. Entertaining? Sylvie says ‘nah.’

The energetic noises of Summer go on day and night!

The Best Weather

While much of the world floods, burns, and roasts, we must not take for granted the absolutely phenomenal weather of late. Apples enjoy large temperature flux between day and night. We have just that. Awakening to the very, very long and gradual dawn (high ridge hiding the fresh sun to the East), it is COOL…like 52F this morning (and many mornings). That’s mighty close to the 40s right here in midsummer. Then the rheostat cranks up, temperature climbing to the low 80s by early afternoon: 82 straight up today! No clouds – a crystalline blue, flawless sky. 50% humidity. A gentle, steady breeze picks up starting 10 a.m. and carries a bit of ocean scent through to sunset. Nearly hypnotically gorgeous weather!

Flocks

Contrasting against the startling deep blue sky, dozens of swallows whir and pitch, careening after insects or just plain having fun. Much of the Farm is fallow this year, and we let the cover crops go to seed. This must have created an invertebrate bounty as this an especially huge swallow display. (Much more impressive than the roaring stunt pilots). There are four species: cliff, tree, violet-green, and barn swallows in that flock. Sometimes, they are all wheeling up high, sometimes many come low, skimming the dry canes of cover crop. The bugs they are after seem concentrated in the fallow fields as the swallows crowd right there for hours in dazzlingly crowded, circling displays.

Where there are small patches of cover crop that someone mowed, another kind of flock alights. Massive, bomber band-tailed pigeons skim down onto the flattened thatch, voraciously pecking at a carpet of fat oat seeds. The uncannily ‘normal’ 14 farm birds have swelled to 40 birds with this bounty, and the local birds are not happy about sharing – they want to fly too close over the incursion of strangers: are they even slapping them with their wings? Possibly.

Forty birds seems like the magic number for Molino’s flocks of birds. There were forty of those swallows last I counted. Forty band-tailed pigeons when the interlopers arrive. And, there are forty goldfinches, also, batting around in a chittering flock.

Scent of a Varmint

Night walks help to catch the scent. Day walks reveal the sign. Skunk. Mustelid musk. Telling holes dug into the soil or through the thick mown thatch. Hundreds and hundreds of holes, already- more every night! Is there more than one of these industrious carnivores? Ground wasps don’t stand a chance this year. Voles – beware!

Scar of 2020 Fire on this fine small oak. Many trees are still healing. Its starting to be Fire Season, again!

Random Other Things

Stunningly yellow butterflies suddenly abound – sulphurs? Those are the wooly bear caterpillars that feed on mustard family things, of which we have an abundance.

Maw and caw didn’t have babies this year.

Banana slugs are sliming around in the redwood understory even in this dry, hot spell.

Ground squirrel babies are everywhere with cute white eyeliner.

Thrasher birds aren’t singing but they are skulking about in the underbrush. Similarly curiously quiet is an abundance of spotted towhees.

Family groups of California towhees are foraging together, scratching the duff with bluebirds watching them from nearby branches hoping they scare up something tasty to eat.

Large and medium-sized gopher snakes are patrolling. Fence lizards are molting and abundant. Mice scamper and boing when you move any cover.

Farm Work

Judy took her first trip to the Palo Alto Farmer’s Market last Saturday. She’s kindly delivering the neighbors the most delicious zucchini – also taking those to market! Two Dog picked their first really truly dry farmed tomatoes. The abundance is starting to abound.

Our Community Orchardists are working miracles among the trees. Though a bit un-tidy for lack of mowing, the trees are hugely adorned with fruit. Green citrus is fattening for the winter harvest – a few Meyer lemons and oranges are there for the orchardists, who also have all the Bacon avocados they can eat. And then there are the apples…

It appears that my estimate of 11,000 pounds of apple harvest is really, really happening even despite the flocks of jays and acorn woodpeckers eating all they can way before the apples are ripe. Next year, we’ll get our first harvest of Gravenstein apples, and there are a few tasty trial fruit for us this year – getting ripe now! Hugh is our star propper – he’s got the gift of heft, knowing just where and how to put a prop that will stick and hold the weighted branches. Negative buoyancy? Even with the massive fruit set, this is the first year we’ve properly thinned the fruit – no big clusters of tiny fruit making us feel abashed. The understory is well weeded. Sylvie scored a new filter and the well-pressurized micro-sprinklers are whirring water across the wetting soil. The trees are super happy!

Night Ants

Night walks for irrigation management remind me of nature patterns not seen for a year, like night ants. Tiny empty trails through the grass, faint by the light of day, are explained by flashlight in the dark of night. Shiny black ants of various sizes, most in a several-ant wide line, most small but some much larger, the biggest ones on the fringes way out there in the taller grass. On the cooler nights, the ant crowd moves slowly, back and forth from an irregularly edged quarter-sized hole. They aren’t carrying anything obvious. I don’t know what they do, but there’s an ant expert I need to ask. I am fond of these mysterious night ants: they are my friends.

Asperitas clouds, photo compliments of Sylvie Childress

Day ants

A new ant revealed itself this year along the same trail that the night ants use. This was a daytime ant, also traveling in lines many ants wide. These daytime ants are tiny, butterscotchy orange-brown and were moving fluidly-fast and in great numbers. They must live mostly underground – I only saw them that one time, and they were gone from that place the next day. I’ve never seen them before despite years of observation.

How many ant species call Molino Creek Farm home? I once despaired that we would lose all of our native ants to the Great Plague of invasive and aggressive Argentine ants. But, I cannot find those ‘Argies’ anymore and instead have only these rare encounters of native ants in surprising times, unexpected places. I wish we had harvester ants in our grasslands – maybe they’ll show up one day.

Creepy False Widow spider photo by S Childress

Spiders

Summer at Molino Creek Farm also reveals spiders of various hideousnesses. Sylvie found a particularly scary one this past week, a large and onerous species that was living in the housing of one of the backup generators for our well pumps. We’re unsure which species it is, but it is probably a central coast endemic called Steatoda atascadera, or Atascadero false widow. If that’s what this is, she documented it near its northern range limit. I haven’t seen the year’s first black widow, a species which is normally abundant in abandoned gopher holes in the middle of our dirt roads. Duck into the orchard and under the trees and you’ll end up festooned with all manner of spiders. None of this is for the faint of heart, but we are thankful for the spiders and all of their work eating bugs.

Enough about bugs, already!

Fruit and Vegetable

Sylvie’s corn is a’tassling. Two Dog Farm’s squash is setting its first fruit but is mostly arrayed with huge yellow-orange blossoms and tendrilled runners. Beans reach up the trellis Judy put up for Molino Creek Farm. In Sylvie’s dry-farmed experimental plot, beans bush out and remain healthy and vigorous way into the dry summer – looking good!

Bacon avocados are getting mopped up as they get more and more ripe, the Community Orchardists are quite elated. There will be more of those! And, in our after-work pacing of the avocado stand, we discovered that the lamb haas are starting to get ripe, too, though they’re a ways out…at least they’ll be the next ones in line after we run out of the bacon type.

The Big News in the fruit orchard is the potential for lemonade: when life gives you ____! One of the big lemon trees is loaded with ripe lemons! Eureka!!!!

Song

Twittering goldfinches, ranting woodpeckers, chirping bluebirds, scolding jays, screaming hawks – the Farm is the stage for avian soliloquy.

Nighttime brings the owl speeches and fox caterwauling. We’ve been hearing the eerie yowls of gray fox…often…at night. The prints were evidence enough, and then there was poo. But recently the fox have been quite vocal. Raaargh!

The red tailed hawk is a real screamer, not sure why. This big bird sails back and forth over the farm screaming way more than normal, leaving us wondering if this one is very young: it certainly is whiter than we’re used to!

Ground squirrel song is at its peak. Those loud chippers are chipping up the whole place often and persistently. There’s no going stealthily around anymore – your presence is announced immediately by the loud chirp of squirrel. The cuties climb to the top of the closest lookout and await the appropriate moment to sound the alarm. Meanwhile, they are sunbathing and sometimes seeming to nap. The littlest of squirrels emerged from the burrows about 2 weeks ago, and they are still quite small: these don’t seem adult enough to have been given permission to chip. We have at least a hundred ground squirrels this year. More to come, I’m sure.

Weird Clouds

This past week, the region around the Farm including into Bonny Doon experienced the oddest of clouds, riding in front of the remnants of a tropical storm (!). Asperitas clouds were first documented in 2006 and only officially named in 2017 – a recent and very rare cloud type! Let’s call them “climate change clouds.” Very odd.

Shifts

Maw and Caw, our resident ravens, panting at the top of a ridgeline tree, trying to catch a cool breeze

Night has become a respite not only from work but also from heat. Daytime – the blazing sun presses on the skin, and clothing blocks the rays but concentrates the heat like tin foil surrounding meat in a broiling oven. Birds pause their flight, perching on understory shady branches, bills wide open, panting. Slowly, the setting sun passes out of sight, the shimmering horizon long holds a golden glow. Stars appear and the world starts to cool. Last night it dipped only into the 60s after a day in the mid 90s. The air is dry – 20% humidity. One would normally welcome a breeze, but on these kinds of days it would be better stilled. The wind reminds us of the possibility of flames carried far, fast. People have become fire-jumpy. Suddenly, summer is upon us after weeks of cold, drizzly fog. We’re sorry we ever complained about that. The weather forecasters are warning about the remnants of a tropical storm peeling northward with chances of lightning this coming week.

Warmth = Growth

The newfound heat and sun make plant growth boom. Thick rows of tomato bushes suddenly get bushier. Winter squash bursts into bloom. Avocado fruit quickly ripen. Apple fruits balloon larger. Passionfruit vines turn shiny green, brightening with new vigor, twining. All the orchard trees press new whorls of leaves skyward, increasing understory shade, shielding tender fruit.

The unfathomable magic of dry farming is in full play. How does the wilting winter squash continue to grow and set fruit? How are the baking tomato plants doubling in size, ablaze with yellow starlike flowers with such dense, perky foliage?

Molino Creek Farm’s dry farmed tomatoes – getting bigger!

Fading Wildflowers, Ripening Wild Fruit

The few remaining wildflowers are quickly fading with the heat. The last annual lupines are winking out. Poppy petals have dropped, leaves fading, plant skeletons sporting long dry pods which split noisily in the midday sun, shattering, sending seeds arcing through the air, sewing next year’s color.

Vast hillside patches of yellow and orange subshrubs are fading: lizard tail, monkeyflower, and deerbrush flowers are browning, setting seed. Leaves curl, turning crunchy. Patches of poison oak are blushing crimson on the dryer parts of steeper slopes.

Coffeeberry, blackberry, acorn and pinecone – all grow, fatten, and ripen but not quick enough for birds.

Elderberry trees have begun to flower. In the cool morning, those huge flat-topped clusters of creamy-green flowers smell sweet and grassy, the scent carrying far, deliciously.

Domestic Flowers

The harbinger of summer: cheerful sunflowers! Sylvie’s garden and Judy’s patch of Molino Creek Farm sunflowers have begun to brighten the farm. Mysteriously, wild sunflowers have also begun flowering for the first time along Warrenella Road, down by the coast – that kind of thing used to only happen way inland, in the hottest part of the state.

Salvias and roses are also blossoming in the gardens and hedgerows.

Birds and Squirrels Feasting on Fruit

Though a Big Year, the apple orchard suffers mightily from many, many jays. Cassandra confirms – it is the biggest year we’ve seen for Steller’s jays. Scrub jays are also quite numerous as are the acorn woodpeckers. Hundreds of husks of apples hang on the trees and more everyday are getting pecked away to nothing.

At the edge of the avocado orchards, ground squirrels are slow-ripening avocado fruit they have torn from the branches. Avocados are strewn here and there, gnaw marks revealing bright green inner flesh that is still waxy-hard. Pointy rodent teeth continue testing until the fruit ripens or softens and then it disappears. Long scraping teeth marks also mar winter squash flesh and few thus far have survived without such damage.

The Work

Farm workers are beginning to stretch as productivity increases. Mowing and weeding are paramount to give the edge to the desirable plants and to reduce fire danger. Tractors rarely rest, weedeaters whine and growl. In car or by foot, now comes the pacing routine of irrigation travels to turn on and off valves, or to adjust and monitor pumps and storage tanks. More Farm Partners are involved this year than ever, and the sharing of the burden of keeping the watering, and the watering system, running is a real joy. It is not easy operating a community water system that integrates many acres of irrigated crops. Soon, we will be harvesting apace. Each day, daylight hours shorten and we recall last year’s dark evenings packing boxes of freshly harvested apples for the next day’s markets.

Dawn Watering

It has become imperative to start the days early, like every year during this season. Fattening fruit demands water. Micro-sprinklers hiss and twirl fine sprays that blow away or evaporate during the windy, sunny part of the day. Early mornings (before dawn, even) is the best watering time, when it is still and foggy. The first inkling of light wakes me into a routine of donning warm clothes and a jacket. The dimly lit, peaceful saunter downhill to the orchard unfolds new wonders every day. Turkeys awkwardly hasten away, great strides, giant bodies rocking back and forth. Ravens glance up from their ground-gazing meditations. An alert doe leads her two spotted fawns a little farther away, slowly. A bout of tiny droplet drizzle cools my face. When the chain latching the orchard gate clinks, the sound seems to carry far, silencing the already quiet chatter of birds. I wrest the big valve open and water gushes down the shaking pipe to the smaller laterals. Sprinklers begin bubbling, then spin. I must take a look at each of the sprinklers – 180 each round – to assure each is working, tracing the flexible tubes feeding them to spot any leaks, ears alert to irregular noises that indicate punctures from rodents or errant hoes. All checked and fixed, hands muddied and pants soaked, the morning grows lighter and I climb the hill back home with a satisfied smile knowing that the thirsty trees are happy, too.

White roses grace the hedgerow near the Apple Orchard

The Fog

Each day starts with fog, either obscuring the ridgelines or right down to the ground, soaking. There have been stretches of days with no sun at all but recently the fog has retreated oceanward midday, replaced by sun and episodic breezes. 52F at sunrise and the warmest part of the day gets to 71F; the sun feels warm but the wind makes chill. Really, when the sun comes out the temperature is pure heaven.

The Last Mow

Celebrations and hard work with the drying of grass. Over many years and with lots of effort, we have converted nearly 20 acres to grassland from scrubland or old farm fields. Grassland is better for fire safety and restores wildlife that depend on it. Western bluebirds, harvest mice, voles, grassland butterflies (buckeyes!), and so much more are abundant now as the red-tailed hawk regularly wheels overhead seeking grassland prey. So much grassland demands hours of mowing Right Now. Five foot thick dry grass gets ground into three inches of mulch, reducing flame lengths and the heat of wildfire. Swallows delightfully swarm behind and around the mowing tractor. Brewers blackbirds pounce and dance on insects uncovered in the new cut straw, beaks full of white moth wings. Afterwards, the shortened sward attracts regular attention from bluebirds swooping to catch insect snacks: these birds really require short grass to find their food. Somehow, the native grass rebounds even after this late mow and in a month the tawny, dust churned mulch will start to green. Poppies will emerge to blossom in mid-September through the decomposing thatch.

A herd of buck-deer, some with large antlers, near the Farm on a 2020 burned slope

Big, Fat Rodent Mounds

The mowing was differently dusty this year. What used to be the more or less consistent roar of the flail mower was interrupted by a bogged down engine and the churn of dirt: ground squirrel burrows! Huge swirls of dust erupted behind the mower, sometimes sent aloft by a breeze. Once, rising heat and a breeze created a dirt vortex that spun in place, a brown twisting spellbound ghost.

Those squirrels had been hiding. Now, they are out in the open, flattening themselves as they grub and graze. Their loud whistle-chirps are more common, as waves of the rodents scatter back to their burrows in alarm. Hawk! Human! Run!! Four to six half-size, big-eyed, skinny young squirrels flock not far from their family’s burrow entrances. Some burrows are quickly being excavated, three foot wide, one foot deep fans of bare, dry soil…and rocks! Mower blades will dull faster next summer and the air will get more dusty.

Farming

Crop plants have become adults. Our community celebrated its first red tomato last weekend and the vines are getting fuller with green fruit. Apples have surpassed the silver dollar stage and are coloring up. Pears aren’t far from being ripe. Meyer and real lemons are coming on as are the bacon avocados. It looks likely that we’ll get a summer crop of limes in six weeks. Our first substantial passion fruit crop won’t be ripe until September.

Judy’s first sunflowers are open and she’s been distributing the coveted silky smooth dark green zucchini. Two Dog Farm’s grapes are neatly trellised with bunches of promising fruit. Two Dog (really, truly!) dry farmed winter squash has just fully blanketed the field, giant green leaves, some patches with beautiful silver veins, all dotted with big yellow-orange flowers. The crews have done their major weeding, now we wait for the ripening of fruit and the promised burgeoning harvest.

Planning

Though the season of long days and hard work are made more enjoyable by the beatific clime, we’re taking the unusual turn of long term planning during the height of the work year. Everywhere you look at ‘outdoor work,’ there is an inter-generational transfer crisis. The hard-working trades of forestry, livestock, land management, wildland firefighting, and farming are struggling to attract young talent. We wonder how to continue the tomatoes and row crops of Molino Creek Farm. Who will manage Santa Cruz County’s North Coast agricultural fields in a decade or so? Will we ever again experience the amazingly diverse, delicious organic crops of Route One Farms from the 1990’s? It takes real skill and hard work to keep each crop growing enough to support the workers. And so, we meet in the large, lonely upstairs room in our Barn and ponder…