The bounty is upon us. The Horn of Plenty gushes forth a profound plethora of food as Fall begins. The Equinox returns old bird friends to the farm’s ongoing bird drama, including many galliformes. The meso-predators – fox and skunk, especially – roam and hunt each evening. Farmers sweat in frequent heat, weeding and harvesting. We are thankful the lightning has skipped us, yet, but WHAT’s WITH THE STORMS??!!

Rumblings Afar

Last week it was Tropical Storm Mario, this week an unnamed spiraling monstor. Mario spewed a swarm of lightning bolts 30 miles offshore, jetting up the coast and not, as predicted, coming onshore. The unnamed storm spun arms of poofy clouds and hundreds of lightning bolts, mostly around Lompoc and the southern San Joaquin Valley. It, too, was predicted to come ashore with that violent weather this past Tuesday night but then, once again, it skipped us: the only a hundred or so lightning strikes were inland, in the foothills of the Central Valley. Tense times, these.

The mugginess, daytime heat, and even balmy evenings are unusual for us. Luckily, it hasn’t been scorchingly hot – the apples aren’t getting sunburn. And, happily for tomato farmers, there hasn’t been enough rain to even start to wet the ground – dry farmed tomatoes split with rain!

And, oh how those tropical storm clouds color our sky at sunrise and sunset. Brilliant orange hues are the dominant evening entertainment, dazzling near the horizon and all mixed up with purples and blues higher up, sprayed across cloud puffs or ethereal mists.

The Toil

Amidst the episodic heat, farmers work and sweat. The weeding never ends. One starts early to avoid the worst of it, but that early starts later…hoes hit the ground at 6:45 if we’re lucky. And the harvest takes hours through the day while the sun pushes prickles and wilting heat right through you. The sweat would drip except it is so very dry, salt cakes on the skin roughly mixing with dust. Harvesting tomatoes bent fully over, gingerly stepping between sprawling plants and peering into the dense foliage for hidden fruit, carefully extracted…boxes and boxes of big swelling fruit emerging from so little ground – it is an epic year! What a contrast to last year’s crop failure.

Fruit Ripens

In the orchard, the apples ripen with lemon harvest still in swing. Eureka lemons get ripe by the day, our first year of sending them for weeks to market. These lemons are popular among our Community Orchardists, too – they are catching on – so, the ‘seconds’ lemons are getting claimed voraciously. About 50% of the lemons aren’t perfect enough for market, and so 25 pounds a week are getting distributed. It seems like next year we’ll have surplus for the Pacific School, once they return from the summer. Our lemon trees have just past 10’ tall, a bit lanky and need of some shaping – sharp spines make portions of the getting-dense trees hard to harvest. It is surprising how difficult it is to discern the varying shades of yellow on the fruit, sometimes with hidden tinges of green, to harvest the ripe ones as they turn ever-so-slightly deeper colored.

Gala apples are the first to ripen: we sent our first box to market out to the Community this past week. The background peach color, beneath the red streaks, is so obviously a sign of ripeness. They are gorgeous when ripe.

Reclaiming the Land

We are so thankful to our various partners for their assistance in restoring the natural areas of Molino Creek Farm. Last year, the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association’s (CCPBA) massive network of volunteers and dedicated staff put Good Fire on the ground, nudging our scrub invaded systems back to coastal prairie. Their work also makes our farm safer from wildfire, which has been much on our minds of late. This fire break augments a many miles long regional firebreak that runs on our border and protects Bonny Doon and then Santa Cruz further down the fire-shed.

This week, the new President of the CCPBA, Matthew Todd, has been using his expertise and big, expensive tool to take that burning a bit further. His Bobcat runs a masticator, and he’s mowing down huge patches of the invasive French broom which sprung up after the 2020 fire. Alongside that broom are acres of brush that has taken over super-diverse prairies that were dominant in photos as recent as 1988. Matthew is a landscape artist – it is looking so great and we are much-relieved to have his help bashing broom…and jubata grass…and coyote brush. Broom control protocol calls for several years of mowing in the Fall, like we’re doing now, and we are going to do just that – maybe with a bit of Rx Fire thrown in there.

Rumor has it that CalFire will do a training burn in a few weeks (after grape harvest), so more to come.

Natural Production

While our Farm Fruit is abundant, so is the fruit of the woods. Jays and Acorn Woodpeckers have turned their attention to the acorns, which have swollen and started to drop. On the ridgelines above the Farm, the manzanita bushes have their first massive berry production since the 2020 fire. The seeds have tasty dry, sweet pulp and hard as rock seeds. Some critter has been feasting on them and then pooping out the remains in our apple orchard – a long haul, but someone has a circuit.

Critterland

It is easy to see a fox at night if you just go looking. We must have a large population. They bark and yowl. You can’t hear them, but you can certainly smell them … skunks are prowling farm-wide. The hayfields are full of their nuzzling holes where they seek mice or crickets. The bunchgrasses we’ve been nurturing in our hayfields have turned green and since we didn’t harvest the hay, there is plenty of hunting ground for skunks.

Welcome Back Sparrows! And…

Golden-crowned sparrows returned, as usual, with the Equinox. In the dark of the night on 9/19, hundreds of these winter birds dropped out of the sky and started feasting on what seeds remain from the entire summer of feasting of the other birds. They were quiet and shy at first, maybe a bit tired from their journey, but now they are feisty and squeaky. 

At the same time, other types of birds arrived. The meadowlarks landed in the meadows lower down and closer to the ocean. And, the blackbirds – Brewer’s and bicolored – have suddenly formed their cacophonous flock at the top of the trees around the periphery of the farm fields.

Gallinaceous Bird Drama

The turkey flock was attacked in the forest, what a terrible noise, and only the male has been about. Seems like a good idea to go to that place of turkey noise and see what happened. A coyote or even a pack of coyotes would stand quite a challenge against such powerful birds: maybe it was a lion? Tracking is in order.

Massive quail coveys flush and whirr at every turn. They are Very Jumpy because there is a Very Good Hunter about: Cooper’s hawk is energetically flying about. Do kestrels eat quail? There’s one of those around, too.