Frog song, forest tending, restoration reflections, and burn piles – just a few of the things happening at Molino Creek Farm this past week.

Frog Song

The cement pond has lots of algae and lots of frogs, singing. This is the second season with a new regimen of pond management. In summer, we try to keep the pond swimmable with chlorine and such. As winter approaches, we stop with the chemicals and allow the pond to go feral. The algae starts growing and frogs quickly move in, and also the newts. The frogs are Pacific chorus frogs, which are relatively small but loud. They can change color in just a few hours to blend in better to their surroundings. For unknown reasons, they start singing louder and louder and then stop, then build up steam again and stop again…right through the night and sometimes in the day. Guests staying the Barn are quite close to the cacophony, which takes some getting used to if one wants to sleep. They are laying eggs which become thousands of tadpoles that gradually grow legs and hop away into the adjoining orchards where they help control pests. Well, I suppose no few of those tadpoles get eaten by newts, which also make eggs and newtlets in the pond.

Forest Tending

We are still cleaning up after the 2020 wildfire, and that cleaning up is helping to prepare for the next one. Bob Brunie has been hard at work getting a patch of Douglas fir in order. That stand adjoins our entrance road and presented quite a hazard during the recent wildfire: it was burning so intensely as to thwart any attempt to use the road, so it was briefly impossible to quickly respond to threats to uphill structures, which may have resulted in some wildfire damage. The fire left lots of dead trees and parts of trees – fuel for future wildfire and a repeat of the last one in blocking the road. So, Bob’s been chopping down dead trees, trimming up branches, and hauling out understory fuels to be burned in piles. We were concerned about Douglas fir invasion before the last fire, but now stands have become quite rare, so this project has become a kind of important forest restoration project. Plus, a shady grove is welcome on hot summer days and some wildlife species probably are glad for it. 

Meanwhile, I spent a bit of time cleaning up burned willows and fallen conifers on another patch of farm ground- alongside our ephemeral stream where one day there might be some good camping spots.

Let’s reflect a little deeper on some other longer-term restoration work the Farm has been up to…

Scrub Transformation

Molino Creek Farm landmates and a network of generous community members have been working with nature to steward this land since 1982 and recently have been embarking on coastal prairie restoration. Photos from the 1980’s show much of this land as meadows. The legacy of indigenous land tending presented lush prairies to the first colonists who took advantage of the abundant forage to feed livestock. Barbara McCrary reported that her husband Lud’s grandfather’s journals noted landscape-level neighborliness with gatherings on this parcel to tend the hay crop in the late 1800’s. Only recently, because of changed stewardship, have the meadows been transforming into scrubland, but two wildfires helped reverse that and we’ve been taking advantage of those to nudge the ecosystem back to the very-endangered coastal prairie ecosystem.

Recent Prairie History

Two wildfires, a prescribed fire, and large-scale mowing have been tilting two large sections of south-facing slopes towards the grassland direction. In 2009, the Lockheed Fire engulfed 270 degrees of the Farm and firefighters set back burns to one of what is becoming a south-facing restoration site. Firefighters fanned across the slope and, just in time, set the scrubland above Vandenberg Field on fire, pulling advancing wildfire away from one of our homes. The slope subsequently erupted in thistles and then reverted to scrubland by the time the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire once again burned it. With it went an area downhill in what has become the second restoration site (below Vandenberg Field). In 2024, the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association burned that second site. After each of those burns on the second site, Moliñeros scattered locally collected grass and wildflower seeds, including across an acre that had been planted in 2010 in native grasses and coastal scrub species. Matthew Todd helped us last year to mow the uphill site, which had burned in 2009 and 2020 but was around 5 feet tall in poison oak, coyotebrush, and French broom.

Restoration Now

Interestingly, the two restoration sites are evolving quite differently. For both sites, ecological reactions to the first fires were similar: very poor-looking soil, lots of bare ground, then broadleaf weeds (thistles), and then resprouting coastal scrub species. After 2 quick-succession fires and seeding, the lower site is transforming into very lush grassland. After 2 widely spaced fires and then mowing last year, the upper site has only rare patches of grassland and lots of broadleaf weeds/resprouting coastal scrub species. If the lessons from the lower site apply, that upper site needs another fire, and/or mowing…soon – and seeding! 

It is most curious that the soil seems so poor during early stages of restoration and then gradually produces more and more lush grassland. Is it because so much of the nutrients are caught up in scrub biomass, and that has to decompose and become available for the grassland…or, is there some soil biome shifts occurring? Maybe one day we’ll know!

Burn Piles

A key component of this land tending is biomass disposal. If we don’t do it, Nature will! We were pleased that the 2020 CZU Fire burned up many brush piles, but we might have placed them better and surely lots of critters, thinking they were safe below all that biomass, were cooked alive. To avoid burning up critters, we move piled up brush to an adjoining spot to burn. Wherever brush is piled and rests for more than a few days, there are lizards, snakes, rodents, and sometimes even foxes hiding in the mess.

This land creates an amazing abundance of biomass, which presents a threat when wildfire comes. This productivity is evident in our row and orchard crops and equally easy to see in the growth of scrub, grassland, and forest. The post-fire cleanup has generated a lot more biomass to be moved around (MOOP!), mostly burned but maybe we’ll figure out gully stuffing and chipping at some point. We should probably aim for 70 burn piles a year to keep making progress; we are at 15ish now with more stuff piling up by the day and we have until April to burn it up (or wait until next December). Bonfire Fun!