Air Quality

Smoke Week, Juice Flowing

For years, as we were planting more and more and more apple trees (we still plant apple trees!), I asked, “What are we going to do with all of the fruit?” “JUICE!” was the answer. Well, here comes the juice….and a whole lotta apples.

Smoke settled thickly onto the Farm during last week’s harvest for market. Holly Frank donned a N-95 mask, others…’cough, cough!’

Later in the day, at sunset, a brief inversion with fresher air at the Farm

The Harvest

First come Gala apples and then Jonagold and then Golden Delicious and then Fuji. We are approaching Fujitime! Somewhere in there are Mutsu, but very few of those this year, alas! 

The Gala apples were plentiful, if disappointing. The pressing at the Pacific School featured those sweet, sweet apples – appropriate for the kidly taste buds, eh? And, many of us made our own juice or dried apples with a few hundred pounds going to the Palo Alto Farmer’s market where we sold practically every last one of them…for $4 a pound! 

The disappointing part of the Gala harvest: the number of fruit with the fearsome “Apple Scab” disease, a mostly superficial ugliness that disqualifies the infected ones from going to market. It seems that variety is particularly susceptible plus the fruit growth timing came at the wrong moment, in the July Gloom part of this year’s anomalous weather. Infected fruit still get et.

Half a box of Jonagold is all we got to send to market, a mystery as there used to be so many more. Bird food? While picking Golden Delicious last week, harvesters were repeatedly bonked on their noggins from falling fruit and we suspected the tree had taken cues from a scene in the Wizard of Oz. Heat stress created fruit shed. Heat Wave #2 hit 100F and the trees on the more exposed sections of the orchard shrugged their loads to the ground. We picked up 400 pounds of the ones that were only slightly bruised and they are ‘sweating’ in the barn for their chance to get juiced.

The apple harvest tally estimate so far: 800 pounds to deer food/compost; 300 pounds to market; 800 pounds to juice; 100 pounds to Pacific School; 200 pounds to pantries and personal use. We are really just beginning.

11 a.m. and the prescribed burn at Swanton Pacific Ranch is roaring next door

Fire…Fire in the Mountains!

We had 21 hours’ notice that the neighbors at Swanton Pacific Ranch were working with CAL FIRE lighting up around 50 acres. We glanced up towards the NW ridge and there it was, a giant plume of smoke, headed towards the ocean (at first). A few hours later, the wind shifted and the fire had grown. Helicopters were whirring, dropping loads of water on some ‘hot spots’ towards the end of the day. A thick stinky mass of smoke enveloped the Farm. 

There had been many days of very hot weather and we had become accustomed to opening up the windows at night to cool homes down. Impossible! It was ‘stewing in your own juices’ time, once again – a phenomenon not encountered since the 2020 fire. One finds a non-absorbent chair, strips down to as little as possible, mops the brow and sips icewater in one’s own living room…at 10 at night! Don’t open the windows!! Duck out the door as quickly as possible and wonder if you’ll die from breathing the air. The sun was that muffled burnt orange glow. The next morning, crack the door…sniff, sniff – ugh! Still smokey. It gradually passed but then there was today – another prescribed fire, this time 100+ acres lit by State Parks at Año Nuevo State Reserve. It was a different smell; we used to be able to identify the type of vegetation burning from the smell, but no longer. And, this time no visible plume, just the entirety of the sky hazy and the air acridly stinky. More burns are on the horizon: a new era for California with the use of prescribed fire expanding. We will contribute our own smoke when the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association helps us use Good Fire to restore coastal prairie while we make downwind neighbors safer for the next wildfire.  Date uncertain.

Smoke headed high, fresher air below, at sunset – but not for long…the pall again enveloped the Farm after dark

Nuthatch and Flicker

A flicker family has taken up residency on the main road through our Farm. Sylvie reports seeing them frequently. Two proud parents and at least one brave young of the year offspring. They have giant beaks. 

The nasal calls of nuthatch and red-bellied sapsucker are common once again, both species having recently returned to the area. Golden crowned and now white crowned sparrows seem particularly numerous this year. With the swallows gone and the aforementioned menagerie becoming ensconced, the avian soundscape is now solidly in the ‘winter’ camp.

A few day later, and another prescribed fire…at sunset the crescent moon still shows

Furries

Sylvie reports newly arrived chipmunk in her vicinity. This year’s ground squirrel babies have reached the size where they are indistinguishable from the adults of last year. The herd of deer is massive, deer everywhere, both in and out of the fence. Somehow, a healthy large buck got inside of the newly fence-fortified vineyard, bashing its antlers angrily into the fence to try to get out. A midnight walk in the cool of the night allowed the then-calmer buck to be coaxed out of an open gate. Herds of deer roam freely in and out of both large farm fences, grazing on all manner of expensive plants, hampering production, sunburning what might have been shaded tomatoes.

Next Work

While we move apples to shoulder-mounted picking bags then to boxes and into trucks, we cast our minds forward with plans to plant cover crop before the rains. And, we mow and mow- the last of the mowing to knock this past year’s cover crop to the ground so that this year’s can be planted or at least last season’s seeds will stand a chance of germinating. The smoke reminds us that we aren’t entirely out of wildfire danger, yet…how to fit in time to do more fuels reduction? And then there’s roadwork…

Delightful sunrises…fascinating sunsets – the beautiful Fall light is upon us!

What’s In the Air?

Have you heard the question “What’s in the water?” I’ve encountered that question recently posed in the context of a situation when odd, inexplicable things had been happening at an organization. Then, new, seemingly fresh and rational personnel are hired, but those people quickly seem just as odd and inexplicable, less fresh and innovative and then things just stay the same kind of weird. How can that possibly happen?! And we exclaim, “What’s in the water?” It’s as if people are being medicated through their drinking water into a kind of sub-par state of being. “They drank the Kool-Aid” is another way of saying that same thing, I guess, except less innocuously referencing a terrible tragedy in South America some time ago. Judging by the amount of filtered water, bottled water, and such that people purchase, it does seem as if we are very, very concerned about what is in our water. What about the air? What’s in our air?

The Direction of the Wind

In my daily routine, each time I walk outside I try to pay attention to the wind. Which way is the wind headed? I feel the breeze on my skin or watch the swaying of the grass and trees. I tilt my body until I face straight into it, to know best the precise direction. Ialso ask how is the wind blowing right where I am versus farther away? Sometimes the wind is gentle close but raging nearby, on higher ground, where trees ‘talk’ and sway. 

The directions of the wind can be predictable, but it is becoming less so. Winds around the Monterey Bay are often from the north or northwest, mainly cool breezes. Winter storms especially sweep in with gales from the northwest. Bomb cyclones come from that way. Atmospheric rivers tilt the direction more from the west. Especially cold storms come more from the north. Once the breeze starts coming from those other two ways, things get weird.

CZU Lightning Complex Fire – The air looked like this for days

The downslope, Santa Ana winds of southern California (aka devil winds) make things really weird to our south. Those winds are from the east and can be very strong; fires rage, people freak out. Luckily, that phenomenon doesn’t happen here, but we do get occasional winds from the east. I swear I can smell the desert on those winds, the smell of creosote bush. Those breezes are warm and dry just like the winds from the south. I can very well recall the stormy winds from the south: those brought us the CZU Lightning Complex Fire as well as a couple other tattered hurricane remnants that created havoc across the state. When winds come from the south or east, beware of fire and keep your eye out for the odd human behavior associated with Santa Ana winds in southern California. We might also be concerned about the better-documented situation where those breezes carry the spores of fungi that cause Valley Fever, an air quality concern…borne on the wind as they say.  

Air Quality

Once you recognize the direction from which the wind blows, the next question becomes what is that air carrying? When the wind blows ‘just right’ (from the northeast), we get a nasty soup of smog hanging out to sea, blown out of the Golden Gate and then generally downcoast where you get to appreciate that the Bay keeps us a bit sheltered and inland from those toxic breezes. Northeast winds are rare, but that smog carries lots of ugly chemistry. There’s stuff you don’t want to breathe for its toxicity, but there is also lots of fertilizer from car exhaust. Catalytic converters do a good job of turning exhaust into readily available nitrogen compounds that are fertilizing the landscape. Healthy? Nay. Fertilizer makes habitats more weedy, weeds grow bigger and make a bigger wildfire danger when they dry. The tall weeds outcompete native wildflowers. Fires carried by those weeds are devastating California’s deserts, endangering things like Joshua trees. The Golden Gate (NE wind) is one of our passages for nitrogen-laced air pollution, the other is the Pajaro Valley, belching out smog pushed by the more northerly breezes passing down through the southern end of the Silicon Valley.

Those ‘Fresh’ Westerlies

If you are like me, you feel lucky to have that great expanse of clean ocean air to keep us breathing well. Think again. We are seeing more and more pollution from China reaching our shores. Those giant cargo containers full of ‘stuff’ isn’t the only thing coming from the east. Coal fired power plants are making a yuckola mess of chemicals that are polluting California’s air. But, let’s not rest all of the blame on human’s insatiable appetite for stuff in the present. Some of the toxic air particles are from greed of the deep past: gold mining. Mercury was used in processing gold in California. That mercury flowed downstream and into the ocean; it is now being carried back to land in fog and rain, concentrating up the food chain and poisoning mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Famous Air Quote

“We have some incredibly talented people that know environment and what we’re doing probably better than any people on Earth.

From day one, my administration has made it a top priority to ensure that America has among the very cleanest air and cleanest water on the planet.  We want the cleanest air.  We want crystal-clean water, and that’s what we’re doing and that’s what we’re working on so hard.”

I’m guessing you know the source of this quote by now. If not, you can probably guess from the recognizable style. We hope that President Trump, like all politicians, recognizes how much the vast majority of citizens value clean air, so that there is ample motivation to do something about it. If politicians don’t act on these things, we all suffer. Unfortunately, few journalists hold any politician accountable to their clean air record: after all, it is anti-business to do so, and the news needs money.

Our Work

Vote. Get an air purifier for your house. Buy less. Go outside and think about the breeze…the direction of the wind…the strength of the wind…and what is carried on those breezes. 

-this post originally published as part of BrattonOnline.com – check it out! Updated weekly with keen insights into Monterey Bay and beyond.