Molino Creek Farm

Wind and Cold

March…the warmest and driest in decades. Might May be the coolest? The heat’s gone to Europe and the East Coast where the poor folks roast and sweat. Will the cold, windy May place at more distance Summer’s wildfire? Nay, this topsy turvy human-driven climate change world gives us dizzying unpredictability. Just out of sight, out on the horizon, who knows what lurks? For now, this week, fog and drizzle rule.

Two layers of clouds roll downcoast: wispy white puffs rapidly curl and pout in the sky over the farm, and an unbroken wall of fog, dark gray and more oceanward is more ponderous and slow in its southward march. The wind’s sudden roar bends trees, flattens grasses. I glance towards the ridges far above our land where scantly needled (post fire) firs and redwoods move more subtly, boughs flexing, tree tops swaying. Birds dart low lest they be pitched downwind by the gusts. Tuesday this week was a day to be inside. Luckily, it lasted only one day. And still the chill remains. Ah- surprises! Rain! Tomorrow!! Maybe a half inch…

Feisty Animals

We sneeze loudly outside (the pollen is thick and swirling) and turkeys gobble back. These foggy days lengthen the bird chorus from dawn to midday. A pair of white throated swifts called their sharp tee-tee-tee-tee-tee-tee for a bit this morning – perhaps drinking at the pond and then playfully departing, wheeling through the swallow and martin flock. Antlers fat and velvety, the brood of deer is moving less furtively away. A two-foot-long Santa Cruz aquatic gartersnake spends mornings on the cement front porch, preparing to molt. One eye is blind: from shedding skin or from old age? This one is far from its aquatic home…old and big.

Sylvie caught a fox and bobcat standoff in the deep, dark night this past week. The sound recording is awesome and harsh. Those screaming and hissing critters were doing their level best to avoid each other’s’ teeth and claws through loud ‘diplomacy.’

Santa Cruz Aquatic Gartersnake basking on the front porch

Liquid Sunshine

We celebrate the fruit, which becomes more numerous and tastier each year. The pride of the orchard recently has been citrus. There are still some (very few) Persian limes. Lisbon lemons are ripening and a few Meyer “lemons” are ready every day or so. Two Valencia orange trees, one much larger than the other, bear juicy, thin skinned, sweet fruit: 3 of those will make an 8-ounce glass of liquid sunshine. Thanks goes to Chuck Overley for planting those and more thanks to the legions of Community Orchardists for nurturing them to bear such mighty crops.

The Wetting

We are officially on the irrigation routine, no turning back until the winter rains next October. Just in time, our second solar-powered well pump is on line for this dry season. The sun allows us to keep the irrigation going to meet the needs of hundreds of trees. 9 more irrigation lines need to be ‘renewed’ before the whole system is ready to roll. We have a total of just over 100 irrigation lines feeding the orchard and each one needs looking after (some- a lot) at the outset of the watering season. That’s a 20 hour job, and it sure is nice to be 90% of the way. But oh my gosh did portions of the orchard get dry before the water flowed! We hope the trees forgive us.

Jen and Ian donated a weed eating crew and look what happened: nice understory to Wickson Crabs!

Mow, Mow, Mow

The first mowing is almost done in the orchard and nowhere is the last mowing taking place. A donation from Jen and Ian brought forward a paid, Highly Skilled weedeating crew to make short work of nearly 25% of the orchard, a thick late Spring tangle on the steepest part of the North Orchard hill. That part hasn’t looked that nice for years! Uplifting!

The mowing machine had chopped and ground up head-high bell beans between the orchard tree rows, and then they resprouted and are flowering 2’ tall, again. Where they grew thickly, regrowth is deep green: the nitrogen those beans created is in evidence and we are thankful. Now to mow the resprouting things to keep the cycle going: second mowing, anyone? Some years it takes 4.

Aster chilensis – native perennial late spring aster!

Floral Report

Ah, where to start with the flowers? Our local version of the perennial bush lupine has its lavender flowered charm and is in peak blossom, especially evident roadside. Native summer aster has started flowering, spikes of many petaled stars. Poppies still color field and hillside, but it has become difficult to find a single annual sky lupine. The farewell to springs opened their magenta petals this past week, joining the late spring tarplants.

Most citrus blooms have past but apple flowers persist. Deep purple, pale blue and many shades in between – vetch, twining and matting, is having its flowering heyday.

A Babyness of Plants

The highlight of the week has been PLANTING. Two Dog Farm has a huge patch of peppers taking root in beautifully prepared beds with drip tape efficiently irrigating the tiny baby seedlings into their new life in the real world: what promise! Molino Creek Farm has a patch of newly planted really, truly dry farmed tomatoes thanks to a close collaboration with the Two Dog Farm’s generous Bartle couple. Judy also had some help planting row upon row of onions this past week. And, those Bartles planted their winter squash seeds, the beginning of the annual unfolding of the Miracle where something appears (prolifically!) where nothing was, without any added water. There’s also Sylvie’s endeavors in some beautiful big patches…dry farmed beans, anyone? What experiments will this expert plant person reveal to us this year?

Hundreds and hundreds of new plants are gracing the fields of our most magnificent farm. Tiny green dots in a sea of freshly tilled rich brown soil. What a sight!

Each of these flowers will probably make a fruit!

Anti-Apple-Babies

On the other hand, there is the great procession against too many apples. So nice to have many hands’ help snipping or twisting off the too, too many baby apples. We are thinning the fruit. This year, it is time to hone our thinning skill, keeping more fruit on the apple varieties that would otherwise make “Whole Meal Apples” – as with Mutsu or Braeburn. With some apple types, you’d need a cart to carry a fruit to lunch if they were ‘properly thinned,’ and no one would enjoy a ‘lunchbox apple’ without leaving more apples per stem. The ground is getting littered by hundreds of marble-sized apple kids. Up on the stems: one apple per cluster where there used to be 5+. Long each bough: one apple every 4 – 6 inches! Those are our goals: high hopes!

And….here’s what a cluster of flowers turns into- a mess of fruit!

Thinned apples look like this- nicely spaced, and not squinched into a clusters

More Cool Weather

This past week has been another ‘the sun sure feels nice’ kind of weather. It has been creeping up to maybe a low 70F hour or two with nights in the low 50s. Foggy mornings, mostly. When the fog clears, the air feels a bit oddly dry. Perhaps the cold soil condenses out what moisture was in the air. “They” say it might get warm this coming weekend.

Baby Trees

Believe it or not, we are still rejuvenating our orchard…through grafting! The 2020 Fire still is echoing- the trees that inferno fried still have promise. Sylvie has taken to grafting desireables onto the few remaining post-fire rootsuckers. Here and there you encounter her artistry- grafting tape at the base of a rapidly sprouting scion. One graft from last year, a persimmon right inside the main gate to the apple orchard, is especially luscious with its bright green, glossy, big leaves. The many, many cherry trees Drake grafted onto rootsprouts from fire kill, in 2021, right after the fire, are getting to look more like adult trees than babies.

In 2025, Sylvie Childress grafted this beautiful persimmon onto some rootstock that had turned into a tree post 2020 Fire

Native Grass Seed

Judy, Sylvie, and I harvested a few pounds of native grass seeds recently. Hanks of seed slowly cure and dry in paper grocery bags warmed by midday sun. We have tens of thousands of California bromegrass seeds, the dominant grass on the Farm which has been getting ripe lately. This is restoration material. The farm has already been transformed in many places from thistles and other weeds to native grass swards. We’ll do more of that as we turn brush fields into prairie just by tossing seeds from one place to the next. If there is a prescribed fire this year, this pile o’ seeds will do just fine.

Upside Down Spring

In our Mediterranean Spring, it is supposed to stop raining and the flowers bloom. This year, it stopped raining, the flowers blossomed and then it started raining again. Purple needlegrass has already bolted and set seed. Sky lupines and poppy are more pod than bloom. It is downright gushy out there: m-u-d spells mud. Spring mud. This late rain makes it very unlikely that wildfire will plague us this year, at least close by. Official reports from the surroundings put us at ‘normal’ rainfall with this past storm. How we got to that is quite a story: rain in November then none for most of December then a bit more into the New Year, then a fairly hot January…a few storms to wet things again through February and then No Rain March (and hot!) and then here comes all this rain in April. Topsy Turvey.

Potentially, this is a Valencia orange tree- not quite ripe, yet.

Oranges

We have Washington, Cara-Cara, Robertson, and Lane Late navel oranges as well as one unknown navel type and a tree full of what look like Valencia oranges. We should mention the bitter orange, Seville?, tree that bears quite a few fruit each year. We have enjoyed the fruit from the two 7-year old Cara-Cara so much that we planted six more last year, and we must wait a long while until we get lots of those fruit. Cara-Cara oranges are red from the same compound that makes tomatoes red, Lycopene, so it makes sense that we grow lots of them on this here tomato farm.

It takes a bunch of work to establish citrus trees; they aren’t happy with weed competition, so we have to keep them weeded frequently…like 4 times a year, for their first 3+ years. This is orange season: the fruit has been hanging for a year and is starting to get sweet. The various Mandarin varieties have a lead on them, so we haven’t been wanting for sweet citrus for a bit.

The Deer would love to eat this cabbage seedling, but maybe they won’t

Deer Report

We chatted about The Deer a bit this past week. Mark Jones reports frequently seeing more than 20 deer. By flashlight, the many pairs of glowing deer eyes are a bit surprising. One can glimpse grazing deer whenever one wants. They scamper or saunter about- normally they are quite shy and run, but not always. We should be pleased for the grazing of the plants, which would otherwise be fuel for summer fires, but some people grumble about all the deer: “landscaping” damage is probably the foremost complaint. With all the deer, one would expect some happy mountain lions, but alas the sign of the cougars is rare, still.

The varied habitats at Molino Creek Farm provide for great bird diversity

Bird News

This past week brought yet more neo-tropical migratory songbirds. A lazuli bunting is high-squeaking right through midday. Black headed grosbeak song is also wonderous. The background noise of bicolor blackbirds, song sparrows, and golden crowned sparrows is ubiquitous. One is occasionally startled by the vast rush of a startled quail covey. Their cousins of the sky, band tailed pigeons, are quite active flapping from walnut tree to walnut tree. Today’s discovery was a female turkey clucking quite loudly for who-knows-what reason. The turkey flock seems to have dwindled to one hen, a young tom, and an older, dominant tom. Just 3 turkeys – maybe the other hens are sitting on nests or perhaps they were eaten…piles of feathers were here and there the last few weeks and a coyote was close by.

Squirrels

We used to have Western Gray Squirrel, but now we only have ground squirrels. The gray squirrels were before the fire – they supposedly are fond of truffles, so maybe that food source changed. We have a local gray squirrel type without a common name, Sciurus griseus ssp. nigripes, which only occurs along the coast between here and San Luis Obispo. I hope they come back!

The latest on our ground squirrels: have you ever looked carefully at their color patterns? They have the most amazing white eye liner, making their eyes oh-so cute! Their back fur also has cute, cute dots. Their hands are quite agile- today I watched one grab grass stalks so it could get at the seeds, which otherwise were above its head. This squirrel was feasting on ripgut brome seeds, a bad weed with heavy weight seeds that are quite rough to touch – good, brave squirrel with strong seed-eating teeth!

Mechanical Chewing

Speaking of tearing things apart – we are seeing more of Mr. Matthew Todd’s expertise with his brush mastication machine. Huge thistle and French broom patches are being chewed up into tiny pieces as we attempt to reclaim coastal prairie patches collaboratively across property boundaries with our neighbors managing the San Vicente Redwoods property. This will be Part 2 of the recipe to try to get rid of the broom: last Fall was Part 1, then there will be this Fall to hit it again…and the next 2 Falls, too, before we expect to see a reduction in this weed.

Large Sideways Rain

Sideways rain washed the windows clean this past week. Well, sometimes it blew the screens clean, depositing the early season dust and pollen onto the adjoining windows. For a few days, trees and shrubs did their crazy wind dances, nodding and bowing and whipping and shaking. It was a sporadically blustery and showery affair, mainly. Towards the end of the storm, there was sunshine in between the gales and rain and…rainbows! So happy to get a bit more rain. It seems to have (re)wet the soil, which had dried two feet down. A big sigh of relief, giving us more time to get the orchard irrigation up and running again without the trees wilting (like last year!).

And, it’s been cool, again. A few nights in the mid-forties. The woodstoves were at work keeping our dwellings warm.

Fabulously Flowing Bell Beans – building soil and providing pollinators happiness

Active Critters

The first squirrel started squeaking this past week, joining the crickets and birds with the high notes. Western bluebirds sure are bright and particularly vocal. Song sparrows are also very song-y. I saw one picking seeds off of grasses in a fallow field – it was very shy and jumpy-nervous. There are innumerable robins posted across the farm. Maw and Caw chased two interloping ravens recently: that was a noisy air battle – noisy, but not long lasting. Perhaps they were just saying ‘hello!’ In the past, there has been less aggressive interactions, which I assumed was one of the offspring bringing a mate back ‘home’ to meet the parents. This was different.

Fox and bobcat have been frequently sighted by various neighbors. One very young bobcat is wandering the road just onto our property at the top.

Greenhouse

The Two Dog Farm greenhouse is vibrantly full of baby plants. There are large tomatoes looking ready for the ground as well as lots of other things. It is the drum roll to planting time.

Orchards

Each Spring presents a mandatory 40 hours of mowing, but the run up is quite beautiful. The artistry of cover crops is overwhelming: lush, flower-filled stalks of bell beans are more than 5 feet tall where they are still growing. Some areas are already mowed, stubs of bell beans sticking up, crunchy-green still. Between those stubs, mushy ground up plants, sometimes stinky-rot, black slime. Patches of mown radish grounds present a particularly unseemly brassica stench. Between mowing sessions, I wander into the uncut cover crop, appreciating the ranks of lush flowers, the fleshy leaves, and the impressively thick shoots.

Fire!

The last bit of backyard burn season is upon us and folks around the farm have been burning accumulated biomass in piles. Alligator lizards snake away from the stacks of branches that we move one-at-a-time into an adjoining flaming pile. Burning in the rain is particularly exhilarating…if you can get the piles started. Bright poppy orange flames counter the graying dusk. The following morning presents an ash pile with satisfyingly little left unburned.

Cherry Blossom Special

It is stupendous and so very fleeting – a grove of cherry trees in bloom. Buds swell quickly, then bare branches soon festooned with pure white petals unfurling. Almost immediately the flowers fade, carried on the breeze, carpeting the ground. Just as rapidly, leaves emerge, grow, and fill the canopies of the trees: fresh, thickly green and lush. New shoots are next, poking into unoccupied voids to capture sun and feed the juicy dark red fruit.

Watering

Cherry Hill, like all of the orchard areas, needs water, NOW…a month early. The microsprinklers and irrigation tubing need uncovering, tested for leaks, pressurized and flushed….2 sprinkers for each of 400 trees, a mile of tubing, hundreds of feet of hard plastic pipe and so many risers and valves. Over the winter mice and gophers have chewed holes, errant mowers or hoes have compromised irrigation: all needs fixing and fast for the thirst of the trees. Marty and Mike chipped in and covered the largest patch of orchard, and I follow to the next places – only 4 more hours to go until irrigation is wetting the soil in all orchard areas! The sun is shining…the pumps are pumping…all is wonderfully waterish well.

Winter Crops

Mostly, the fields are making ‘green manure.’ Cover crops are nearly all in full bloom, making for beautiful color. Head-high yellow mustard is the eye candy from Molino Creek Farm – with an understory of daikon radish: mow that stuff and the roughly chopped remains smells very rich (!) (rank?) as it rots. It is better left tall and flower-filled and habitat for redwing blackbirds a’plenty. In the orchard, the wet, thick stalks of bell beans are festooned densely with flowers, leaves wilting as the soil dries. Oats and vetch are lagging portions of the cover crop: flowers still to come, they are the understory or sometimes the overstory when in stunted, poor-soiled parts of fields.

Tall mustard and Daikon radish – big cover crops inviting nesting birds

Coyote, Turkey, and Quail – Oh My!

Coyotes have gone quiet – a sure sign that lions are near! Wild dog turds are commonplace along trails – that’s how we know they are here. But, they are tip-toeing, nose to the wind, sniffing the big kitties, trying to keep one step ahead. Turkeys – way less bashful. Two toms have been frequently flashing their huge tails, puffed up, dragging their dirt-drawing wings, drumming. Their fleshy head parts are very impressively flashing purples, blue, and crimson. Hens are unimpressed. All are pecking at grass stalks, picking off the first seeds. They take to air easily, flying into the woods, across fencelines. I counted 140 quail in one covey, crowded along a freshly mown road. The big group or smaller all seem particularly skittish right now- what’s up? This ground created lots of quail last year – we’ll see how this year’s eggs hatch. They aren’t paired up yet, so chicks are a long ways off. I saw a finch feeding a baby today, though- early? odd!

Human Stuff

The diggers found the pipe break. Mowers are mowing. Grape growers are fencing. The soil is getting ‘worked up.’ We are trying to discern why one would run a trencher so crookedly, but they did. Every 10 or so feet: an elongate hole was excavated until the pipe was encountered. Then off in the approximate direction for the next hole. From the water pressure, we knew the pipe broke at around 6’ elevation above the well head, and Sylvie’s measurement put that up near the fence/road…but had to trace the pipe to that point and then, YES, that’s where the pipe burst. We’re in business again- the well is pumping to the tanks once again and all is happiness and satisfaction.

With the long days, drizzle, and mucho sun, things need mowing. Mowers are stretched. Already two of the six mowers are down. Thanks to the generous gifts last year, the Community Orchard has its very own mower and it is working quite well: there are 20 hours of mowing to do in the orchard in the next few weeks! Chipping away by the day.

The solution to elusive in-fence deer: build an interior fence! Two Dog is putting a fence within a fence – fencing their vineyard. Beautifully aligned, white-tipped T posts stand in long lines awaiting the fencing.

Speaking of Two Dog Farm – the master tractor operator Mark Bartle is busy making the soil luscious. The rough discing has been followed by more soil work so the fields are looking dark brown and fluffy. The color and the fresh tilled soil smell is something to behold!

Earthstar Fungus popped up thickly under an oak

Wildflowers

Away from the tilled or cover-cropped fields, the native wildflowers are bursting forth. The poppies are in full swing- huge orange patches brighten the slopes, especially in the area that the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association burned in Fall 2024. Looking more closely at those poppy patches, you see blue: sky lupines are also in full bloom: the mix of orange and blue is the mix we get for the best displays. In the woods, the checkerlilies are bobbing their speckled blossoms and the dense 12’ tall ceanothus is making the Whole World smell of native lilac. It is peak spring come a month early.

Heat, Heat, Heat!

Extraordinary heat is the news from Molino Creek Farm…and everywhere around the Central Coast of California. It has been in the 80s during the day for a few days running and going down into the 60s at night – enough to cool the house, thankfully. The sun beat down so wiltingly, burning right through the shirt. Panting finches, beats propped open. The biggest yellow-bellied racer I ever saw, living up to its fast name, slither-whipped across a trail. Snake weather! Clear blue sky days and most sparkling star depth nights. What interrupts the sky are occasional clouds of road dust and legions upon legions of zooplankton. Clouds of tiny metallic green Ceanothus beetles and many others, whirring and spinning above the shimmering hot fields, mopped up by swallows, pounced on by bluebirds.

Quince flowers are always the first to really create some art in the Orchard

Herbivory

The panicky quick growth of Spring is riddled with insect holes, shot through with orange rust fungus. Blue or yellow butterflies energetically flit from leaf to leaf, setting down eggs, flick over to a flower for a sip, and then more frenetic egg laying. Smooth green, fleshy caterpillars or ones covered thickly with prickly black hairs…munch leaves, everywhere, bodies swaying, mouths hungrily arching back into fresh foliage.

Walking with sandals through the hard-to-see overgrown trails makes for orange footwear, orange feet. Wild oat leaves, especially, but also our garlic crop, blackberry and many other plants have been besieged by rust fungi. Leaves turn orange, giving off dusty orange puffs of fungal spores; a closer look reveals thousands of odd evenly spaced orange dots. The fungi are feasting where the insects have failed to feed.

The Deer

The saga of ‘deer in the fence’ continues. We have two large fences. Maybe too large fences. Seems we can’t keep up with the fences. Do fences shrink or are the deer bounding better? Gradually, we add a few more feet on top of the old fence, which was only 4’ of ‘field fencing’ with another set of spaced wires to get the thing to perhaps 7 feet. The wire spacing technique burned up in the last fire, so the top wires hang willy nilly in many places and The Deer find their way over or through that weak link. Gradually, we discover the favored fence jumping spots and add new sections of fencing to close those gaps. Above Vandenberg Field, the (once) new fence extension ends and right where the old, shorter, less effective fence begins…is the Trail of Deer. A team of four (mighty healthy looking) deer come and go as they please through that weak point. This evening, all 4 deer were lined up at the Most Delicious Salad Bar, enjoying a Greek Feast of freshly sprouted grape leaves right at mouth height, held up on vineyard trellis.

Flowers!!!!!

The quick Spring creates a riot of flowers, all blooming at once. The woodlands surrounding the Farm are dense with post-fire California lilac, shiny leaves and hundreds of acres of blue, sweet bouquet. Where the shrubs don’t crowd, native understory flowers bloom: fat false Solomon’s seal and milk maids, redwood sorrel and native blackberry. Out around our fields, in the native prairie, there are rafts of California poppy and the beginnings of the first sky lupine, buttercup, and blue eyed grass. Native grasses are blossoming, too: purple needlegrass and brome, mainly.

The orchards are blooming, too. The earliest pome fruits, quince, are in full joy as are the navel oranges and avocadoes. The scent of citrus wafts far from the orange trees across the farm, a sweet perfume. Cherry blossoms have just burst out in the last couple of days. It won’t be long before the entire apple orchard is pink….so early!

Cover crops bloom in masses. Row after row of bell beans are blossoming in the interstitial areas of the orchard; their fleshy thick leaves barely hiding whorls of big pea flowers. In the row crop fields, daikon radish is head high presenting blinding pure white sheets, abuzz with bees.

This is the way that Spring rushes towards, and soon past, our open-mouthed surprised selves: WOW! Time is moving quickly.

Bell beans’ lush leaves hide pea flowers

Tremulous Time

Humans keep calendars and clocks, rarely aligned with Nature’s metronome. Religion nudges ceremony further, further from the harmonic pulse of seasons, from the spin of Earth, Moon, and Sun. The peeling of millions of people-machines drown timekeeping (dawn and dusk!) birdsong, belching chemical steam, blotching sky, trapping heat, swaying ancient melodies into continuous disharmonious cacophony.

Disoriented humans growing old too fast, days’ flight, years’ fast wrinkle.

Cows on the road into Molino Creek Farm, photo courtesy of M. Lipson

Jumping Ahead

Daylight Savings Time came and March lept into the place where April used to be. Apples are blossoming a month too soon. The blinding greens from the shining fields are already upon us, grass bolting, wildflower riot. Heat waves follow draughts of rain (again!). No more rain foretold and yet too early to believe it is the end of this ‘rainy’ season.

Prescience

Presently taking the time to gaze and smile at verdant hillsides, lush grass and dark green, leafy oaks. Endless ranks of pointy grass strain skyward portending future pokey seeds and ankle-torturing socks. For now, it is grassland Peak Green.

Big, bushy coast live oaks unveil soft new leaves, some trees more yellow, some more red, all gradually turning more uniform dark, prickly, waxy green. Pale dusty pollen filled oak flower tassles dangle from every branch tip; tinier, unseen…stem-hugging female flowers promise acorn births. Farm fields glow at sundown – rafts of white radish, yellow mustard splashes, sprays of bright calendula orange. These will hurry seed-making against all odds, facing the pace of people-priorities under tractor-wheel, mower and plow onto worm-work, rot, and crop-root (joy!).

The varying green of grass and coast live oaks – Photo by M. Lipson

Creature Gathering

Toms and hens, spiders to the wind, and the dawn reveals the arrival of swallows.

The harem found Tom, amused at flashes of facial color (the blues! the reds!), gobbling and strut – cooing encouragement then giggling. Too soon for (echoes of Mardi Gra chiefs) tail displays. The Molino Creek Farm turkey flock saunters along the roads, pecking at field margins. Wondering if this is the same flock that disappeared last early November, all except the Tom: where did they go?

Marty reports spiders taking to the sky. Arachnid astronauts spin and then drop from web ends. Abandoned threads continue downwind, tangling together, creating scattered ropes, white crazy string biotic ‘litter.’ Parachuting predators terrorize fast-reproducing feasts – herbivorous bugs or themselves become wren or robin snacks.

Mysterious moonlit sky trails recently led the barn swallows back to their Molino summer home. They peer into last year’s neglected mud nests, taking stock. Last year’s brood must find new nest locations, not too far from family… collective actions guarantee the coming year’s sibling success. Each whirring swallow eventually lands puddle-side, testing the qualities of mud with both claw and beak.

So goes the rhythm and so goes the song of the consistently changing world at Molino Creek Farm.

Frog Song

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

The geological substrate of the Farm: Santa Cruz Mudstone. (this one looks grumpy). This is on an old railroad grade bank- lower restoration site in an area planted with purple needle grass in 2010

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…

Bracken fern is plentiful in the upper restoration site

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.

Small flowered needle grass in the upper restoration site: rare situation- most of the area doesn’t have native grassland species, yet.

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.

The lower restoration site, which we have seeded, has lupines and poppies- here just beginning to flower

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!

Rain at Molino Creek Farm

Rain runs off of bark, soaks into soil, and hisses as it soaks rapidly into mudstone pores. Drops percolate through the earth, moistening roots and wetting bugs, coalescing into aquifers, seeping out in springs, flowing down as streams. Rainwater mixes with rain whipped ocean salt droplets but remains rather pure. As downpours, showers, or drizzle, rainwater washes nutrients out of the soil past slurping, hungry roots, bathing micro-organisms in nourishing soup. More pristine, richer soils more effectively capture free nutrients. More disturbed/tilled poorer ground loses nutrients. Nitrogen in particular leaches from disturbed soils and finds its way into groundwater or rivers, sometimes in such quantities as to be classified as pollutants.

Rain water collects in tractor rut in our perched-high Vandenberg Field, farmed by Two Dog Farm

Watershed

The Molino Creek watershed begins in vast swaths of maritime chaparral growing in fractured mudstone with very little discernable soil. Manzanitas, ceanothus, bush poppy, and such are the dominant chaparral shrubs, growing symbiotically with fungi. When the winter storms drench this chaparral, rocks soak up the first good bit before water soaks into the millions of cracks through this highly fractured rock. Down it soaks, a few feet for every inch of rainfall. There’s not much in that water, the nutrient poor ground rife with fungal threads gives up little to the flow. Under the mudstone is a dense sandstone. The interface is a line of springs. The seeping water converges, forming Molino Creek.

Tributary

There’s a tributary on our farm and it remains unnamed. Most know this stream for its 25-foot waterfall, which splashes noisily through the winter. There’s a productive spring in this stream and below it the stream flows year-round, although just a trickle in the drier summers. When the waterfall really roars, we know that the karst below us is full and to expect the lowest sinkhole to become a lake shortly. Water piles out of foot-diameter holes, pillows of powerful flow billow up into the rising lake.

One of the handful of holes connecting to karst from whence issues water during high rainfall events

Looking down the karstic hole…how far does it go?

Sink Holes

There are 5 larger sink holes on Molino Creek Farm and there are more on adjoining open space lands. The largest pock of collapsed limestone is 50 feet deep just off a trail downhill a bit on Cotoni Coast Dairies parkland. We also haven’t named the lowest, largest sinkhole but we see it most years, sometimes even with a flock of ducks. There is no known limestone on the other side of Molino Creek for a hundred miles north along the coast, but the limestone continues south to Santa Cruz and then appears again in Big Sur. Our farm’s sinkholes have nice deep soil to allow tomatoes lots of foraging space for nutrients and water. Somewhere way down below there are caves – tiny honeycomb caves or grand ballrooms decorated with flowstone and stalactites. Sometimes, they collapse, creating a dent in the ground above.

Rain-kissed Persian limes hang thickly awaiting harvest

Citrus

Citrus Hill grows and produces – more each year. We planted many orange, lemon, lime, and mandarin trees in 2019 (-ish), and those are starting to produce. These trees are 4 – 8 feet tall, they are deep green and laden with fruit. We have harvested and distributed over 150 pounds of Persian limes with another 70 that are ready ‘to go’ (right now). Browsing harvesters are snacking on the first ripening mandarins. Four hundred pounds of oranges will gradually ripen between now and 3 more months. Meyer lemons are also slowly ripening.

A gravel road with a 'rolling dip' that is shown melding with a ditch to drain water off of a farm road — Ditch meets road drain rolling dip on the main road into Molino Creek Farm

Roads

Our farm is 3.5 miles from the highway and we maintain another 3+ miles of roads on the farm. This land use changes Nature, requires work, and has many great advantages. The most evident road effect is hydrological: roads become waterways, sluicing rain and runoff into ditches and drains, carrying mud and road gravel. Human and non-human animals use the road routes – easier than the alternative. Long ago, the road from the highway was so poor that it required four-wheel drive and chains. Before that, it was on the back of horses or mules, ox carts, etc. and up a now-obliterated road parallel with Molino Creek.

Shovel and tractor, sweat and sore muscles, are called upon to keep the road drains clear, to spread new material, to fill holes.

Newts and Frogs

With the soaking drizzle, raining right through the night, amphibians are on the move. Driving home up the Coast Highway at 9pm, red-legged frogs were making brave attempts to cross the road in the pouring rain. Rough skinned newts were flashing their tummies, heads held high, trying to be seen. It was slow going slalom to avoid the critters. The small chorus frogs are singing loudly all night long in the cement pond next to the barn where they are laying eggs and cavorting. As a friend pointed out…when it is raining, the whole world is amphibian habitat!

Enjoy the Rain!

Giving Thanks

Here it is…suddenly the season where we reflect on what it means to be thankful and what to be thankful about. All around us, beings are ecstatically grateful every moment. But, us humans seem to segregate our thankful moments, relegating them to holidays or ceremonies. Well, we should be happy for the ability to reflect in such a way, however it occurs.

Deep Time Thanks

Molino Creek Farm lies within the unceded territory of the Awasawas, or Santa Cruz People, in the Cotoni tribe. They lived on and cared for our land. They left lots of artifacts. There are places where seashells are still coming out of the soil. There are lots and lots of chert and some obsidian flakes. We have found bowls, mortars, and cooking stones. They were the first human inhabitants of this land and they took care of the old growth redwoods and ancient oaks that we still enjoy. Their land management made our soil rich for the crops we still grow.

The Greek Ranch and Transition

Much more recently, us Molino Creek Farm folks have The Greek Ranch and then Kay Thornley, Harlow Dougherty, Jim Pepper, Steve Gliessman, and others to thank for being here. There were years of hippies living here, wild years as we understand back in the Greek Ranch days. As the Greek Ranch transitioned to Molino Creek Farm, this contingent from UC Santa Cruz managed to purchase the land and created the organization that we have now. Many thanks to the folks who had the patience and fortitude to wade through all sorts of issues in establishing this cooperative.

A few Lisbon lemons still left on the trees

Farming

Joe Curry, Judy Low, Mark and Nibby Bartle, and many others worked very hard to establish Molino Creek Farm, which became a legend for dry farmed tomato production. The early farmers made enough money and worked hard with piles of purchased materials to put up miles of deer fence, long stretches of irrigation, and a very good agricultural well. They bought equipment – tractors, fuel tanks, implements, generators…much of which we still rely on. These intrepid farmers taught many people how to grow dry farmed tomatoes and those people started their own businesses. The Farm was the 13^th certified organic farm in California…there are hundreds now. We must thank these organic farming pioneers for showing how it’s done and inspiring others to give it a go.

Intentional Community

Other work deserving thanks is from the communal spirit and willingness of those who co-own this land. Living together in such a rural place takes work. The Farm is off grid and so produces its own power and water. We live 3.5 miles up a private road, which takes a lot of maintenance. They say people used to have to drive with chains to get up a muddy hill on the way in, and even then it wasn’t certain.

We have people who manage the finances, ‘the books,’ taxes, meeting facilitation, meeting notes, work party conveners, and so much more. Some of the group maintain the farmland, others maintain the wildlands, and others the water infrastructure. There is a legal committee, a road committee, and a neighbor committee – all very necessary. It takes great generosity to make these things work and we remain grateful to one another for the things we fit into our otherwise busy lives to help keep things together.

2020 Fire

The CZU Lightning Complex Fire devastated our farm. We lost two homes and a community garage workspace, fences, parts of our water system, many orchard trees, and much more. We put out word about what happened and an accompanying call for assistance. Within a short while, we raised $80,000 to help generally and a big portion of that to revitalize what was lost in the orchard. Such Huge Generosity!! We are still awed by that support. The financial support we received is just one indication of the strength and support of the social networks that the partners in this endeavor hold and tend.

Land Stewardship

Since the fire, we have had amazing support for tending our land. The Prescribed Burn Association has poured support into teaching our cooperative about good fire and then leading a prescribed burn last year, reducing fuels over many acres, restoring coastal prairie. They brought people here to help and keep in touch, watching with us the effects of their management. Now CalFire is offering that same kind of help!

Neighbors

Our neighbors have always been helpful. For years, the folks at the cement plant helped keep our road in good shape, the gate secure, and even supplied us with road material, rocks, and spare cement. PG&E has chipped in lots of funding and work to keep the road repaired.

The partners with the San Vicente Redwoods have also been unendingly great to us. Roadwork and weed work, fire and fuel management, security, and so much more have all been graciously a part of their contributions. We are learning together how to take better care of our lands, the non-human beings, and each other.

Community Orchardists

For 15 years, we have enjoyed the growth of our Community Orchard. We keep in touch with 225 people on email. 5 – 20 people show up to tend the orchard on many Saturday afternoons. Even though the fire took us backward a step, 5 years later we discover the orchard has surpassed that damage and is creating more and more amazing fruit, feeding more people.

This year, we needed a tractor and the community orchard network donated funds that allowed us to buy one this past week. It is amazing how the generosity continues, born out of the relationships we build by tending a beautiful orchard, creating “Fruit for the People!”

In sum, we are very thankful. We have so much to be grateful for. Thank you, each and every one of you, for the various kinds of love and support you offer this amazing place, this greater community, which we steward together.