Molino Creek Farm

Happy Summer Solstice 2026!

Apples

It’s a common question: what do you do with all of the apples? We ask ourselves that, too. We’ve got this issue with oscillation: alternate bearing years having most recently been spurred by the Fire of 2020. Post fire 2021-few; 2022-lots; 2023- few; 2024 – lots; 2025 – few; and guess what…2026 looks like another ‘lots’ year. Other things contribute to changing harvest numbers, such as burnt up trees, age of trees, pests, heat wave apple roasts, lack of chill hours, etc. Nevertheless, in this macro harvest year we will (probably!) have to ask and answer the Big Question again, and we already know the answer: more juice, and more hard cider!

A farewell to spring flower in our grasslands replete with 2 native sleeping bees, droplets of drizzle.

My calculation for this year’s harvest is a record 11,000 pounds, nearly 6 tons. We’ll probably sell 2500 pounds to put up some capital for compost, irrigation supplies, and things we need to keep the orchard running. And, we’ll probably give 2500 pounds to the Pacific School and other charities. That leaves 6,000 pounds of ‘seconds’ apples going to either juice or into the deer-feeding (eg., pest destroying) compost piles. If we can manage the pressing power, that means we could make a record 250 gallons of hard cider! Last I checked, we have 5 cider makers in our midst and we’ll need everyone to pitch in, pick, haul, wash, sort, grind and press this year to make it work. Watch out for October!

Avocados

The other fruit to celebrate is the oily green avocado. The repercussions of the fire also play out here, and this is the first year since 2020 that we have much to harvest. Our Community Orchard is bringing home the Bacon, with thin-skinned avocado fruit on the less oil content side of things but still delicious. About a third of our 100 trees are Bacon and only 4 of the oldest trees are bearing this year. The warm, dry March and a plethora of pollinators made a big crop that will be ready next year. Meanwhile, we watch and wait. The other types we expect larger crops from next year are Reed and Lamb Haas, but we also have a few Gwen, Pinkerton, and Carmen Haas sprinkled in the groves. Bacon avocadoes are the fastest- ‘only’ 16 months to ripen; others take almost 2 years. The ground squirrels and gray fox are already sharing the harvest. One day soon we’ll learn how to cook with the leaves and in a few years maybe we’ll figure out how to extract the oil.

Does it count that we add other plant diversity with this invasive poison hemlock?

Organic AND Regenerative

Another frequent question we are asked is ‘Are You Regenerative?’ That’s a loaded question because there’s not really any way of measuring or verifying such things…not like our organic certification with CCOF. Sure, you can fill out a self-assessment checklist, and proudly attest to your professed stellar farm care, but what thinking third party goes for such balderdash? Anyway, we resonate with some of the apparent principles of the regenerative agriculture movement such as building soil organic matter, creating conditions for increasing (especially native) plant diversity within the orchard understory, and integrating animals into the orchards.

That latter one is a bit of a chuckler. ‘Chickens? Sheep?’ you might ask. Nay, much better: voles and turkeys, fox and squirrel, woodpecker and robin! Some may squint, “Are you serious?!” Yes- and we have evidence that anyone can see. Most recently, we’re seeing one large, fresh, glistening turkey turd every 5 square meters. We don’t need to care for those wild turkeys, they are self-sustaining! And, they are eating weed seeds, mopping up pests, cleaning up fallen fruit, and turning all of that biomass into fertilizer deposited right onto the fungal web that feeds the orchard trees. Plus, they are entertaining. And, if a coyote eats one of our understory flock, we don’t cry or call the wildlife department for a depredation permit nor do we raise apples to pay the bills for guardian dogs. If any of you readers know of any way we can help the turkeys feel more at home in our orchard, please let us know. And, if you are wondering about our other orchard understory animals…stay tuned for more fascinating Regenerative Agricultural Stories about integrating animals into cropping systems.

We’re good at raising lots of poison oak

Noise

What’s the noise around the farm? Vegetation control. Up above the farm, on San Vicente Redwoods land, the masticators are roaring and the saws are revving: they are doing more post fire forestry to make the redwood stands more resilient, to better protect Bonny Doon from the next inferno. On the Farm itself, the noise is mowers. Our discerning gaze turns to the color of grass: is it tawny, is it dead? There are complex calculations involving percent dead grass, relative humidity, nesting birds, proximity to infrastructure, and time left to mow before July 1 spurring us out the door, onto (or behind!) the tractors, and pointed in the right direction. Back and forth, strip by strip of cutting.

More Wild Birds

The size of a couple of bird flocks deserve mention. The goldfinches! Will somebody teach me the difference between the species? Whatever type of goldfinches they are, there are commonly flocks of 30 noisily descending on patches of the non-native dandelion seed heads. Rough cats ear seeds are apparently scrumptious to these seedeaters.

Equally noisy, equally numerous flocks of wrentits are visiting the oaks around the farm. The trees seem to squeak with a bit of an energetic russle then a confetti of tiny birds erupts, fluttering to the next oak. They sure seem to be having fun.

Farewell, Spring!

Here we are, on the advent of Summer and just at the right time this year we can say ‘farewell to spring’ with the namesake flower, which is in full glory right now in patches around our well stewarded grassland. Deep pink-red, large four-petaled flowers open with the sun and close with the night, creating safe sleeping spaces for the cutest of native bees, their pollinators. In other places, the summer bloom is on- tarplants with their resinous, odiferous leaves and yellow sunflowers brighten and scent the midday prairie. As we progress into summer, there will be more miraculous flowers dotting the landscape despite the lack of rain and the bone-dry soil. Week by week, the flowerscape changes. We hope for a mild summer without smoke or fire.

Happy Solstice!

A Wild Weather Ride

Sticky monkey flower is adding a riot of color to the hillsides around Molino Creek Farm

Each month, every month, there is a new shrub in bloom around our farm. This month the featured flowering shrubs are sticky monkeyflower and bush lupine. The sticky monkeyflower of California’s central coast is a striking and unique orange-yellow whereas Big Sur has a paler and larger flowered version and Down South it is downright red. Ours is special: friends don’t let friends infect the local genepool with monkeyflowers from thither.

Our bush lupine is also unique – a lavender jobby contrasting with the common bright yeller form down along the coast.

Bush lupine – our type is this color, but most of California has a yellow form with bigger leaves

Fruit Eating Birds

The native blackberries are ripening, juiced up from the late rains. Band tailed pigeon discovered them and are feasting along our extensive deer-deterring (somewhat) fencelines which prop up linear mounds of prickly canes. The large pigeons balance warily on the top wire and then dive onto a patch of berries, pecking and sucking up fruit. Their bills don’t even get purple-messy!

Impatient scrub jays and acorn woodpeckers are also eating fruit, but unripe fruit, in the apple orchard. Many rock-hard 2” apples are scored with bill marks and sometimes pecked holes. The unabashed woodpeckers sit on the top of orchard trees and fence posts, seemingly saying ‘look at me, I’m beautiful and innocent!’ They are Not. Innocent. But, they ARE beautiful with their stark black-and-white patterning and brilliant red-capped heads. And, they ARE fruit destroyers, but we grow enough for everyone.

Vermin

This, the 6^th year after the wildfire, marks the return of the blood-sucking vermin: ticks! Every foray around the Farm nets at least one feisty little creature, hard to dislodge from crawling on pants or skin. Young brush bunnies are straying farther from home, shaking their itchy, floppy ears, which are festooned with puffed up parasites. Imagine not being able to take those things off of you! Ugg.

Bigger ears are also wagging, but do we really refer to deer as vermin? Some do. Deer ears spoon out like radio dishes aimed right at me when I scritch by on the crunchy gravel road. ‘Hi deer!’ I say ‘It’s okay, I’m not gonna chase you!’ Some of the herd is becoming calmer near me, I think, with such urging. Or, is it more menacing? There are a couple of very large bucks that stand a little too close and eye me a little too intensely, and I hope I never have to toreador around their thrusting antlers. I hear they get more aggressive as their antler felt sheds – still a ways off. Now, their antlers are still growing, completely dark brown felted, the points dull and rounded. Tree bark is not freshly tattered from their rubbing. That’s a ways off.

Lion Sign

Mountain lion sign is becoming more common for the first time in 6 years. Scat on the main road. Scent scrapes on the trail down to the creek. I am searching for paw prints. And there is nary a coyote calling on the farm. They fear the lions: you know…that old cats versus dogs thing and isn’t it funny that its always the dogs that are more frightened?

The lions don’t venture out into the open grasslands down by the highway. It is there, at the gate, that one can hear multiple packs of coyotes singing at each other across the wide open spaces. Quite the cacophony. Quite often.

Gala apples are taking on color, but they won’t be harvested until September

Three Calls

Three calls are catching my ear when walking about: bluebirds, turkey hens, and song sparrows. The lazuli buntings have stopped their incessant singing- they were the last fascinating regular calls. Bluebirds have fledged their young and are travelling in small flocks, constantly foraging around the farm fields. Their moist-sounding low-slurred descending single notes are unmistakable and carry far. Contrast those watery notes with the drier sounding clucking of female turkeys and now you are on your way to the symphony. The hen-clucking is also nearly always evident as they keep in constant touch with their chicks. The early batches of chicks seem to have gotten et, but a new batch is sauntering around in loose pursuit of their family – two hens and a tom. A percussive ‘clucK, cluck, cluck!’ calls them to stay close. The much more melodious song sparrows sing their high and complex lyrics, showing up these other two. Song sparrows are quite common around here and their songs emanate from every patch of weeds.

Wild Ride

All these farm critters and we along with them have been party to a wild weather ride this past week. There was intense, thick fog and cold. Days struggled to get much into the 60’s and one morning was 45F! Then there was WIND…branch breaking wind, gusts coming from all over, random, crazy. The wind brought some clouds and even a few splattery drops of rain. Then, today, there was HEAT. 91F was the high and it is still warm after dark. It was the first Hot Day of the spring. The untilled fields are starting to turn tawny and us grass allergy folks just want every grass to whither and stop poisoning the air.

Crickets and snakes love the heat. Every farm trail and road had a snake today: gopher snakes of all sizes and a few yellow-bellied racers. The snakes loved the heat. I accidently disturbed a nest of 8 freshly laid, leathery southern alligator lizard eggs. They were smartly placed at the base of a giant bull thistle – protection!

The night song cricket chorus isn’t that deep, but it is the first night with much cricket song. Summer’s coming soon…the warmth grows, dryness progresses. What will tomorrow bring?

Chill, Long Days

The days slowly emerge from fog. Many mornings we wake to misty fog close at hand. The silvery blue fog is backlit by the rising sun. It ever so slowly melts away, downhill, into Molino Creek canyon or towards the ocean as patches of pale blue sky emerge…around 10 or 11 in the morning. Grass is wet to shoe-soaking into the early afternoon. The days have never really warmed that much: it was 46F one recent morning at dawn.

The days get light early (5 a.m.) and stay light late (8:45 pm). Solstice is close. One is easily tempted to stay outside too late doing chores, then dinner is late and it is hard to get a full night’s sleep.

Molino Creek Farm – really, truly dry farmed!

Adolescent Plants

Two Dog Farm winter squash plants haven’t started sprawling, but they are starting to cover the ground. Molino Creek Farm’s tomatoes are getting weeded, but will we keep up with the weeds? Parts of the tomato field are covered with huge rosettes of lush daikon radish, the cover crop that went to seed early this year. Those hunker roots will be difficult to arrest from the soil and meanwhile they drink up the soil moisture which had been destined for tomatoes. In other areas, rows of tiny onion and pepper plants decorate the still evident and rich soil.

The Two Dog Farm crew was assiduously weeding their “Roadside” field this past week. So much work is made more inevitable by the recent weed-germinating rain. Mark Bartle weeded large areas with the tractor, leaving only close to the plants to finesse weed-free.

Two Dog Farm’s beautiful dry farmed winter squash

Tweetings

The remarkable thing about this past week has been The Birds. Three days running, Saturday – Monday, the entire region’s bird songs erupted in glory. Bonny Dooners reported it and it was obvious at Molino Creek Farm. The birds were singing like it was dawn all day long. Was it the amazing temperature, the moon cycle, or Spring: who knows? Here’s a list of the birds we can see every day, easily, around the farm: 2 ravens, 1 kestrel, 1 red tailed, 8 bluebirds, ash throated flycatcher, olive sided flycatcher, robin, dark eyed junco, goldfinch, pine siskin, purple martin, violet green, barn, & tree swallows, great horned owl, scrub and stellar jay, band tailed pigeon, lazuli bunting, song sparrow, black headed grosbeak, pileated woodpecker, turkey, California quail, spotted towhee, California towhee, Bewick’s wren and finches….probably more! And, they are all singing, all day long for unknown reasons. Pure joy?

Along the Boundaries

In 2010, Molino Creek Farm established a 1600-foot hedgerow along our main road’s northern fenceline. The NRCS funded the project, enabling us to put in a water line and to purchase plants and root cages. All of the plants burned to the ground in 2020 but are standing tall once again this year. Valley oaks from Felton acorns, Oregon oak from Annadel State Park acorns, hazelnut bushes & flowering currant from nearby stock, and many elderberries from the Work Ranch in southern Monterey County…and many more species are growing (soon to be intertwined?) in the long, linear row. Birds love it.

We have also been planting even more floriferous bushes along the orchard fenceline, and that fence needs more flowering shrubs. Anyone want to donate some beauties to fill that out? There is another 100 feet to plant along that area. We love the 4 types of rose bushes there, each with its own unique color, scent, and seasonality of bloom. There’s also a patch of spreading, rhizomatous ‘swamp sage’ with beguiling sky-blue flowers – we may uproot some and spread it around. Add in a mallow, buttonbush, and butterfly bush and you have most of it.

Several floriferous species at the ochard hedgerow

In The Orchard

The Community Orchard is making fruit! This will be the first harvest of avocados since 2020 and the Big Fire. It looks like we have 100+ pounds of bacon avocado fruit rapidly getting ripe right now. We are also hauling in bags of Valencia oranges for juice. The Satsuma mandarin branches have collapsed with the weight of ripe fruit. Meyer lemons are keeping a pace with the harvest. A few limes linger, and the Eureka and Lisbon lemons are just starting to ripen. This will be the first in many years with no prunes, missing due to unknown reasons. Apple trees have enlarging fruit at the same time they are still flowering: odd!

The Work

I already mentioned the weeding, but there is also the mowing. Alas, 2 of the 3 active mowers are down right now. The DR done drowned, having been left out in the freak rain storm and now probably flooded with water in places water should not be: it won’t keep running. The Kubota mysteriously developed a cripplingly bent steering rod. Sometimes, it seems like we need a full-time mechanic! And still… the BCS keeps running, and much more mowing is needed. Now to find the time to walk behind that machine, wrangling it around corners and on steep hillsides.

We are in the midst of fruit thinning for the apples, thousands of tiny fruit littering the ground and thousands more needing plucking. Some fruit rolls off with a twist, but the Fuji and some others are more stubborn, requiring clippers.

Wild LifeSlinking away from the house…a gray fox. Fox poop is everywhere, thank goodness. Coyote scat is also evident but they stopped singing a while back. Deer antlers are getting longer but still thick and velvety. No sign of mountain lion. Bobcat tracks are around but not that common. No skunks. No raccoons. No recent weasel sightings. There are (a few) bats

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.