avocado

Misty Stillness

After work it is time to walk around the farm, legs swishing through soaking grass. Each one I touch lets loose a shower and, lightened, the stems straighten for a bit until more mist collects. Where I walk today and where I walked yesterday will remain evident for weeks: tall, lax vegetation flattened and so fat with moisture as to be unable to get back upright. Above the tall boots my pants still get wet; the grass is 3’ high. The mist muffles sound like snow, and it is very still. The moist chill has hushed the birds, the only sounds my feet and the dripping of a million drops.

Native brome grass and poppy, laden with moisture

Composting Fields

The brief drying and warmth allowed everyone a chance to mow and till, but there was still not enough time. Some fields got more thoroughly tilled than others. A sweetish funk of rotting cover crop hangs in the air near turned up earth. Topsy turvy pieces of cover crop stick out of the mud, the finer leaves and stems melting into mush. The tiny pieces of ground up punk will enrich the soil, hold moisture, feed microorganisms, and nutrify plants. “Green manure.”

Freshly tilled, ‘Pepper Field’

Standing Crop

In the orchards, the cover crop gets cut but we don’t till. This year, in the poorer soiled areas between trees, I ran the flail or mulching mower, grinding up the cover crop to feed the soil right where it grew. Where the fava beans are towering taller, it’s the dance with the sickle bar mower, cutting the tall plants, which fall in rows to dry and then get raked as mulch under the trees.

I keep the orchard mower regularly running not just for exercise but to ‘keep up’ with re-growth. It is nice to get March rains after the cover crop is cut. The ongoing moisture allows the soil to digest the shed off nitrogen rich cover crop roots and make that food available to wakening trees. It is becoming critical to mow the last of the fava beans, but there is never enough time. The Avocado Bowl and Cherry Hill cover crops are going to be 4’ tall soon, thousands of flowers feeding hummingbirds and bumblebees. I hate to deprive those friends of their nectar.

A sea of fava beans (and vetch!) surrounding the Avocado Bowl

Cherry Buds Swelling

The cherry trees are about to flower. Buds are showing color and the sleek red bark is taught from running sap. It is the last moment to observe the bare tree architecture and envision summer pruning. The old, fire-damaged trees are hanging in and the ones that died, root sprouts grafted, hold lots of promise to become more tree-like this year. The piles of grass mulch the Orchardistas hauled and stacked last June have almost entirely melted away but not too soon: there are few weeds where those mulch piles sat at the beginning of winter.

Lapins cherry buds nearly bursting
Old, fire damaged cherry trees (left) and the sprouted Colt rootstock grafted (right)

Native Wildflower Spring

The Community Orchardists not only steward trees but also the mulch fields, some of which are becoming amazing and beautiful native grasslands. Molino Creek Farm was a hay farm in the early 1900’s. It still makes fine hay and those hayfields are alive with many flowers and lots of wildlife action.

Our farm has a curious pattern of shallow-soiled knolls surrounded by pockets of deep soil. The rolling landscape provides for diversity in crops and native habitats. It seems that cutting hay (at the ‘right’ time) and hauling it to the trees as mulch has helped wildflowers proliferate. We are at the onset of poppy spring and two types of lupines are soon to glow. After that, rafts of tiny tarplants will flash yellow each morning. The brome grass has already started and will keep producing seeds at the end of waving graceful arched stems, towering over the wildflowers. Blackbirds march noisily across these fields in lines, scaring up the bugs that find feast in grassland diversity. A giant mound indicates gopher action, a few seedling poppies germinating on the fresh, moist soil. Networks of pathways and open burrow entrances means voles are active. Deeper, bigger holes with fresh claw marks – coyotes at work digging up furry late-night dinners in the hay fields. Where we don’t collect and manage for hay, those fallow fields are humpy with thatch and scattered with shrubs and poison hemlock: a different type of habitat…one which we hope we can muster new energy to manage. More orchards- and more need for mulch…the fate lies with the capacity of Community Orchardists.

Poppy, brome, bicolor lupine and madia- cutting hay creates knoll diversity!

Falling leaves and moist winter chill

Fallen leaves blown across the forest path, under foot while walking, go “swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.” The sound of moist leaves (not crisply crunchy), an early rain and cool nights softened the landscape, removed the dust, made things gentle again. We are relaxing, slowly shedding the stress of the Fall’s potential for wildfire made more real these past many weeks by wind-carried smoke from prescribed fires across the entire state, even nearby at Wilder Ranch.  

Breezes carry in the clouds and then clear the clouds, waves after waves of clouds and then sun alternate as the dry summer plays with the wet winter, back and forth. This week, winter won with a bit of rain, shy of an inch and not yet wetting the soil more than superficially. After the rain, some sunny warmth and then the wind, fog, and another front , and it got chilly. Tuesday evening fog piled up on the other side of the prominent ridge across Molino Creek and poured over it, falling like a ghostly waterfall backlit by the evening sun. Beautiful!

Neither the rain nor the subsequent drippy fog has been enough to release the cedar-scented petrichor, much anticipated.

we do grow olives…for locals only olive oil!

Big swell, seasonal scents

Last night’s goose bump chill sent us to close the windows, put on sweaters, and some even built their first wood stove fires. And today’s cool air reminded me of how I’ve been taking the sun’s warmth for granted and how I’ll miss that deeply warm sense for a long time soon. The cool air, moisture, and gusty breezes accentuate the piney, resinous smells of redwood, Douglas fir, and coyote brush. Winds across the ocean pushed up an epic swell recently. Roaring and thumping waves reverberated across the landscape, but now there’s just a low more consistent hum. The patterns of breezes with long lulls awaken the senses, especially when it is peaceful on the farm but the trees on the ridge start talking, telling us a big gust is coming.

Feathered visitors

Geese, Canada and white fronted, are honking their melodies overhead near sundown. They are making their way to their winter grounds.

The newest birds are blackbirds, strutting around the fields in flocks, their heads moving curiously straight back and then straight forward with every stride. This evening, the light was catching the glean off the backs of a flock of Brewer’s blackbirds, reflecting the iridescent deep purple-blue of their gorgeous plumage. They let me get close but eventually alighted to show me the bicolor blackbirds in their midst. There are around 50 of this mixed flock and more may still arrive. They love to eat the grass seeds in the cover crop. They might even be anticipating it.

Other wildlife

Otherwise, the wildlife report is all about the Very Big Buck, coyotes, and chirping bright blue bluebirds. Perhaps there’s more than one Very Big Buck, but people are talking about an extraordinarily large, very impressive male deer from here to Davenport and north to Swanton. This creature stands very smart and tall with a giant set of antlers nearly 3’ across. He stood in the roadway looking intently north where he couldn’t traverse without going around the deer fence. He hesitated, looked north again, and then sauntered uphill following the fence line, somehow seemingly begrudgingly.

Nearly nightly, the coyotes sing. They aren’t doing the long musical numbers with multiple animals yipping and howling, but rather it’s a series of solos of the one coyote couple. One evening, they were calling from way up the Molino Creek canyon. Another evening, they sang right outside the window. Each night they try making some song from a different place, perhaps checking out the acoustics: the echoes are always fun.

The throaty, watery chirps of western bluebirds grace our midst. The brilliant blue flashes from the males’ zig-zaggy flights are breathtaking. There were seven birds, up a couple from last count. With that plumage, one wonders if they are considering breeding early…

The fading row crops will soon be tilled in and cover crop will grow, instead

Fall farming

We’re not quite ready to cover crop. There are still 10 days of tomatoes to harvest and the apple harvest is in full swing. The floral crisp sweet Gala apples are almost all gone; we will pick no more for market. Last weekend, we picked all the remaining Mutsu apples which had been devastated by the apple scab disease that enjoyed our late wet warm spring. Next up are the Fuji apples, and there are plenty of those! Plus, there are Golden Delicious, an underappreciated long storing apple of extraordinary flavor. In the Barn there are hundreds of pounds of culled apples that we’ll soon be juicing for cider. And so, we pick, pick, pick…sending on the perfect apples to market. Between picking spells, we spread compost and mow to prepare for harrowing in the bell bean seeds.

those rusty brown tentacles….avocado roots poking up into the loose, month-old compost!

Tentacles in the compost

The Community Orchardists have been spending the last many weeks spreading compost under many trees. Around a month ago, we spread compost under the avocados on Citrus Hill. After that little bit of rain, I noticed those avocadoes looked particularly perky and vibrantly green. So, today I pushed around the compost to see if the avocado roots had invaded it: they had! It is so curious to me that avocado trees push pointy tenacles of roots straight up, out of the soil into mulch. How do those thick pokey roots feed off the mulch? Such a mystery.

young avocado trees are growing fast!