Community Orchard

Rainsong from Creek and Cloud

It has been blowing and blustery with so much rain that the ground is oozing and bubbling, and newfound springs are pouring from gopher holes across the entire landscape. The creeks do more than murmur: they rush and shout. The ocean has been loudly roaring with unfathomably massive waves, more foam showing than water. People tire of no sun, but all are thankful for the rain, we will perhaps never again complain of rain…lucky us for the wetness, for hydration of the ground, moistening of the forest duff, the slicking of the rocks and mud, and the paddling of the 11 ring necked ducks across Lake Molino.

An enlarging moon rises above Molino Creek Farm and some of its cover-cropped fields

Moon Growth

Last night, the cloud cover slackened, and the moon was as bright as the sun has been for many days. Moonglow shining through drizzly fog. Owls hooting. Deciduous trees awaken even at night, the quickening of sap, the fattening of buds.

Dazzling Green

We all this sprinter. The trees are bare and the grass is turning Electric Green. The meadows around Molino will get 6’ tall this spring, if we let them. In the past week, in the aisles between the orchard trees and the margins of the farm fields the grass doubled to 2’ tall. It has become unbearably wet to trod off trail or road, shoes and pant legs quickly soaked, even when it hasn’t rained for hours (rare).

Sprinter- the trees are still bare, but the grass is turning electric green

Flowers Unfurling

The first orchard trees are in bloom – the first plums are a’flowerin’. The quince bushes aren’t far behind. The orchard understory is thick with 2’ tall (!) someplaces lush cover crop: fava beans, oats, and vetch. The wide, blue-green fava bean leaves are lush and heavy, nodding as the first white flowers emerge in whorls along the stems. Under the trees, the Iberian comfrey is in full bloom, tempting the bumble bees, preparing them for the Big Bloom when we really need them. Borage, native strawberries, and weedy radish are also offering nectar in the understory. Sprinter – a time for the vibrancy and lushness of the herbaceous world.

Pile It Up

There’s not much going on with the farming, but the Molino folks have been ‘at it’ with land management. We’re not quite done burning all the biomass we piled up this last and the prior year, but we’re close. Fourteen piles ate up lots of stuff into relatively nothing, doing work at the same time. We made the burn piles on top of brush that we didn’t want, so the stumps were thermically removed, saving future work. Often, these piles went through both weekend days with shifts of energetic people tending and adding to them. Each branch we torch is one less to add to the future wildfire, and we work apace to make the farm more fire safe with the understanding that next summer could challenge us once again with an uncontrolled inferno. Meanwhile, we get soaked in the rain while the bonfires steam our clothes dry and keep us warm.

The ridge has fewer trees: dozens fell in the 75mph winds a few weeks back

Chores

We can no longer rest. Although the short, dark, wet days still make us lazy, we must awake and enliven and get to work. After a 2-year hiatus, the meadow voles are back- good news for the riddance of gophers but bad news for the sweet bark of the young trees. Time to make bare the area around young tree trunks- the only way to keep the voles at bay. Also, many young trees pitched sideways must be propped. And…The Pruning! The Grafting! The Planting! Wow, is it ever time to catch up.

-this post simultaneously published at Molino Creek Farm’s website

Rest Impending

The sun grows distant, already so far South, days so brief. Rain has moistened everywhere. Fall is sweeping the farm, triggering bright leaf colors, tree-by-tree, each evening stroll revealing new tones in new places.

The ground blushes newly green from the previous expanse of dark brown soil or gray aged thatch. Millions of seeds germinated on the much-anticipated first significant rainfall this past week. Pairs of many-patterned leaves unfurl from different types of flower seeds while single first grass leaves poke straight up.

More wetting storms are approaching, pushing southward from the distant northern horizon. Beautiful clouds appear, sometimes a skyfull of feathery patterns, other times ominous heavy gray huge pillows. Layers of clouds above oceanward fog are often accentuated by sparkling orange pulses in between them at sunset.

Muffled Song

As the winter approaches, birds become more quiet, their songs more concise. Bird-eating hawks swoop and wheel, frightening seed- and seedling-fattened flocks. Silent spells with no song signals hawk. The consistent whispered squeaks and chirps suggest hawk absence as groups of quail, sparrows, and juncos slowly emerge from cover, pecking up thousands of tasty sprouts; their favorites are abundant: clovers, filaree, medic, lupine, poppy, wild lettuce, and dock. Full bills, filling tummies, hunger satisfied peaceful birds prepare for long stormy wet nights. Each evening at sundown, flocks huddle together in dense clusters surrounded by protective thick tree or shrub canopies. They have already negotiated safe roost locations and even their individual places in the rows along branches. There are a few squabbles at dusk in the roost locations as some on the edges realize disadvantages of their relegated positions. By dark, they have become politely quiet and still.

Tree nest woven over compost-strewn soil makes for cozy beds for the coming winter

Tucking in the Trees

As orchard leaves begin to fall, we prepare tree beds for the long slumber. Last weekend, Community Orchardists hauled and spread the final compost and then the last windrows of dried hay. Energetic tree keepers filled and then hauled bucket after bucket scattering compost/worm castings in the understory of each tree. Following them, skilled pitchfork wielding orchardists pitched, piled, and sculpted neat circular hay nests surrounding young trees. Winter snacks and cozy blankets for our tree friends.

Nodding Off, Colorfully

As the trees approach their sleep, leaves brighten then drop. Cherry tree leaves are turning orange-to-red, starting on the sunnier sides of each tree and day by day progressing onto the northern side of the canopy. Apricot, aprium, plums and pluots echo those cherry leaf reds but tend more orange to yellow. Apple tree fall color extends well into winter, slowly unfolding many shades of yellow through February in an extended fall. Most leaf colors change fast and fall quickly, splashing rings of color bright in circles on the ground beneath brief spells of brightness dancing across the orchard among the high held branches.

The Rustling

We were unable to mow every corner of the farm and in some places the dried grass and wildflowers formed thick dry swards. Deer paths wend into these stands. Following these wildlife trails, we find hidden clusters of mashed down straw – cozy deer beds. The breezes sing high schwews on the ridges with more of a full, wooing noise in the nearer conifers, but these tall dry grassy areas make scratchy, rustling noises in the winds at the onset of each storm. The deer thank us for leaving them some dense cover to shield them from the chilly gales through the dark nights.

Fuji apples held ripe while leaves change color

The Last of the Fruit

Tomato vines whither after rain; winter squash vines long spent, fruit curing; later season apples grow sweeter and crispier with the cool nights. We feel lucky again to find a ripe tomato among the melting vines. Weeds will soon occlude the deliquescent reddish fruit and then all will be tilled and cover cropped.

Molino Creek Farm’s wilting dry farmed tomatoes, slain by rain

Two Dog Farm is boxing and curing the bountiful dry farmed winter squash crop, and colorful squash still brighten the fields.

2 Dog Farm’s last dry farmed winter squash, waiting to be gathered.

Fuji apples are the last bigger harvest in the orchard. We will gather the last of the apples over the next week and press the last of the culls into the final cider of the season. Much of the orchard has had a final mowing, the harrow scratching in bell beans is close at hand.

Emerging New Tree Characteristics: a dance between species

Sunsets and Quickening Evenings

The sun speeds quickly towards the west and evenings pass suddenly to night. One moment, the beautiful array at sunset tinges the hills and the next moment colors wash and fade to gray, stars winking into sight until the night sky reveals vast constellations. There is a moment in this transition to night when my attention is drawn to the silhouettes of trees, revealing new characteristics of long familiar friends. Brushy oaks dance on the edge of regal, posturing clusters of redwoods. Then they disappear, overcome by the majesty of night.

simultaneously published at Molino Creek Farm’s website

Changes Slowly Emerging

The calendar says it is almost fall, just a couple of weeks away. But, the temperatures and dryness suggest it is more like midsummer. The days wake up mostly sleepy, fog having rolled in during the night. Everything glistens with dew in morning’s first light. Sunrises are muted with tones of gray and silver across the shadowless and chill landscape. There is no dawn chorus, only a few peeps when the birds warm, late. The morning crawls on as the fog slowly breaks. It brightens more, bit by bit, until there is mostly blue sky by about noon. Then, barn swallows take noisily to the sky. The afternoons slowly warm until the sun gradually fades, a shadow line edging across the fields as the sun disappears behind the ridge to the west. This past Friday, the fog was so heavy and long lasting that it drizzled enough moisture to wet and settle the road dust.

Pattern Recognition

Last year, we would have been about to get our first inch of rain. That September storm produced what we call the germinating rain, and the early timing was extremely unusual. After that, there was another Big Storm in October – more expected timing. A bit later, all heck broke loose in December through January when we got atmospheric river after atmospheric river. None of that was predicted. In fact, as late as October, our national weather service climate scientists were saying it was going to be a dry winter, a La Niña situation! Right now, those same experts are saying there are strong El Niño conditions and that there is a 95% chance of those continuing through February of 2024. Compared to the last 12 years of data, this year looks comparable only to 2015, a year that brought some hefty rains to our part of California. With last winter’s deluges fresh in memory, it is easier to prepare though the really rainy times should be months away. So, we are able to chip away at the chores: an armload of firewood here, a bit of road drainage improvement there.

Nature’s Patient Changes

The nature around us also patiently transitions. The monkeyflower bushes leaves fade from top to bottom from their sticky dark glossy green to a crisp and withered black. This year, even those drying bushes still sport flowers feeding hummingbirds and bumblebees as they make their daily rounds. Madrone leaves and shreds of bark fall bit by bit, day by day, refreshing a layer to keep the footpaths only a bit crunchy. The grass, once shiny golden as it started to dry, is now almost gray with age, falling over and covered with dust. It will bend still until it is all in broad arcs and pillows in the unmown areas. The mounds of dry grass resist herbivory in that elevated state. In areas we mowed and the chopped grass touches the ground, herbivores feast on hay: insects, mice, and gophers are fast eliminating this year’s productive crop. Crickets in particular are having a good year.

Cricket Families

The night walks reveal new generations of crickets alongside the older, bigger adults. There are many sizes of crickets from the tiniest of young to sub-adult adolescents to honking adults. The adults are surprisingly large, especially the black field crickets which are the bravest, barely moving from the examining beam of my flashlight. One large adult sings from every 3 square yards, and I haven’t seen two of those large adults more in proximity, so from whence the young? Ah, something more to learn…

One of our many odd comice varietie- all ripening differently though contiguous

Abundant Life

Life’s young are growing in other species. Coyote parents follow their adolescents’ lead for the yelping chorus. Judging from their plentiful and frequent scat, they are enjoying scavenging lots of farm fruit. Momma deer has two growing young in tow; they might not realize that she is pregnant again and so will share the space with a new sibling or two before very long. It has been a few weeks since I saw the latest puffball young quail, and there are currently huge groups with lots of curious nearly grown young learning the techniques to avoid being the meal of so many predators. Those quail groups are so large as to seem to flow like liquid from bush to bush as they shuffle and scuttle through their days. Tiny fence/blue bellied lizards have recently emerged, inch long babies that are much more energetic and jumpy than their older counterparts. They leap impossible distances and dart down holes at the slightest movement. There are no intermediate sizes, so a simultaneous hatching seems logical. Medium sized snakes, now that’s a thing! Foot or so long gopher snakes share paths with similarly sized yellow bellied racers. I wouldn’t want to be a mouse right now given the snake abundance.

Organic Gala Apples Hanging Heavy, Soon to Pick

Fruit Developing

The fruit are also growing up. This past week, we reached the saturation point for pears: there are 60 pounds of pears sitting under one comice pear tree waiting to be scavenged; more pears are on their way with boughs bending under the weight of so many fruit. The Gala apple crop hangs heavy, too, and has just started gaining its peachy blush that indicates ripeness. Fuji apples are farther behind, still green with the slightest of red blush just appearing where the sun hits the fruit.

Organic Fuji Apples, a ways off… until ripe!

Noticing

Fog, then sun, then night…fog ebbs and flows. The recent super blue moon fades gradually, night by night. The Milky Way gains prominence. The roar of waves crashing creates the baritone and bass notes of the cricket-filled soundscape of Molino Creek Farm. Long still nights beckon sleep. The first subtle light of dawn is the call to chores abounding. Each day flows into the next, an unending cycle of light and dark, coolness and warmth, and the chance to curiously glance up to see who else is watching the play of light as the sun travels the sky’s glorious arc.

I hope you are.

For Fruit’s Sake!

Heat Breaks, Monsoon #4

Heat fades. Cool nights. Cloudy, muggy days. Clouds scatter northward – tattered remnants of Hurricane Kay make for spectacular sunsets and less intense sun. This was the fourth odd monsoon of the season. Most years we have no monsoons. Global weirding.

Apple Love

We were so proud to last weekend to pick up a whole season’s fallen and thinned apple fruit, ~700 pounds. But the heat wave triggered mass fruit shedding. Big fruit now litter the orchard floor. So, we must go again – only ~300 pounds this time. Perhaps we will save these windfalls for pressing. And, perhaps we will add Molino’s first hops to the juice.

The cool nights should help the Gala apples get sweet and floral, so that we can send the harvest to markets next week. Two Dog Farm will be carrying boxes to their markets for the first time in a long while…we have a big crop.

Each apple type is coloring up with varietal distinction. Braeburns are deeper red, mutsu medium apple green, fuji – grayish green-red, cheery red and yellow striped gala, maroon esopus spitzenberg, cheery red and green wickson crabs, and so on, and on….we have so many varieties. The colors of help gage (subtly) ripeness…in the right light. Apple growers benefit from expert color memory. There are plenty to taste test.

On Cherry Hill, Around the Avocado Bowl

A similar heat wave ushered in the CZU Fire in 2020, destroying our cherry orchard and one big block of older, bigger avocado trees. In 2021, the California Certified Organic Farmers organization sponsored their employee Drake Bialecki to take a sabbatical to work at Molino Creek Farm helping us with fire recovery. Drake’s steady hand, nurtured by years of fine pottery, graft-healed the cherries and avocados, patching buds onto cherry stems, matching new shoots to avocado root sprouts. A year later, we have 6’ tall, big bushes of avocados and 4’ tall vibrant starts of recovering cherries. Phoenix orchard blocks. We envision dense cherry tree shade sheltering families with giggling children raking in UPick sweet fruits in just a few more years.

A big bush from a 2021 graft: phoenix revival of burnt up avocado trees

Return of the Cool

Cool nights in the upper 50s, contrasted with heat wave nights in the upper 70s to mid-80s. Waves of low clouds, like a wall over the near ocean, send occasional arms inland and wisps of fog lick treetops.

The nocturnal cricket chorus is much muffled and seems more distant. Owl hoots less frequently. Everything needs rest after a week of extreme heat stress and all the work that entailed.

Wildlife

Some critters appear, others disappear. Each week there is change. I frequently encounter a huge antlered buck sometimes near the female and her young, sometimes alone. He holds his head high, three points on each side of a big set of antlers. Some bucks with these many points are barrel chested and bulky; this one is more graceful but still strong. He bravely moves only a little bit away from people. Deer always seem to be browsing.

For a long while, I could spot fresh snake trails every day. Seeing gopher snakes was normal. Now, no snakes and few snake tracks. Where did they go?

Sky the kestrel is back to being always around the farm, as is the red-tailed hawk. There were for a moment two Coopers hawks: we hope both stay – one is normal. The kestrel fusses at the others, screeching and dive bombing them.

Blue bellies and alligator lizards are easy to find. Baby blue bellies- 2” long- are commonplace, nervously scurrying to the lips of gopher holes as we walk by.

-originally published in my blog for Molino Creek Farm

Loud Crickets, Warm Nights

Ripples and waves of peachy color-brushed fog flows downcoast at sunset, cloud tops at 400 feet elevation, well below the Farm. As darkness sets in, it is one of the rare handful of warm night opportunities to immerse in outdoor sounds. There’s a fullness to the cricket chorus, with windows wide open all through the night. The crescent moon barely shines, a dull orange from high altitude smoke once again blanketing the West. There’s no wind tonight and it won’t get below 70F. Hooot Hoot hoot-hoot hoot hoot calls the great horned owls. Tiny animals make small curious noises as they scurry through dry leaves. All the night noises filter clearly indoors tonight.

Heat Wave

Maw and Caw the raven pair hop and pant, beaks wide open midday. They are trying to scare up grasshoppers around the farm fields, patiently pacing. Big black birds have a particularly hard time with heat waves.

Today was the first of a predicted weeklong heat wave. We hope for the sometimes unpredicted fog to roll in and provide relief. Already, near mature apples have burned-bleached skins on the sunniest of fruit sides.

Fall Color

Grass and weeds have turned the dusty, tired gray-brown tint that is typical of late summer. Early bearing stone fruit – apricots prunes, and plums – have leaves that are turning fall color (yellow, orange).

Stone Fruit Fall at Molino Creek Farm’s Community Orchard

In the wildscape, poison oak fall creates bright red patches on the hillsides, its early fall with big leaf maple coloring creeksides yellow. The last flowers of summer have reached peak: silver-gray foliaged sagebrush holds up spires of tiny nodding green flower clusters…female coyote brush is also displaying – furry flowers buzz with flies and bees, flutter with buckeye butterflies.

Last of the wild flowers…coyote brush, a female shrubs fluffy fur

Deer!

Momma deer still has her two small adolescent offspring. They are well fed plump but in good muscular form. She teaches her young not to panic when I walk by, sauntering relaxedly. ears alert, nibbling and walking to keep a little distance. There’s a long dark straight scar down her belly. The whole family has dark brown-gray fur, summer coats grayer than the blonde-tawny winter coat…or maybe they’re just dusty dirty- the color closely matches Molino Creek Farm’s soil.

Fox

The One Fox has become at least two…each time encountered on the uphill edge of our property, mostly with late night driving. Lower the headlight beams, give them time to find a way off the road that isn’t in the stickers. We beckon them to migrate further in…closer to our gardens and farm fields where their rabbit and mouse eating might help us with our plight. It is a Big Year for gnawing damage, crops and ornamental plants suffering.

Pests

Two Dog Farm workers draped rows of bird netting over their Chardonnay this week. The vines and their first dime-sized fruit hanging in sporadic thick clusters are now obscured by green netting, but birds still cheep and flit among the open rows, between the netted vines.

We won’t have to net the avocado trees, but they will be a few years before they bear much fruit. Nevertheless, the young trees look healthy and are putting on their second wave of growth.

2021 planted avocado tree…healthy and sprinting upwards

-this post originally from Molino Creek Farm’s web and facebook pages.

The Long Return of Winter

The wintery weather continues if only with some clouds, cool air, and gusty breezes. The days are noticeably longer and the sun has some heat to it, but it has been chilly sweater weather in the mornings. What’s left of the ridgetop trees have been ‘talking’ – a groaning wind has been pushing across the ridges and dancing across the grasses on our hill-protected farm. The giant sets of waves send roaring echoes up the canyons and white caps make a mess of the surface of the ocean. Is it winter leaving or are we headed to more weeks of weird deja vu for weather that should have been, but wasn’t, in January?

Would seem to be post-winter storm, but this is April!

Excited by Flowers

The bees know it is Spring with swarm after swarm landing in the beehive traps. The apple trees buzz with honeybees, the lupine fields bob with bumbles; avocado flower clusters rustle and whine with a myriad of flies, butterflies flit from calendula to radish and onto flat-topped yellow lizard tail flower clusters. Flower biomass is at its peak here and across the hills- especially if you count grasses (achoo!). The farm fields have long sported weeds and cover crops in bloom, and now the wildlands have erupted in color. Monkey flower, weedy brooms and vetches, colorful native bulbs and paintbrush, lupines and honeysuckle – all in bloom from the oak groves to the steep brushy hills. Grassy fields are 100 shades of green, oak groves are turning a dark green as the leaves settle in, and all else is adorned with patches of yellow and orange, lavender and blue…with accents of red or bright white – an astounding naturally artistic landscape.

Critter Escapades

Recently, I mentioned in this newsletter the entrepreneurial two lithe deer. I thought they were just passing through, but they settled in nearby the farm, but are still quite shy. These two are graceful and thin and healthy and golden brown and jumpy. Great new additions to the community of playful farm creatures. April is normally reptile month: earlier it seemed to fit, but later in the month the reptiles have been interested but barely able to move. Huge alligator lizards drop lazily out of mulch piles as we move them. A massive momma lizard sat immobile in the road waiting to warm in the midday sun. Snakes are hiding somewhere for warmer times. The gophers and mice celebrate the cold predators- there is more rodent herbivory than anytime recently. If there were more rabbits, they would be getting well fed- we just have a handful after last year’s sudden dearth. I found a giant dead mole (stinky) just lying on the ground next to a tree I was weeding. The persistent truck beeping backup noise of the local pygmy owl is incessant, from the nearby forested canyon.

Greens

The final set of deciduous trees on the farm are leafing out. The so light spring green of the black walnut trees is always magical, set off more so from the dark brown bark background. The winter skeletons of those trees, so prominent across much of the farm is now being lost to a summer of seemingly subtropical canopy.

On the drive out to the coast, the meadows have grown in green again, healing from the wintertime drought. The winds make waves of mesmerizing nodding grasses. Far off, the grass flanked fields, hills, and ridges make a soft mat resting the eyes and mind- it seems so right.

Molino Creek Farm is just past the highest point on the horizon- way up there.

The Production of Food

Two Dog Farm planted their first row crops of the season: rows of baby padron pepper plants are settling in to the harsh reality of life under open sky, in the wind and wavering temperatures…so different than their greenhouse lives of the past months. They will quickly turn darker green and get sturdy, but they look so pale and fragile right now.

The orchards are setting fruit and flowering. Where we can, we have left understories and rows of cover crops to grow more and bloom. The apple blossoms waft elusive hints of dusty rose scent. Lupines and now profuse bell bean flowers delight our noses with rich and heavy purple-grape perfumes. We are suddenly finding ourselves in the OCD fruit thinning program. After work strolls – can’t help but stop (an hour passed??!) but thin some apples. Weekend irrigation management and then, whoops, stopped for too long to thin some pears. Etc Etc. We’ll soon be in round two of mowing with new sickle bar blades making the work easier for a change.

The cherry fruits and plums are shiny plump and growing…what promise!

Hoping you are letting your mind wander in the Spring Clouds – there is so much there.

Beauty.

-this post part of my weekly blogs at the Molino Creek Farm website.

Buds Break

this is a post I just published on Molino Creek Farm’s webpage

Let’s hope for a repeat of the last couple of years where March and even April have brought us additional important rain. The shallow soils are drying out on the grasslands nearby, but the creeks are still running.

Since last we posted this news blog, back in November, there have been deluges and droughts, cold and heat…Molino is a land of extremes! December was unbelievably wet with heavy storms intermingled with endless mists and drizzles. January came and someone turned off the tap, then no rain expected in February, normally our wettest month. It was 75F today and the sun felt very hot. But, in total this winter, we’ve had lots of cold nights…we’ve burned more firewood to keep warm than in recent memory.

Calling Critters

The most noticeable wildlife is the mixed flock of blackbirds. If you were hard of hearing, you might think it was our ancient bulldozer squeaking and rattling across the hills. Better hearing can make out the seemingly multidimensional mélange of starlings, brewer’s blackbirds, and bicolored blackbirds singing together. Mostly the song is brewer’s blackbirds, but the others are in there, too. 80 birds exchanging, at their own tempo without any evident coordination, low-to-high crescendo-Ing whistles combining to near dizzying cacophony. If you walk by, the song shockingly and suddenly stops and up goes the flock in a vibrating dark cloud. The bicolor blackbirds land again in downward arks like windblown leaves. Then, a few brewer’s blackbirds make clicks, like drumsticks on the edge of a snare drum…but not keeping any pace or rhythm: Chek…chek……check…chek chek…chek….then one, then ten, then suddenly all 80 birds erupt in their whistling joy once again. The whole farm reverberates with this chorus, which is particularly loud this winter.

The other wildlife calls are much more subtle. In the last 2 months, I’ve heard a single fox yawl and a single female lion cry, but the coyotes are keeping quiet. Every night there is but one great horned owl hooting. The red shouldered hawk, a friend that still needs a name, hasn’t been scree-ing as much, but is still omnipresent as is a kestrel and recently a pair of red-tailed hawks. A single peregrine falcon comes by once or so a week to scream terrifyingly at the Molino prey.

Winter Crops

In this climate, we harvest all year round. Gleaning 2 Dog peppers was over in early January, but now we are starting to get a fair harvest of Persian limes with Meyer and ‘real’ lemons on their heels. Venturing out in the cover crop, there are pea shoots to forage. Kale has done well this winter in the home gardens.

Peas in the cover crop – a forager’s delight

Orchard Tending

Not much to do in the row crop fields, but the orchards have needed tending, especially recently. A few weeks back, Bob Brunie and I started up the backpack sprayer and sprayed most of the apple orchard with a mix of ground up kelp and fish along with living beneficial microbes to foster tree microbiomes for maximum health. Small groups and individuals have also been pruning, fertilizing, and assembling/burying water lines. The early winter planted cover crops germinated, but then have only been growing very slowly due to cold and lack of rain. The Robins have been enjoying late afternoon feasting on orchard cover crop vetch.

Cherry buds are swelling…like so many of the fruit trees in our orchards right now

The Storms

This story would not be complete without some notes about the storms of December. That month brought one rainy front after the next with a few days’ pause between storms, so that our solar arrays recharged batteries and the soggy grasses bent back upwards. Lake Molino resprouted and (glug glug) drowned the Bottomlands Field cover crop. For nearly three weeks we had that big pond, but no ducks showed up this time.

This massive rain and all of the fire damage must have sent some debris flow into action along Molino Creek. If you walk down there now, it’s a massively changed scene. Instead of lush Creekside vegetation, now there’s a twice-as-wide scoured rock bed with pummeled banks. Upstream, there is a series of small granite waterfalls into clear pools where once there was just mud, logs, and a few ferns.

The downpours, however, produced very little damage to the Farm. We had some rills on the road, which needed some maintenance anyways. The winds broke oaks apart along our fence lines, those damaged by the fire or some prior issue. In the hills around us on the more recent rainless windy days you can hear tree after tree cracking apart and falling with big bangs and low thuds. Zephyrs are taking down the burned trees and its not safe walking in the forest on blustery days.

The Coming Spring

The first orchard trees are about to bloom. Plums are breaking bud. Early peaches are unfurling leaves. Citrus blossoms are filling the air with sweet perfume. Avocado blossom clusters are unfurling. The fields and field margins are massing with weedy Calendula and oxalis color. And…it is just the beginning!

The biggest show will soon be poppies and then LUPINES. For whatever reason, this is a Huge Lupine Year. Bumble bees are going to be very, very happy and the returning swallows will be feasting on them before too long.

We hope you are enjoying these (too) wonderful days.