Molino Creek Farm

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.

Behold! The Tomato!!

Behold, the peak of ripe, sweet, delicious dry-farmed tomatoes. The best in the world at the peak of the season, which will wind down soon. Lots of people are canning, drying…putting up food as the harvest rolls in, a bounty beyond any other season. Jays and acorn woodpeckers, too, rushing about, storing food like so many others.

Harvest

Tomato farmers can barely keep up, and people are buying. There are three particular crunches in the season: planting, weeding, and harvest. Each has its particularly critical moment interspersed not so much with ‘what do we do’ but more ‘how many people are necessary’ to do the work. The crunch times require more people than the weeks between, making it difficult for labor management and economics for small farms.

Soon, the Community Orchard will face that final crunch. It seems to be a year like the last one when all varieties get ripe simultaneously. Gala apples are suddenly all ripe at once and the Braeburn and Jonagolds aren’t far behind. Luckily, the Fujis are going to wait a bit…and they are the biggest crop this year. It is a scratch year for the Mutsu variety for some reason. There are ten other varieties with one tree each that will get ripe in about 2 weeks. So, we’ll start preparing for a cider pressing gathering to process 1,000 pounds of apples in 2-3 weeks.

Two Dog Farm’s pepper field is lush and green with abundant fattening fruit. Their winter squash patch is still luxuriant and green with hundreds of butternut squash peeking through the leaves. Their Chardonnay grapes are getting honey-green and close to ripe…all ~2,000 pounds.

Wild Life

Baby owl begging, distant coyotes singing, a mountain lion caterwauling, masses of quail, a morning garter snake, bright-eyed deer herds, and many, many ground squirrels.

Every now and then one of the baby birds strikes up a unique racket; this time, it is a baby great horned owl…begging. The begging goes all night long and it is loud and obnoxious. I suppose if you are the Queen of the Sky, you can make that kind of racket and not fear getting eaten. With no other baby around to mimic, a single young owl can pick whatever obnoxious voice to really bother its parents. This one ended up being half way to a barn owl screech, but louder. Mom and Dad owl hardly bother to hoot as the baby steals the show. You’d think it would get hoarse.

Sylvie reports a mountain lion caterwaul – that’s new since before the 2020 fire! Celebrations!!! Welcome back lion momma.

There are streams and rivers of quail pouring out of the brush to peck-peck-peck at masses of seeds strewn everywhere on the ground. They are fat with glossy plumage. It has been a good quail year.

Open the front door first thing and there’s a 2.5 foot long garter snake on the stoop. What luck. First snake in a long while. The other moist morning or late evening snake to see is the (common here) rubber boa…haven’t seen that one for a month.

There are a record number of deer hanging out on the farm. Deer highways pound grass flat and expose soil along hoof-rutted trails. Piles of fertile deer poop litter the ground every few feet on the north-facing grassy slopes where they graze on a mix of grass and resprouting shrubs. At night, flashlight beams illuminate more than a dozen pairs of eyes on that slope. Walking down the road to turn off evening irrigation sessions, my heart races to be too near to huge antlered bucks; hoping not to antagonize one: they seem feisty.

A flock of 60 blackbirds has gathered on the farm, a mix of Brewer’s and bicolored, singing their complex anarchistic melodies from atop bare-branched fire killed trees and then flying like wind-scattered fall leaves down into the fallow fields to feast on seeds. Their song lights up every hour of every day, a chorus that will entertain us through the winter. Their rhythm section has squeaky peeps that nearly match the repetitive, constant, mechanical ‘Chip! of ground squirrels scattered far across the Farm- between the two species it approaches cacophony.

A skein of 50 honking, white-fronted geese in a huge V flew West to East high above the Farm at 4:30 this evening.

Bills Open: Nuts!

Jay cries are muffled, acorn caps scattered. It is peak acorn season and the jays hardly have time to taunt. Their heads are down, shoulders hunched, beaks pried open carrying fat ripe green shiny acorns to-and-fro. Don’t watch them when they try to bury the nuts – they’ll get mad, pick back up the nut and fly to somewhere where you aren’t watching. They suspiciously glance about, quickly poking each nut into a hole, making a quick swipe to cover it up and it’s onto another one. Back-and-forth over and over: busy days! We are pleased that they are distracted from eating apples, leaving the fruit destruction mostly to yellow jacket wasps now.

Dahlias are a long-time specialty of Judy Low

Land Tending

Our great gratitude to one generous guy- Matthew Todd has finished his mastication work for us this year: 4 acres of brush ground to small pieces! We needed to do something about the weeds and he offered to help for a great big discount that made it possible. He resonates with our mission to keep our hillsides wild and native and tending back to coastal prairie and so he wanted to help. His wonderful skill and powerful machine took care of jubata grass, radiata pine, and French broom, which had proliferated after the 2020 fire. Now we have a better chance of tackling those scourges with other tools – excavators, pulaskis, burn piles, and broadcast burns will join a several year mastication project to reduce the broom until we can get livestock to help manage the restoration areas. Thanks, Matthew!

We’ll collect a bunch of grass and wildflower seed this next spring to hurry the restoration along.

Hoping CalFire will be able to help this Fall with another prescribed burn.

Longer evenings make for less work time.

Enjoy the lengthening nights!

Rumblings Afar

The bounty is upon us. The Horn of Plenty gushes forth a profound plethora of food as Fall begins. The Equinox returns old bird friends to the farm’s ongoing bird drama, including many galliformes. The meso-predators – fox and skunk, especially – roam and hunt each evening. Farmers sweat in frequent heat, weeding and harvesting. We are thankful the lightning has skipped us, yet, but WHAT’s WITH THE STORMS??!!

Farm Overview at Sunset – Color thanks to Tropical Storm Mario

Rumblings Afar

Last week it was Tropical Storm Mario, this week an unnamed spiraling monstor. Mario spewed a swarm of lightning bolts 30 miles offshore, jetting up the coast and not, as predicted, coming onshore. The unnamed storm spun arms of poofy clouds and hundreds of lightning bolts, mostly around Lompoc and the southern San Joaquin Valley. It, too, was predicted to come ashore with that violent weather this past Tuesday night but then, once again, it skipped us: the only a hundred or so lightning strikes were inland, in the foothills of the Central Valley. Tense times, these.

The mugginess, daytime heat, and even balmy evenings are unusual for us. Luckily, it hasn’t been scorchingly hot – the apples aren’t getting sunburn. And, happily for tomato farmers, there hasn’t been enough rain to even start to wet the ground – dry farmed tomatoes split with rain!

And, oh how those tropical storm clouds color our sky at sunrise and sunset. Brilliant orange hues are the dominant evening entertainment, dazzling near the horizon and all mixed up with purples and blues higher up, sprayed across cloud puffs or ethereal mists.

The Toil

Amidst the episodic heat, farmers work and sweat. The weeding never ends. One starts early to avoid the worst of it, but that early starts later…hoes hit the ground at 6:45 if we’re lucky. And the harvest takes hours through the day while the sun pushes prickles and wilting heat right through you. The sweat would drip except it is so very dry, salt cakes on the skin roughly mixing with dust. Harvesting tomatoes bent fully over, gingerly stepping between sprawling plants and peering into the dense foliage for hidden fruit, carefully extracted…boxes and boxes of big swelling fruit emerging from so little ground – it is an epic year! What a contrast to last year’s crop failure.

Two Dog Farm dry farmed winter squash, each year a stunning miracle from such seemingly dry ground

Fruit Ripens

In the orchard, the apples ripen with lemon harvest still in swing. Eureka lemons get ripe by the day, our first year of sending them for weeks to market. These lemons are popular among our Community Orchardists, too – they are catching on – so, the ‘seconds’ lemons are getting claimed voraciously. About 50% of the lemons aren’t perfect enough for market, and so 25 pounds a week are getting distributed. It seems like next year we’ll have surplus for the Pacific School, once they return from the summer. Our lemon trees have just past 10’ tall, a bit lanky and need of some shaping – sharp spines make portions of the getting-dense trees hard to harvest. It is surprising how difficult it is to discern the varying shades of yellow on the fruit, sometimes with hidden tinges of green, to harvest the ripe ones as they turn ever-so-slightly deeper colored.

Gala apples are the first to ripen: we sent our first box to market out to the Community this past week. The background peach color, beneath the red streaks, is so obviously a sign of ripeness. They are gorgeous when ripe.

Ripening Gala apples in our Community Orchard

Reclaiming the Land

We are so thankful to our various partners for their assistance in restoring the natural areas of Molino Creek Farm. Last year, the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association’s (CCPBA) massive network of volunteers and dedicated staff put Good Fire on the ground, nudging our scrub invaded systems back to coastal prairie. Their work also makes our farm safer from wildfire, which has been much on our minds of late. This fire break augments a many miles long regional firebreak that runs on our border and protects Bonny Doon and then Santa Cruz further down the fire-shed.

This week, the new President of the CCPBA, Matthew Todd, has been using his expertise and big, expensive tool to take that burning a bit further. His Bobcat runs a masticator, and he’s mowing down huge patches of the invasive French broom which sprung up after the 2020 fire. Alongside that broom are acres of brush that has taken over super-diverse prairies that were dominant in photos as recent as 1988. Matthew is a landscape artist – it is looking so great and we are much-relieved to have his help bashing broom…and jubata grass…and coyote brush. Broom control protocol calls for several years of mowing in the Fall, like we’re doing now, and we are going to do just that – maybe with a bit of Rx Fire thrown in there.

Rumor has it that CalFire will do a training burn in a few weeks (after grape harvest), so more to come.

Matthew Todd on his masticator, taking care of prairie one strip at a time: Thank YOU!

Natural Production

While our Farm Fruit is abundant, so is the fruit of the woods. Jays and Acorn Woodpeckers have turned their attention to the acorns, which have swollen and started to drop. On the ridgelines above the Farm, the manzanita bushes have their first massive berry production since the 2020 fire. The seeds have tasty dry, sweet pulp and hard as rock seeds. Some critter has been feasting on them and then pooping out the remains in our apple orchard – a long haul, but someone has a circuit.

Critterland

It is easy to see a fox at night if you just go looking. We must have a large population. They bark and yowl. You can’t hear them, but you can certainly smell them … skunks are prowling farm-wide. The hayfields are full of their nuzzling holes where they seek mice or crickets. The bunchgrasses we’ve been nurturing in our hayfields have turned green and since we didn’t harvest the hay, there is plenty of hunting ground for skunks.

Native bunchgrass, California brome (*Bromus carinatus*) hay field with skunk hunting sign

Welcome Back Sparrows! And…

Golden-crowned sparrows returned, as usual, with the Equinox. In the dark of the night on 9/19, hundreds of these winter birds dropped out of the sky and started feasting on what seeds remain from the entire summer of feasting of the other birds. They were quiet and shy at first, maybe a bit tired from their journey, but now they are feisty and squeaky.

At the same time, other types of birds arrived. The meadowlarks landed in the meadows lower down and closer to the ocean. And, the blackbirds – Brewer’s and bicolored – have suddenly formed their cacophonous flock at the top of the trees around the periphery of the farm fields.

Gallinaceous Bird Drama

The turkey flock was attacked in the forest, what a terrible noise, and only the male has been about. Seems like a good idea to go to that place of turkey noise and see what happened. A coyote or even a pack of coyotes would stand quite a challenge against such powerful birds: maybe it was a lion? Tracking is in order.

Massive quail coveys flush and whirr at every turn. They are Very Jumpy because there is a Very Good Hunter about: Cooper’s hawk is energetically flying about. Do kestrels eat quail? There’s one of those around, too.

The Bounty

Do we revel enough in the produce on our plates? On the Farm, we get to see the food from its tiniest seeds through to buckets of production and onto the internment of the spent plant bodies back into the soil to start the cycle once again.

The not so subtle beauty of zucchini plants

Zucchini-Summer Squash

Big blossoms sit atop tender green fruit; both are edible. The giant leaves shelter the center stem where climbs rank over row of production of new zucchini. We keep a close watch on them to harvest at just the right time when the fruit aren’t tough or large seeded and yet are larger than the tiniest, finger sized tender fruit. The succession from the tiny to the huge can happen rapidly: we must be ever vigilant – the fields must be visited daily, the crop harvested every other day. You can almost hear the squeaky squash flesh stretch and grow.

Winter Squash

Isn’t it funny that the hard rinded ‘winter squash’ are squash just like the so different zucchini? What makes them winter squash? Oh, it’s just that we get to eat squash in winter, long after summer squash has gone, even in the recesses of the produce drawers of our refrigerators. In market, the zucchini comes from Mexico in the winter. As I traversed the road next to Two Dog Farm’s winter squash at dawn, I was surprised at wafts of sweet perfume: the winter squash in full bloom en masse has the most delightful citrus-y scent! The vines are romping across the field – soon, no soil will be visible. It is becoming one big mass of big umbrella leaves.

Onions

Our farmers grow the most delicious onions – red onions, yellow/sweet onions. Their spikey leaves are so perky. Row after row of waxy cylindrical foliage subtended by growing bulbs. One day, the leaves start to FLOP! Then we know they’re ready. Fresh onions go to market now and soon bucketfuls will get scattered on the greenhouse tables to ‘cure.’ That will net many weeks of storing onions to go to market. Those onion rows have been weeded and weeded, and weeding isn’t easy with those delicate leaves creating such an impenetrable canopy. We miss weeding and the bulbs turn out tiny. The unintended pearl onions are labor intensive to harvest and more so to get to market, so they go to the neighbors who delight in their unexpected midsummer arrival. Never take for granted the work behind each and every onion.

Avocados

The Lamb Haas avocado has an 18-month ripening period. The fruit from this year grows alongside the fruit from last year for many months. It is looking like the few we have this year will get harvested in a month or so, but they look like the right size. The ground squirrels have started, and abandoned, eating them- a sign that there is time still to wait.

Eighteen months is a long time for fruit to hang out, vulnerable to weather and pests. No wonder these fruit are so expensive! We are just past the Avocado Fall where the old leaves fall off and the new leaves unfurl. The trees look so lush, expansive, and vigorous. The Community Orchardists have done a top-notch job of making the main grove of our avocado trees look marvelously cared for and tidy. Next year, 6 years after the fire and the subsequent mass plantings, we’ll have a good harvest of fruit, again.

Critters

Last week, Sylvie reported seeing a skunk and some raccoons. She showed a short film of mother raccoon standing down her car to protect the too innocent young who were too curious to get off of the road. Wander the farm at night and you’ll soon encounter the scent of skunk. Skunk’s diggings through the thick thatch in search of mice or crickets is everywhere. To compliment the mesopredators, an opossum wanders the road at night increasingly close to the Farm each encounter. Sylvie also reports a one-eyed fox; we all hear the foxes yelping and yowling, so vocal.

The herds of deer are incredible. Cassandra reports the mother and daughter deer are still stuck in the farm fenced area; luckily, they have all they need to eat and drink in there. At some point, mother was ‘knocking’ at the gate, but took off when we tried letting her out. What does one do with a nearly 20 acre fenced area after you repair the fence with the deer inside? Apparently, you feed them organic chard, peas, grape leaves, and tomatoes. Our artesian wells leave big puddles to quench their thirst. They are gourmet.

Our first passionfruit in a long while are on their way: variety ‘Frederick’

-post simultaneously published at the Molino Creek Farm webpage

Tranquility

Most days there are two daybreaks. First, illumination transforms the dark night of the fog-hidden slight moon. Much later, it brightens again to blue sky and sunshine. Every morning is chill: the kind of damp cold that necessitates thick socks, sweater and jacket. Most want a shared lament, “How’s it going?” “well, the darned fog and cold and where is summer!?” Some of us still smile. “Ahhh! The cool fog!” “Glad there’s no wildfire!” We are grateful for wonderful wet smells, easy on the nose, deep breaths of fresh air.

Droplets glint from leaf tips, spider webs, and fence lines. Slightly muffled fog drip patters through tree canopies tumbling to make dents on the dusty ground. I join the quail and other birds to avoid wet weeds, wending our way along the trampled short-grassed pathways to avoid getting soaked and cold. The quail covey scratches and struts, making low whistles, talking. I gaze at them, at the distant alert-eared deer, at the obscured horizon, dark ridges and trees, there and gone again in the procession of low gray clouds.

Seedeaters

The farm is teeming with seed eating birds. Finches and goldfinches, juncos and sparrows. A roiling, chirping wave of songbirds retreats, keeping a comfortable distance from cars on the road or walkers sauntering down trails. There are shrill begging young birds and calmer chittering groups of adults. Most are intent with continuous beak probing of turf, pecking and scratching, sometimes lighting on low branches for breaks, polishing their dusty bills.

Hoes Out

As the young crops continue to mature, it is weeding time. Up to a half dozen people on any given day are hard at work obliterating unwanted pests, eyes bent on the ground, precision hoeing, thousands and thousands of plants uprooted. Success looks like a blanket of wilting plants, shriveling into dry crispy leaves and fading into nearly unnoticeable skeletons. Only the bindweed resprouts in the dry farmed deeply dusty fields but the irrigated fields will continue to flush new weeds for many weeks to come, complicating time budgets with both harvest and maintenance.

To Market!

We took food to the downtown Santa Cruz Farmer’s Market today, first market of the season. After months of tending with no cash flow, things are starting to pay off. Sunflowers, zucchini, and maybe some lemons…much more to come, more every week for a long while yet.

The beginning of the return of the Barn Party

Camp Molino aka Boomer Fest

From its founding in the early 1980s until the mid 1990’s, there was a traditional barn party at Molino Creek Farm. After a long hiatus, the event returned this past weekend. A slow trickle of incoming visitors wandered onto the farm. New generations followed older returnees. So many fine greetings, hugs and smiles. Tents colored knoll and meadow. Groups and gaggles wandered the farm, laughing and talking.

Many joined the Community Orchard working bee. Then, a prolonged after-orchard-work-party melded into dinner followed by divine, deluxe rock and roll, dancing in the barn. It was all lit up and alive, booming bass and melodic electric guitars so expertly played.

The next morning was slow and the day brought more farm walks and friendly chatter before people returned home and the farm was quiet once again.

Molino Creek Farm Community Orchardists hard at work on Citrus Hill

Orchard Progress

The large gathering resulted in an amazingly good volunteer turnout to tend the orchard. The group took on summer maintenance of 105 trees on Citrus Hill (see photo). First in the progression, a group pruned up trees so the next in the progression could rake out the dry spent leaves (wildfire damage prevention) with the weeding team close behind them. Others cleared plastic irrigation risers and some harvested lemons. We have never achieved so much in such little time. This, one of three blocks of trees, is looking so very good.

Elsewhere in the Trees

The apples are turning red. The first trees to greet you when you walk into the North Orchard are the Gala apple trees. Their cheery red fruit create the quintessential festooned apple tree forms starting this past week and on through late September during harvest. There are not too many fruits this year: the trees spent themselves last year and are taking a bit of rest. Still, there will be enough “Fruit for the People!” The juice will still flow.

-this simultaneously published on the Molino Creek Farm webpage

Swings

Prickly, skin burning sun gives way a day later to chilly overcast drizzle. As the planet warms, the extremes get more extreme; I don’t recall that kind of pendulum, but who knows? Monday’s sunny high at Molino Creek Farm was in the low 80’s, Tuesday a little cooler (but not much), and Wednesday it was in the low 60’s and drizzling. Let’s go back to the moment it switched: Saturday. We gathered our Community Orchardists just as the day went from somewhat cloudy and cool to crystal clear and warmer – the kind of beautiful where it feels like someone dropped a psychedelic dome over the big green earth, emphasizing color and clarity. Shimmering, exquisite beauty.

Fruit for the People!

The working bee rocked- cheerful chatter and hard workers knocking out pruning, weeding, fertilizing and cleaning branches & props. It was enough to turn around whatever doubt we might have had that this season is a turning point. We came together around food with toasts and kind words of appreciation for the community we create around growing Fruit for the People! Speaking of which…our Community Orchardists have delivered their first crop of Robertson navel oranges to our favorite outlet: the Pacific Elementary School‘s Food Lab in Davenport. Somewhat shy of 100 pounds of juicy, brightly colored, thin skinned oranges are making people happier and healthier. This kicks off 2025’s food donations to this important program.

Oh- and By the Way…many thanks to our dedicated readers and their forays to the Food Bin. They sold out of our tasty Bearss Limes and had to call us up to get more – vocal demand was the key. We are happy to help more people to shop local – this is The Locally Owned Grocery Store on this side of town. Go on back, now- they have a new batch of our limes, the best limes in town.

Aisle cover crop: bell beans; under tree permanent cover crop: Iberian comfrey

Terroir

We imagine we taste it in our limes, maybe in our oranges, too. But, the terroir comes out especially in our cider and wine. Cassandra Christine pointed it out first and now we are all grooving on the unique taste our soil imparts into our fruit. You’ll have to wait a bit to purchase Two Dog Farm’s chardonnay, but we are wishing them well in getting a big harvest this year after so carefully tending the vines.

This Land is Bird’s Land

There are so many birds at Molino Creek Farm right now – it is teeming with feathered friends. A few of us counted the bicolor blackbirds singing in a dead, bare-branched fir tree above the orchard. The number is the same as previously reported 35-40: that’s our flock.

There are hundreds more golden crowned sparrows, which are getting ready to take off to Alaska. I have some observations to share about these buddies. The sparrows around my home have accepted me as a friend and do not flee until I get around 5 feet away if I move slowly. As I walked around the garden the other evening, I approached the cherry tree, which had just started flowering. A golden crowned sparrow was happy about that – he was furtively plucking petals and pecking at buds, feasting away as fast as he could, ecstatic. This had mixed effects on me: on one hand, I was excited to realize that this species eats flowers; on the other hand, I wasn’t pleased that this bird was potentially causing loss of my favorite fruit. I talked to this guy about it, telling him that I really wished he wouldn’t eat my cherry flowers, but he didn’t seem to understand. I told him I’d get out the bird seed and feed his brethren seed if he let the cherry blossoms along. A moment later, he left and I haven’t seen sparrows in the tree again: good! I put seed out in the front yard and, looking out my sliding glass door this morning, I saw the flock of golden crowned sparrows, some of whom were eating the seed. I noticed that others, closer to the window, were eating weeds…and one was eating the petals of a California poppy. Just as I felt the rush of another discovery, yet another piled on: the poppy petal eating sparrow fed a luscious mouthful of petals to its friend, as if to say – “YES! It IS delicious!”

One more note…the golden crowned sparrows are also eating radish leaves, but not just any radish leaves – they find certain tasty radish plants and strip them to leaf midveins while completely ignoring a neighboring, probably less tasty plant.

We will miss these friends when they leave for Alaska…any day now.

Austrian Pea – a resprouting cover crop plant in a sea of chopped up calendula

Scents of Spring

Sweet smell of plum blossoms, pungent-bitter scent of calendula crushed underfoot, the perfume of fresh cut grass…and, the acrid-poopy smell of rotting radish. The Farm planted daikon radish as a cover crop and it does quite well. Grind it up with the mower and, well, it rots. To me, it didn’t smell so nice even as a live plant. I don’t really like that crucifery stench, but others apparently do: a recent UCSC class visit taught me that humans can have vastly different experiences with the mustard green smell. Good thing. A bit more rain (its coming!) and a bit more mowing and that rotting daikon scent will be ubiquitous. About that time, the rotting radish smell will mix with the freshly applied compost and melting down feather meal scents and the Farm will smell….richly stinky!

The Sounds of Late Winter

Behind the bird chorus, waves pound. Finches crazy whistling, goldfinch squeaks, robin operas, junco twittering, bluebird sonnets, and so many other bird songs fill the air at dawn and dusk…and sporadically all day long. Lately, the waves have been very loud, rolling roars pulsing, occasionally cracking high on the rocks and sending an attention note into the hills. Gusts sing in the trees and whistle through the winter’s last dead hemlock stems, rocking.

Here goes another growing season, folks! We’re digging in deep.

2020 Fire starting to disappear to new redwood bark regrowth

Rain, Mushrooms, Fire, and More

Another round of rain enlivens the vibrant living system that is Molino Creek Farm. Citrus ripens, quince/hazels/milkmaids/houndstongue blossom, and grass and herbs thicken and deepen in every field. Sun returns, wind…the cycles back-and-forth unfold into spring and (too) soon the epic dry summer. The Earth drinks now in preparation for the long parch ahead.

Water

It rained so much a few weeks back that the Bottomlands pond quickly filled. And, it as rapidly disappeared: not long enough, or deep enough to attract the ducks of yesteryear. Then it was sunny and warm. And then the rain returned, mists and drizzle and the occasional shower. The wetting brought back the chanterelles and beaucoup mushrooms, which had previously pulsed in December only to dry and disappear during the long dry January. Parasols and puffballs poke up from grass and leaves, a variety of colors and textures. Feasts of fresh-picked mushroom risotto return to the menu. The waterfall on the unnamed tributary of Molino Creek spatters and sings, a newly reopened path leads to the overlook. A long glistening wet wall, profusely dripping, towers over the far side of the lively creek channel, hanging thick with wild ginger and ferns. Downstream, the main creek makes even louder creek noises with pool, fall, and rock pile riffles.

A LBM, Little Brown Mushroom, by Cassandra Christine

Fire

Does it ever get too old to talk about Fire? 2020 seems to be fading into the past; 4 ½ years past the catastrophic fire that destroyed so much and changed our landscape forever. Soon, we hope, the Bartles move into their rebuilt home. Our Good Neighbors at San Vicente Redwoods meanwhile continue their excellent post-fire restoration and management. This past week, their crews burned many, many piles of fuel that they had cleared alongside our shared road, including adjacent to the Big Hill. One moment there were stacks of Douglas fir longs and brush, the next moment only charcoal and ash. If a wildfire had raged up that small canyon, it would have been spectacular, dangerous, and destructive, but this controlled pile burn left a smaller footprint with more beneficial outcomes. We are safer. Nature is better off.

Restoration

Our work post fire and overall is evident with the wildflowers. Shucking seeds with our bare hands from nearby wildflowers and Hucking those seeds into the right places throughout the farm creates promise. For instance, a couple of roadside hound’s tongue plants popped up several years ago and have been seeding into the surrounding fire safety mowing zone. Now, there are 10 new seedlings…the patch is growing…the flowers beautiful and there will be more.

Elsewhere, strewn poppy seeds, ant-dispersed footsteps of spring, and grass seeds cast about are manifesting as big patches of increasing species diversity. Besides the rich hound’s tongue blue, there are already splashes of early spring yellow and loud bangs of poppy orange. Bunchgrass tufts throw up panicles of flowers above the meadow sward. Blackberry vines are flashing cascades of white star flowers along fencelines. Trimmed up oaks will survive the next fire, shading a short, fire-safe understory.

Working Fields and Orchards

Mark Bartle steered the 2 Dog tractor in rows across the Roadside Field, mowing cover crop, sending the season’s first cut grass smell to thickly scent the air. A legion of helpers cleared the youngest trees of weeds, saving them from voles. The orchard cover crop is growing tall or just plain growing, depending on whether it was sown early or late; the voles should be going into those rows and feasting on vetch, or bell bean, or oats…soon their litter strewn trails will be evident as they graze and poop and pee and serve as they key component of our regenerative animal impact integration. The owls and coyotes and hawks are thanking us, too.

The oscillating weather still allows for citrus ripening, trees hanging heavily with rain filled yellow, orange, and green fruit. New leaves are sprouting, spikey branches elongating, and older leaves falling to make dense mulch. It still amazes me that we can make this fruit, and we seem to have escaped the frosts of another potentially devastating winter.

Buds swell and the first orchard blossoms have appeared. Quince petals decorate the haphazardly growing bushes near the entrance of the orchard. Apple buds swell on some varieties while others’ buds remain tight and small. Hazelnut catkins dangle and sway in the breeze. Pointy green elderberry leaf tips begin to emerge. The multitude of orchard trees are patient overall in their response to approaching spring.

Waterfall at Molino Creek Farm by Cassandra Christine

Beginning of Burgeoning

Plants and animals are awakening to the waning Winter and the approaching Spring. Spring Equinox is March 20, 2:01 a.m.; daylight savings starts March 9. The days are getting longer and, recently, warmer. On an afternoon walk recently, a new level of bird song filled the air: the birds feel the changing season. Robins, finches, goldfinches, thrashers, towhees, sparrows, blackbirds and juncos were simultaneously raucously singing, each song distinct, each clearly audible from anywhere on the farm.

Lucious peach blossoms, so early in the season!

The dominant song, the loudest and most enthralling, is the flock of 50 or so California bicolored blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus californicus). This flock hunts in hopping flanks across the fields, scaring up food, or lights into a tree from which it hemi-melodiously erupts into cacophonous orchestration. During this group song, individual birds will take to the sky above the flock, display and glide-flit back down into the tree with a pattern much like falling leaves. Sometimes several birds will do this at once, sometimes only one. It is like a dance floor in 3D. I highly recommend spending time observing this species’ behavior – it is fascinating to watch and mesmerizing to hear.

Greening

Meanwhile, down on the ground plants are starting to get taller. Grass is one foot tall, poppies 6 inches, bee plant two feet with its vigorous stalks and huge dark green toothed leaves. Soon, all that herbaceous stuff will be knee high and difficult to negotiate on foot: this is our last chance to readily romp through lush fields and meadows.

The winner of the green growth height race is, and always was and will be, wild cucumber aka womanroot, so named because the starchy root is the size of a woman, albeit a smaller one. That starch allows the plant to hurdle forward with long reaching vines and twining tendrils, simultaneously flowering and more slowly forming leaves. On a warm, still day, you might catch the cucumber scent of the flowers. Don’t stand still too long or one might grab you!

Flowers

Our Earlitreat peach trees are in bloom. They have to be early to set fruit for harvest by Mid May (!), so sweet and tasty. The large pink flowers are pure eye candy, and the bees are loving them. We are happy for the hot dry spell right now to help the leaves not get too much peach leaf curl, which is problematic with this early variety.

In the uncultivated areas, California poppy flowers are opening. As always each spring, the first flowers are the size of tulip flowers and show more the inland poppy traits: pure orange petals. These were planted from seed brought in and have naturalized. The local poppy blossoms later and so the two races keep separate niches and maintain their flower color and different leaf morphologies right alongside one another.

Frogs and Bats!

Our concrete pond filled early and has stayed full for the winter, attracting chorus frogs. This is the first year in more than a decade that chorus frogs are hopping through the fields, along the trails, and under the orchard trees. They go to the pond at night to sing and play but then out into the fields they go to feed on bugs for full tummies to get them through the night of frenzied singing socializing. The pond is rife with frog egg masses but last I checked no tadpoles. One newt floated around and will be feasting on eggs and, soon, tadpoles, too.

Another thing a pond does is attract bats. All at once, a gaggle of small bats poured out of the ‘horse barn’ roof edge last Saturday at dusk. This evening just after sunset, a larger singular bat was energetically gliding and flapping around the farm. All this bat action but no real evident evening time bugs…but, who am I to say…they are much better at assessing that situation.

Citrus Harvest

Have you been to the Food Bin where Molino Creek Farm limes have been on sale? Everyone says that these are the tastiest limes, thin skinned and juicy. We’re getting ready to harvest another large batch- they ripen gradually and in pulses with the warm spells. Our Community Orchardists went on a citrus harvesting stroll last Saturday after our work party, loading up on limes (Bearrs and Key), mandarins (mostly Honey), Meyer lemons (no one took many), Seville oranges (for marmalade), and navel oranges (mostly Robertson but some Lane’s Late…Cara Cara and Washington a bit slower). Some enterprising souls also are experimenting with the first possibly ripe Pinkerton avocados…we hope for reports back! More different mandarins are ripening…soon! Another couple of years and we may have too many mandarins and be able to send some to market or to charity or somewhere, we’ll see. But first, how will we do this year with making use of the many pounds of navel oranges on the trees – everyone is reporting large orange harvests this year!

Hoping you have a great week and enjoy some seasonal, local citrus to spice up your life and give you the Vitamin C you crave.

-this post co-published at the other site I maintain for Molino Creek Farm

A Keen Balance of Heat and Cool (but then smoke)

The balance works out just right between night and day temperatures recently. The nights have windows open, cooling the house, providing fresh air and cricket chorus; the days are warm almost hot, almost warming too much, windows get closed….then the sun goes down and windows open, fresh air pouring in. Perfect comfort, naturally.

The Smoke from Prescribed Fire Makes for a Pretty Sunset

And so it was today, windows closed, an afternoon break and a glance outside reveals “OH NO!!” Smoke!!!!! The view outside was through the all-too-familiar haze that means fire somewhere: where?! Stepping outside, the characteristic smell of brush burning a ways away. Waves of denser or less dense smoke walk across the landscape, slowly – barely a breeze. Bob Brunie says he heard on the radio of a fire in Boulder Creek that had been put out, but Sylvie says it is a CAL FIRE-directed prescribed fire in the San Gregorio and Pomponio, according to the WatchDuty App on her phone. Oh good…so glad that’s what it was! And, the smoke magically changes from unwelcome and scary to welcome and thankful. So it goes. Made for an interesting sunset. Our farm will do a similar thing with the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association soon – fuel reduction through good fire! Our smoke will cause some concern, we thinks.

What Do the Birds Think?

The smoke probably gives everyone pause, birds included. The migratory ones will recall smelling smoke and maybe even seeing flames during their journeys to our Farm this Fall: does the current smoke make them fearful? Carpets of scratching juncos and sparrows bob and hop through the churned-up dead grass, chipping and cheeping all day long, looking for food. As I approach the flocks, wrens erupt with their scratchy warning scolding alarms. Midday and coveys of quail flow from the thick patches of brush nervously crossing open spaces to sources of water, dipping and sipping, someone always keeping an eye out for danger.

Oozing holes in the orchard trees and the telltale PEENT! Gives notice that the red-breasted sapsucker(s?) have returned for the winter. Tommy Williams recently shared a photo of a burrowing owl somewhere nearby- they, too, have returned for the short-days season. As dusk dims, several poor wills flush in front of cars rolling along the very dusty road. And then, a stream of big bats sally from the barn, flapping quickly away, out of sight, a long night of foraging for bugs ahead.

The Harvest

The flip side of the hungry, fruitless beginning of summer is right now, the middle of Fall. We are mid harvest in the orchard, which started in August and will continue through February this year. Next year, the harvest will go year-round as more avocado types make fruit. The early fruit is gone: the last of the prunes in the fridge are shriveling, the final gala apples are headed to market (and press). The middle season apples are ripening: grenadine is a favorite, as is Hudson’s golden gem, Bramley, Cox’s orange pippin, golden delicious, and so many more. Thanks to Freddie Menge for tipping us off to plant two dozen Wickson crab apples: we have the Wall O’ Wicksons now- a massive conglomerate of tiny red tartness bedecking the ‘left bank’ of the orchard. This is their First Big Year. We didn’t have enough props for them, and one ripped itself apart right into the ground with the weight of the fruit.

Quince are ripening!

The mandarins, limes, and Meyer lemons are also starting to ripen on Citrus Hill. Those types of fruit will extend the harvest into February when MAYBE we get some avocados for the first time since the 2020 fire set back so many trees.

In the Fields

In the farm fields, there are peppers. Two Dog Farm has a field with row after row of tiny bushes laden with peppers from dark green to bright red. Nearby, their winter squash abundance is tantalizing. Butternut squash makes for the best ‘pumpkin’ pie, and you could walk across an acre of those beautiful fruit. A very few tomatoes hang on in their own fields, maybe perking up from the heat waves…we hope for at least a trickle of harvest for a bit longer.

Logs Out

We LOVE our neighbors who, with the help of Nadia Hamey and her crew with Hamey Woods, have made our egress route a thousand times safer. The Big Hill was Dangerous, the Douglas firs burned up in the wildfire- then, dangerously perched on either side of the road awaiting windstorm or decay to come crashing down. A month ago, the saws revved and whirred for so long, trees crashing down, cut into logs, hauled into piles by huge machinery. This past week, the piles got picked up and hauled out: a changed and safer landscape. So much dust, so much noise…such an amazing amount of energy, work, and money. The effects of the fire are still with us, but smart and kind people are still mitigating the effects to great benefit. Thank you!

Birthday Boy

One of our newest members, Bodhi Grace, will soon celebrate his birthday by having the first party in the Barn in quite some time. He drained and cleaned the Cement Pond, wetting the periphery of the barn for dust and fire. That old barn is about to rock. Happy Birthday Bodhi!!!

Welcome Fall

We woke on the Equinox, September 22, to the song of night’s arrival – golden crowned sparrows. Somehow, they know the right day and arrive the same moment each year, ending their long travel south from Alaska. With the changing world, it seems odd that some things remain constant. These pesky birds promise hours of entertainment as their pecking order is as animated as chickens and they are far more numerous. Their aggression is correlated by the brightness of gold on their heads, but they still love each other: they have tight-knit family groups and larger tribes and they are settling into the same cluster of shrubs they called home last winter. They must be pleased to have so many seeds: last winter’s bounteous precipitation made the seeds rain more than even the huge coveys of quail can keep up with. When it rains, there will still be millions of seeds to germinate and the sparrows will start grazing the lush turf.

More Typicality

Just as last year, the winter battles summer this time of year. Some of us celebrated one more Warm Night: unusual in these parts. The warm night was sandwiched between two pretty hot days and then the Fog returned: moisture rolling off rooves at sunrise, dripping from leaf tips, coloring the dust on the road beneath wetted trees. The see-sawing of temperatures was the cue the apples needed to get that much closer to ripe, but the bouts of fog enshrouded days make it difficult to keep up with the watering…solar pumps don’t produce much when there’s too few photons. It would be better to water the orchard before it gets really hot, but the hot has recently been when the sun comes out. Dynamism and daily adaption is the way of the farmer. The question now…will it be truly typical and rain an inch, our first ‘big storm’ in the middle of October? Whoah! That’s just two weeks away!!

Fields of Tomatoes

The bouts of heat and the progression of the season coalesced to create a grand glut of tomatoes. In this house, we’ve processed a hundred pounds into jars and jars of sauce to brighten the meals in seasons far from summer. Another household dried 200 pounds. The smell of tomato fruit hangs in the air on still warm evenings. The warmth and dust-loving russet mites have ravaged many plants, leaves withered and crispy: they’re time is up, but there are many more healthy plants in some patches, especially in the ‘diagonal field’ with deeper soil, upwind of the road dust. That’s where the future lies…we need tomato production through Thanksgiving for a truly prosperous year.

Flowers

This is truly the driest time of year as we’ve had no rain since April. The hillsides are crispy dry and most shrubs, flowers, and grasses are dormant. The exception is the unbelievably bright green pine-scented coyote bush…just starting to flower. Want to tell the girl from the boy coyote (bushes)? Now’s the time. I mark the coyote bush female plants and eradicate them preferentially- they are the existential threat to us folks who like to keep grasslands, grasslands and let the wildflowers have the wide open space. For now, the coyote bush is keeping the pollinator community well fed. Butterflies flock, flies buzz, and wasps hop from cluster to cluster of the pollen and nectar rich flowerheads.

In the irrigated garden, it is Dahlia time! Big poofy, luscious flowers of the most unbelievable colors pop and spangle in a scant row among cucumber, beans, and squash. Sunflowers are still going, cut for each of the 3 farmer’s markets we are going to nowadays (Aptos/Cabrillo-Saturday, Downtown Santa Cruz-Wednesday, and Palo Alto-Saturday).

Fall Color

The walnuts and garden birches have only the slightest tinge of the beginnings of yellow. Same with the maples in the wild canyons. At the edge of the forests and on steep hillsides, poison oak is further along with its remarkable streaked purple-reds. Rumor has it that the aspen leaves are turning in Eastern California where ‘leaf peepers’ are drawn to fall glory.

More Return of the Birds

Besides the golden crowned sparrows, other birds have returned from afar for their winter haunts. Cassandra and I have both seen an unusual feathered friend: Western meadowlarks visiting the Farm! Their bright yellow, black-spotted bib and dangerously long stout bills give them away. I guess our grasslands have reclaimed enough shrub ground to look like viable meadowlark habitat – that’s new!

Another bird sighting – an osprey! Around 2012 this time of year, two ospreys would fly over the farm each evening at dusk, west to east. One is flying now. Someone says that they saw it carrying a fish…a little late for fledglings, don’t you think? Still, this is an odd thing and someday someone’s going to have to follow that sea hawk and see where its going.

Hey Rick, hay rick!

Last weekend at our work party, Jen, Mike, and Roland rolled up the hay near Cherry Hill. Tons of the dry grassy stuff is cut, getting raked, and being placed in our rudimentary hay ricks. If we had pines nearby, we could put some needles in our haystacks, but as it is they are full of weeds. This is a new adaption from the bad idea of old…placing dry hay under perfectly innocent trees during fire season. Now, we stack the hay, let it molder, and wait until the end of fire season to swoosh it under the trees to suppress weeds, add nutrients and organic matter, and provide cozy homes for VOLES who do such a good job of ridding the orchards of gophers.

Perhaps we’ll rediscover the way of stacking the hayrick…a profession of years ago with expertise and methods long lost.