Molino Creek Farm

The Busyness

This past week at Molino Creek Farm has been a busy, busy, busy one: harvesting, cover crop sowing, pressing apples, burning large areas of wildland, and getting ready for rain. This is the beginning of the final push for getting ready for the more sleepy winter.

The November 11, 2026 sunset moon from Molino Creek Farm

A Pressing Affair

One of the products of the Molino Creek Farm Community Orchard is hard cider – a way to preserve apples and provide the Community a beverage that many enjoy at our gatherings (and beyond?). This past weekend, members of the community held the second large and fourth of the total apple pressings thus far. We use a big electric grinder that pulverizes up to 40 pounds of apples a minute…the apples going into the hopper are rejects from sales and have too many blemishes for provisioning our favorite charities. The apples get cleaned and trimmed and then ground up. The pulp goes into the hand-press ‘basket,’ the spindle gets turned by one person, and the clear golden juice sluices out into a shoot, into bottles and pitchers. The sizeable crowd this past week bottled and drank 10 gallons of fresh juice and the Cidermakers took home 12 more. Not a huge juicing…pretty small by comparison, but ‘enough.’ Hard cider is on its way, bubbling vigorously in carboys, changing sugars to alcohol. One knows the hard cider is being enjoyed in our weekly ‘under the tree’ gatherings as the volume of revelry gradually increases and cheery voices can almost be understood from the other end of the Farm. We must create 80 gallons of hard cider to keep up with the weekly demand between Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving.

The fresh juice is in freezers or refrigerators to be cherished by many.

Eva and Jen have been the Conveners of Juice this season, and all hail their sheroism! Organizing these things is actual hard work. The question is…will there be one last apple pressing of the year?

Nadia Hamey taking care of the land, once again.

The Burning Question: Answered at Last!

Speaking of praise of our fellow humans – the biggest of awe-filled thanks goes out to the innumerable volunteers that followed Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association Staffers Jared Childress and Spencer Kleinfelter up onto our Farm last Sunday to burn, baby burn! Some may recall that this laudatory group pulled off such miracles last in 2024 and here they were, re-burning the same areas, again. We set fire to 3 big spots with varying South, West, and Northern facing slopes. Folks fanned out: ‘holders’ who kept an eye on the boundaries; ‘lighters’ who used drip torches to start the fires; ‘observers’ from UCSC’s City on the Hill Press and other media outlets as well as folks who just wanted to see, and; lots of folks helping to direct, plan, track, and log what was being done. And, oh boy! There was CAL FIRE providing wisdom, expertise, and support!!! The weather was dreamy-good. Hourly, one of the crew would read current weather conditions into the radio and everyone could hear. It seemed to vary very little: wind from the S, SW 2 mph, gusting to 4…71 degrees F…58 percent humidity.

We were watching flames, each other, wildlife, and smoke all day long. Sometimes there was a woosh and lots of cracking as the fire lines hit larger patches of dry fuel. Sometimes the flames walked slowly across big short-grassy areas. People were beaming, sweating, and working hard. One herd of fence-trapped deer scooted alertly away from the flames and may have even left out a gate, but one doe was seen clambering ‘into the black’ (burned area) at the end of the day still in the fence. We shared stories of legions of rats running from wildfire but only saw a few rodents scurrying. Ma the Raven caught on quickly and was wake hunting the fire line, cawing excitedly; Caw is being a bit lazy, concernedly lazy, these days. Sparrows were put out of home but somehow were seemingly excitedly flocking into the freshly burned ground. The smoke stung our eyes but mostly we could get out of it – up it went and off to the North, away from neighbors and larger communities.

Holly and Rebecca followed the burn with seeds that Judy, Sylvie, and Grey collected earlier in the year from around the Farm. Blue wild rye, California brome grass, and purple needlegrass seeds got scattered through the burn, offering some healing and restoration.

Slowly, with many peoples’ help, we are restoring the Old Ways and coastal prairie. It is amazing how many ‘first timers’ there were watching and helping with the burn. We are turning the tide of our relationships with each other, with partner fire, and with the non-humans and landscape around us.

Many thanks to the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association for their many volunteers and awe-inspiring work!

Apples to School

We delivered another 60 or so pounds of mostly Fuji apples to the Pacific School’s newish walk-in cooler. Now the test begins, how long will they last in 38F? They have quite few boxes! The news: the kids love the flavor of our apples – they are appreciated. We love providing the fruit to the youngest in our community, to the school food program that teaches children how to make healthy meals. What a great place!

The Greening

We’ve had just over an inch of rain in three bouts, the latest .78” not long ago. Now, we get the greens reappearing. The wild oat seedlings are 3” tall and the summer’s dry thatch is getting buried in renewed life.

This is the new, climate change rhythm: hot-hot-hot then wind then plummeting temperatures and a bit of rain. We are in the hot period: it was 75F + today, cooler than the last heat wave. The rain is due to land and the temperatures to drop starting late tomorrow. Three waves of storms are predicted, the first with an inch of rain and a total of probably around 4” of rain for the entirety of the systems.

What the Rain Means

The coming rain means it is time to scurry. When the last fire was coming, we scurried. This is similar, but different. The coming rain means we need to get all of the cover crop into the ground. The earlier we get the seed in, the bigger the cover crop, the better the soil is held in place. This year (knock on wood as we are in the middle of it), it looks like we’ll get the entire orchard cover crop planted before the onslaught of rains, early in the season. This is because folks stepped up. Holly, Rebecca, and Jen were the seed throwers. Sylvie, Bodhi (especially Bodhi), and I are the tractor wranglers.

Can’t wait until the bell beans sprout, big juicy leaves unfurling and covering the ground…big rains will be a delight, too.

Onset of Rain

For all that’s unpredictable and chaotic in the world, when our Mediterranean climate encounters the onset of rains on schedule we smile and settle and love the transition. Winter birds celebrate. Seeds turn to shoots. Late season apples swell and sweeten. The short days and moisture suggest the end of fire season and we turn our attention to hydrology.

Gold Rush apples have been tasty for a long time hanging on the tree- a new favorite of our community orchardists

Precipitation

Mark Lipson notes that the last couple of days brought the Farm .78 inch of rain, at least at the elevation and exposure of the weather station he monitors. Ecologists suggest that it takes 1” of rain to spur germination and we got a couple of other smaller storms not that long ago…and voila there we have it…the blush of green has commenced! Seeds burst, birthing into seedlings! Dust becomes soil! Drought-shrunken leaves moisten and stretch. Cows drinking from puddles wander further from troughs, grazing freshly wetted grass. Underground fungal hyphae flush and earthy scents are caried on the humid breeze. Storms pass, clouds part, and sunshine sparkles off billions of droplets left behind.

After around an inch of rain: germination!

Land History Demands Stewardship

In deep time there have been tens of thousands of years of warming and drying…plants that love cool, fire-free, moist environments have been retreating northward…ones that love hot, dry, flame-licked landscapes come from the South and East to take their place. Molino Creek Canyon was a grand fir forest 15,000 years ago, just before redwoods appeared. As that march of time progressed, humans walked in using partner flames to tend the wild. The African-like animal-scape winked out – mastadons, mammoths, horses, camelids, ground sloths, bison, and so much more: tasty meat! Gone! Colonists remove the People and their wisdom of place and the tender, intelligent, adaptive care the landscape had come to know. Murder! Genocide!!

Us ‘modern folk’ are, in effect, infants being buffeted by a Nature we do not understand (very few are seeking to understand) and which is imbalanced and untethered with the recent legacy of unprecedented changes, abuse, invasion, and extraction. Once-partner-fire awakens current generations to realize survival is impossible without new approaches. A new culture of stewardship emerges.

Molino Creek Farm Pursues that Challenge

Surrounding the super-manipulated farm fields and orchards: scrubland, coastal prairie, oak forest, creeks and redwoods. Photos from early farm days, 1988, reveal mainly hillsides of prairie surrounding the farm, with forest and trees on the ridge lines and canyons. Slivers of that globally endangered coastal prairie remained in 2008, each a refuge for poppies and lupines, owl’s clover, sanicle, lotus, farewell-to-spring and rare native dandelions. Each year since, we have been working however we can to restore the prairies, conserving species and creating greater wildfire resilience.

Matthew Todd now, and others before him have been the large-scale muscle with expensive mastication machines for mowing brush. Farm partners perform daring and acrobatic maneuvers with our own grass-mowing tractors. Hand-to-stem wrestling periodically controls tree and shrub invaders. Wildfire swept through twice.

Matthew Todd is a dedicated Earth Steward and this is one of his tools – see above, his results!

Sunday, we sigh relief that an extensive stewardship community returns to Molino Creek Farm. The Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association has organized its second event to burn many acres that are returning to coastal prairie. Lots of volunteers, all geared up, in various levels of training and all pumped with enthusiasm for Good Fire, are the reason we can do this. The hillsides will turn from gray-brown to black. Native and non-native invasive shrubs and trees will be rocked back on their heels yet again. Nutrients will flush into the soil to feed the expanding patches of native coastal prairie wildflowers and grasses, which we regularly gather in Spring and spread into restoration areas in Fall. The below-ground biotic community is shifting to that which supports coastal prairie.

Harvest Winding Down

Some fields are still rocking, some petering off. Some orchard trees are already sleeping, some still swelling with fruit. Two Dog Farm’s tomatoes and peppers are still burgeoning, Molino Creek Farm’s all gone. The gleaning of leftover winter squash and onions is still happening. The last big harvests of apples are rolling in – Fuji and Braeburn, mainly. There are 100 pounds of our first Granny Smith apples in years, but those won’t be ready until January. The new favorite apple “Gold Rush” has a few more tasty fruits for snacks. But LIMES, oh my LIMES! (and lemons!) Citrus season is starting, once again. Each day, the Persian limes turn yellower, getting close to being ripe. Lemons are dropping to the ground, rotting – guess no one wants lemons! (or lemonade). Late season avocados are dribbling in, more to come.

Farm Labor

Besides harvesting and helping with prescribed burning, Farm Partner work attention moves to preparing for winter. The final mowing of orchard blocks has recently been completed, so Saturday we switch the mower out for the harrow on the BCS. Bags upon bags of bell beans are stacked in the barn for sowing and folks have ‘signed up’ for shifts behind the beast of a machine to scratch those big shiny seeds into the soil. The ride-on tractors will similarly be at work soon, disking cover crop seeds into the ground, contouring their final tire tracks so soil doesn’t wash down hill and leave large swaths infertile. Stacks of wax boxes are in the greenhouse, curing winter squash for upcoming sale. We’ll soon move tools inside, stack orchard tree props for the winter, and drain irrigation lines in case of freeze.

A look at one of our North facing slopes, Farm tomato field in foreground

Seasonality of Birds

The dominant and the sub-dominant bird songs indicate upcoming winter. We’ve got the cacophonous caterwauling of blackbirds calling from large flocks gathered on the baring branches of walnut trees. And, hidden under and around bushes with calls a bit more subtle, hundreds of sly sparrows. These flocks are big enough to make feather noise when they flush just as much as the quail. Woooosh….Wirrrr…FFFFFFFFF….

This is going to look different in a few days- one of the main slopes we burn when we can

Pass…Future?

The last dry farmed tomato crop of Molino Creek Farm (?)

Those with more years are surer that they know better. We seem headed down the long tunnel towards darkness, remembering the other side, where light returns. Fall to winter, winter to spring. And on and on. We want to share experiences, how we coped with trials, the reason and the right way to plant a seed. When to water and when to leave off irrigation. How does a farmer pass along their lessons to the next generation? Years and cycles of seasons create notions of wisdom, minds ruminating on stories that want to be told. An auntie alone on the couch beckons for listeners, but she seems so tired, her ideas so old. Youth turns aside, rejection, lightness calling, pulling them away. They want to learn, they want to learn their own lessons, their own way. Innovation! Creation! Energy! Originality! Expression! Old tired eyes squint at this dazzling light. Auntie is offering gifts, some of irreplaceable value, some that are best let go. Both, she insists, are the same. Oh, so tiresome! The setting sun, glowing beauty, meets an ancient oak soaking up the last rays, joyfully, nonetheless. Bright stars gleaming in the night. They say whole galaxies are being born somewhere out there.

An ancient oak bathing in the last rays of sunset

The Last Markets

Another season draws to a close at Molino Creek Farm with one, maybe two last markets. Judy and Adan comb the rows of tomato vines, searching for the last tomatoes worth selling. The sunflowers have faded, but a few onions remain. Where once there wasn’t room in the market truck for even one box of orchard fruit, now many boxes are welcomed. Customers are buying apples! And the cash immediately goes towards cover crop seed, just in time. And we wonder…where next will we sell Community Orchard fruit? Where there is such rich and valued sweetness, we will find a way.

Clouds Roll In

Clouds and distant thunder accompany this ponderous and sad end. Recent years bring this see-saw of Fall heatwaves crashing headlong into surprising cold spells. A third major, many day heat wave saw even high 90s last week and only cooling to the 70s at night. And suddenly this morning we awoke to the 40s with clouds streaming in. They say it might rain. Some farmers even forestalled irrigation with hopes of water from the sky! At any rate, transpiration slowed from cooler temperatures, shortening days, and cloud cover so plants naturally aren’t quite as thirsty.

Fall Color

The recent heat crisped the normally colorful black walnut leaves, but the promise of fall leaf cheer is starting to blush in Molino Creek Farm’s willow groves. Six years on after the fire, the willow groves are lush and thick like never before…many 2” diameter smooth trunks sprouted from the burnt-out stumps. They are 15 feet tall now, thick in long bushy lines along the unnamed tributary that cuts across our land. The willow yellow is a welcome respite from the otherwise drab landscape. The once-tawny gold grasses are gray with age and the summer drought has left even the redwood needles a bit tired and dull. The forest understory has shriveled to nothing: “duff.” Wildlife tracks have exposed dusty trails, many tracks left in the dirt and piles of dried scat accumulated from the entire summer alongside those. Nature has a fondness for muted browns right now…but then there are the willows! Perhaps rain will soon wash away the dirt and many shades of green will emerge with the newfound moisture.

The lush, post-fire willow glen along an unnamed tributary to Molino Creek…on Molino Creek Farm

some close up late season dry-farmed squash

“Some people pay good money for a hole like that!” – Grey referencing the funding spent on burrowing owl hole creation. This hole made by a genuine ground squirrel, for free!

Smoke Week, Juice Flowing

For years, as we were planting more and more and more apple trees (we still plant apple trees!), I asked, “What are we going to do with all of the fruit?” “JUICE!” was the answer. Well, here comes the juice….and a whole lotta apples.

Smoke settled thickly onto the Farm during last week’s harvest for market. Holly Frank donned a N-95 mask, others…’cough, cough!’

Later in the day, at sunset, a brief inversion with fresher air at the Farm

The Harvest

First come Gala apples and then Jonagold and then Golden Delicious and then Fuji. We are approaching Fujitime! Somewhere in there are Mutsu, but very few of those this year, alas!

The Gala apples were plentiful, if disappointing. The pressing at the Pacific School featured those sweet, sweet apples – appropriate for the kidly taste buds, eh? And, many of us made our own juice or dried apples with a few hundred pounds going to the Palo Alto Farmer’s market where we sold practically every last one of them…for $4 a pound!

The disappointing part of the Gala harvest: the number of fruit with the fearsome “Apple Scab” disease, a mostly superficial ugliness that disqualifies the infected ones from going to market. It seems that variety is particularly susceptible plus the fruit growth timing came at the wrong moment, in the July Gloom part of this year’s anomalous weather. Infected fruit still get et.

Half a box of Jonagold is all we got to send to market, a mystery as there used to be so many more. Bird food? While picking Golden Delicious last week, harvesters were repeatedly bonked on their noggins from falling fruit and we suspected the tree had taken cues from a scene in the Wizard of Oz. Heat stress created fruit shed. Heat Wave #2 hit 100F and the trees on the more exposed sections of the orchard shrugged their loads to the ground. We picked up 400 pounds of the ones that were only slightly bruised and they are ‘sweating’ in the barn for their chance to get juiced.

The apple harvest tally estimate so far: 800 pounds to deer food/compost; 300 pounds to market; 800 pounds to juice; 100 pounds to Pacific School; 200 pounds to pantries and personal use. We are really just beginning.

11 a.m. and the prescribed burn at Swanton Pacific Ranch is roaring next door

Fire…Fire in the Mountains!

We had 21 hours’ notice that the neighbors at Swanton Pacific Ranch were working with CAL FIRE lighting up around 50 acres. We glanced up towards the NW ridge and there it was, a giant plume of smoke, headed towards the ocean (at first). A few hours later, the wind shifted and the fire had grown. Helicopters were whirring, dropping loads of water on some ‘hot spots’ towards the end of the day. A thick stinky mass of smoke enveloped the Farm.

There had been many days of very hot weather and we had become accustomed to opening up the windows at night to cool homes down. Impossible! It was ‘stewing in your own juices’ time, once again – a phenomenon not encountered since the 2020 fire. One finds a non-absorbent chair, strips down to as little as possible, mops the brow and sips icewater in one’s own living room…at 10 at night! Don’t open the windows!! Duck out the door as quickly as possible and wonder if you’ll die from breathing the air. The sun was that muffled burnt orange glow. The next morning, crack the door…sniff, sniff – ugh! Still smokey. It gradually passed but then there was today – another prescribed fire, this time 100+ acres lit by State Parks at Año Nuevo State Reserve. It was a different smell; we used to be able to identify the type of vegetation burning from the smell, but no longer. And, this time no visible plume, just the entirety of the sky hazy and the air acridly stinky. More burns are on the horizon: a new era for California with the use of prescribed fire expanding. We will contribute our own smoke when the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association helps us use Good Fire to restore coastal prairie while we make downwind neighbors safer for the next wildfire. Date uncertain.

Smoke headed high, fresher air below, at sunset – but not for long…the pall again enveloped the Farm after dark

Nuthatch and Flicker

A flicker family has taken up residency on the main road through our Farm. Sylvie reports seeing them frequently. Two proud parents and at least one brave young of the year offspring. They have giant beaks.

The nasal calls of nuthatch and red-bellied sapsucker are common once again, both species having recently returned to the area. Golden crowned and now white crowned sparrows seem particularly numerous this year. With the swallows gone and the aforementioned menagerie becoming ensconced, the avian soundscape is now solidly in the ‘winter’ camp.

A few day later, and another prescribed fire…at sunset the crescent moon still shows

Furries

Sylvie reports newly arrived chipmunk in her vicinity. This year’s ground squirrel babies have reached the size where they are indistinguishable from the adults of last year. The herd of deer is massive, deer everywhere, both in and out of the fence. Somehow, a healthy large buck got inside of the newly fence-fortified vineyard, bashing its antlers angrily into the fence to try to get out. A midnight walk in the cool of the night allowed the then-calmer buck to be coaxed out of an open gate. Herds of deer roam freely in and out of both large farm fences, grazing on all manner of expensive plants, hampering production, sunburning what might have been shaded tomatoes.

Next Work

While we move apples to shoulder-mounted picking bags then to boxes and into trucks, we cast our minds forward with plans to plant cover crop before the rains. And, we mow and mow- the last of the mowing to knock this past year’s cover crop to the ground so that this year’s can be planted or at least last season’s seeds will stand a chance of germinating. The smoke reminds us that we aren’t entirely out of wildfire danger, yet…how to fit in time to do more fuels reduction? And then there’s roadwork…

Delightful sunrises…fascinating sunsets – the beautiful Fall light is upon us!

Loss and Suffering

As the sun sets in the West, as night becomes longer than day, as we pick the last fruit from a tree, as an ancient deer breathes its last breath…we have the chance to awaken to the ephemerality of things. So, too, marks the end of a russet mite infestation on the tomatoes, plants throwing up new healthy shoots above withered, diseased branches. Or, a flock of starlings or jays taking flight elsewhere, releasing the apples from their incessant pecking damage. Loss is sometimes welcome. Cycling contrasts between things (newly present or freshly departed), and suffering (realized or relieved), is always at hand here at Molino Creek Farm as everywhere.

Belle de Boskoop, a rare apple variety – when will it be ripe? This is its first crop, so we learn…

Where, Life?

A weed is a plant out of place. A plant has its preferred location, but sometimes we don’t want it in a specific spot. Amaranth and calendula are pernicious weeds in our fields but we celebrate them in moderation: both add to salads, calendula praised for healing salves and pollinator bliss.

Deer and squirrel are lovely, peaceful neighbors but not so welcome when they feast on crops.

The struggle of farmers is to maintain life where we (think we) want it. Shall we load up Noah’s Ark again, kill everything not on it and then release pairs of wildlife in well fenced reserves to save a lot of money and work? Should we use herbicides to overcome our battles with weeds?

Where does life belong?

Horehound, a nasty invasive, but someone values it, somehow- cough, cough!

Plants out of Place

Spring was the time for weeding. As the days warmed with soil still wet from rains, plants entered the time of Proliferation. Farmers planted and weeded. And weeded. And weeded. Community orchardists worked to keep bare areas around tree trunks – vole protection! Mowers and weedeaters battled plant height. Mediterranean dryness finally slowed that work, and the shorter days of Fall marks its end.

Critters out of Place

Heat waves and 5 months of no rain have dried the last of the ephemeral vegetation on the landscape around us. The leaves of perennial shrubs are curled, resins concentrated, unappetizing to deer. Farmers are watching female deer jump through surprisingly small holes in the fences meant to protect crops. Antlered bucks muscle through gaps or jump over a low spot in the fence. Flashlight-illuminated eyes reveal five deer at midnight feasting on tomatoes. Fence repair, T-Post pounding, banging and clanging echoes mark the struggle against these giant, hungry herbivores. We once weighed the suffering of a fire-compromised fence with the suffering of the price-hike consequences of an insurance claim and now feel the pain of the former. Forgetfulness aids deference.

Turkey (a non-native bird) makes dancing scratches, quail (a native bird) tracks right through them

Heatwaves

The best way to greet dawn these days has been to close the blinds and windows. Nights cool our homes, the momentum of thermal mass our (momentary) salvation. By sunset the indoor temperature approximates that of the outside: 85F (or higher). We recall when there was thick smoke and we couldn’t cool with the night air.

The sun scalds fruit. Tomatoes turn sickly pale orange-yellow instead of ripening to deep red. And then they melt. Apple and avocado fruit scalds where sun exposed. Shaded apples drop from the trees, unripe, and we wince at the grass-muffled ‘clump’ of fruit striking the ground in the afternoon with such regularity that it sounds like the hoofbeats of deer. On the ‘sunny side,’ citrus perks up, reveling in the heat.

There was no such regular searing heat before 2019, now it comes every year. We cannot create shade fast enough. Perhaps we’ll become a citrus farm. Fists raised to the oiligarchy and their evil greed. May they depart.

Awaiting Ripeness

On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the ripeness, readiness, or tastiness of this apple? That’s the question of the weekly apple tasting during our Saturday work parties. Given side-by-side slices of the same apple, the spread of responses is surprising. Sometimes there are clusters of agreement signaling harvest time or telling us it is time to wait. The community learns to judge what is right for 50+ varieties of apples, some of which ‘should’ be ‘sharp’ rather than sweet.

The rare apple variety “Ashmead’s Kernel” was the lesson this year: a range of opinions kept the harvest at bay until all opinions merged on ‘overripe!’ So, tens of pounds go to boxes with the hope that they will get pressed before they rot. Storage in this heat is iffy. We dislike wasting the fruit that took so much labor, so much waiting. People are often surprised about how much food is wasted in the cycle of agricultural production. How much of that is avoidable? How?

Another Time

The first rays of the rising sun in the East alert us to another cycle of the New. Perhaps the Fuji apples are ripe today. Perhaps fox will have stolen a whole tree of fruit. A sniffle becomes the flu. Someone new walks into the orchard to remind us of awe. As things arrive, they bring meaning…consequences…potential. So curious. What’s next?

Vandenberg Field, leased to Two Dog Farm, perched on a high terrace at Molino Creek Farm

Some of my favorite big oaks in the distance

Big Work

It has truly become too much to keep up. The tomato harvest is ahead of us…too many ripe fruit to pick and distribute! The harvest and such is so huge that we can’t finish fire safety work and fire danger is still high. Vegetation is so very dry that the deer are pressing up against the fences and getting in to eat crops, but we have too little time to fix the fence. The Super El Niño is coming and the road needs work so it drains when the Deluge begins, but, again, we can’t get to it. Jubata grass blossoming, tall plumes nearly ready to spread 100,000 seeds per plant across the landscape…they taunt us and still we can’t manage the work. Stewarding 137 acres, farming, infrastructure upkeep, and jobs to pay for it all…so much darn work. And shortening days to boot! Peace of mind becomes a practice. We can only do so much.

Bright Nights, Buzzing Days

The bright moon of this past week illuminated peaceful nights full of cricket song and fox yodeling. The days brought the first red-breasted nuthatches back onto the farm with their squeaky truck backing up beeps. The blackbird flock is growing, red-winged and Brewers, now 50 strong combing the fallowed fields for food in meandering lines with their cackling chorus. The warmth increases the population of face flies, small clouds of annoying larger-than-gnats that want to get in your ears, eyes, nose and mouth. Several neighbors are complaining about welts under what should protect them clothes – a new pest, still unidentified. Batches of loudly buzzing flies flush from untold attractants along trails, besides roads.

Growing Groups

Turkey flock +1, deer herds increasing, too. That turkey tom that was gobbling from afar has been welcomed into the flock after 2 weeks of much/distant conversation: the farm flock stands at 8. These meander over about 15 acres that they have claimed as their own. Early mornings find them in Judy’s flower patch and tomatoes. Midday, they hunker down in the shade of apple trees. Afternoons, they travel to the mowed cover crop field for the last sun of the day, then back to the woods around the orchard. We think they roost in the tallest field-side redwoods.

So many deer have concentrated onto the farm that it is hard to know who is who. The very golden deer mother is still here with her last year’s twins and this year’s small fawn now in tow. The buck we chased from inside the fence is pacing around the outside perimeter of the fence and seems lost and concerned, though very husky and brave in his rut stage.

We thought we were skunkless after the great horned owl killed the old one, but there was a healthy young one warily pacing the orchard recently- hooray for ground wasp control! We hope that there are more…

The Barn

Molino Creek Farm has a beautiful giant barn made by Lou Bock, Dave Getchell, and Co. right before our Farm’s Founding in the early 1980’s. Big timbers, intricate joinery, and custom forged hinges make it an artpiece. The bottom floor is for Work – sorting, packing, and storage. The top floor is the office and a big open room for gatherings. There is a quaint high up 3rd floor apartment.

Grizzly Pruned Oaks

A big branch fell off of one of our ancient oaks this summer, but others hang on. These trees are old enough to have experienced grizzly bear young up in the canopies in years like this, shaking acorns to the ground for ease of feasting. They give us shade and their beautiful forms are mesmerizing. When they get wet with the rains, their giant branches support a world of colorful mosses and lichens.

Pacific School

By now, readers will know that our main outlet for extra orchard fruit is the Pacific School. And, once a year, Bob Brunie rolls his apple juice pressing apparatus down for a demonstration organized by Mike and Charity, our school-bridging agents. Tuesday was the day, and what a great deal of fun and learning took place. It was a gala of Gala apples, such sweet juice. We so love our relationship with those children! An homage to Fall…cider flowing.

Happy Equinox!

Tuesday 5:04pm marked the beginning of Fall and the moment where day and night stood as equals. Now the night takes over. All hail the night! Think about how your life changes with the shortening of the days. Many people’s emotional states change. Activities shift to those that can be done at night. Some of us must daily increase the rush to do what must be done in daylight…including farmwork. This week, it seemed sudden that outdoor work needed to be done by 7pm and could start not much before 6:15am.

The Rain is Coming!!

In the Mediterranean California area, the Fall Equinox marks the final warning before rainfall. We have 3 weeks to prepare for the first significant precipitation event (1”+), and this year it might be a doozie. The rule is to have bare ground covered, road drains cleaned out, firewood and equipment/tools protected…before October 15. Here we go.

The foreshadowing of the Super El Niño is coming from Peru where massive rains where rains never occur have caused mayhem. The weather forecasters have never seen anything like what is happening with ocean temperatures, but when they have seen things approaching this, the outcomes have a high degree of certainty: big, big storms for Southern California, probably as far north as the Monterey Bay.

Heat

Some will recall the heatwave a couple of weeks back and the surprise at little apple harvest loss: I spoke too soon. The apple trees did okay, but still the rain of apples happened. The fallen apple cataclysm was small, perhaps only 200 pounds, but still enough to worry about waste. Those apples on the ground sure do make good juice. Also, folks picked up a bucket of Roxbury russett (the oldest USA apple) and half a bucket of Bramley’s seedling that got distributed through the Community Orchardists. That leaves buckets of grounder Galas to deal with.

And FIRE

Even with the near-term probability of rain, the danger of fire is still great. Another heat wave is hitting now. Occasionally, we smell smoke or smog fills the air from conflagrations far away. Way above the Farm, CALFIRE is doing a 2-acre prescribed fire to help maintain a shaded fuel break. Now that the Two Dog Chardonnay is harvested, we have turned our attention to working with the Very Admirable Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association. Their Proposition Q-funded burn program plans to once again put Good Fire on the ground at Molino Creek Farm where they will help to restore coastal prairie and increase wildfire safety for our neighbors downwind in the fireshed.

Meanwhile, The Work

It has become pretty much impossible to keep up with the time sensitive work. The harvest gets ahead of us and any equipment or infrastructure that needs attention doesn’t quite get it in time. We lined up a big group to drive deer out of one of our 20+acre fences only to realize that the 8 months of time we gave ourselves to repair the fence wasn’t enough. Thanks to the group and Sylvie’s leadership, the deer were driven out, but the fence work still needs finished (or the deer will be right back in). And, there’s the other 20+acre fence that also includes a herd of deer…

Molino Creek Farm is now at the Saturday Aptos Farmer’s Market as well as the Saturday Market in Palo Alto. There are lots of tomatoes headed to the happy people who so strongly support our farm: YUM and Thanks!

We sent our second batch of apples to the Palo Alto market last week- they are quite popular. More and more apples coming, more each week.

Down below the Farm, on Cotoni Coast Dairies, two types of vegetation control are on display. The heifers are giving birth at the hardest time of year for the poor cows: the fall, when there are no more high protein seeds to support the lactating mothers…but, the return on the sale of the young promises to be better for this risky and stressful timing. Contrast that with the work around the BLM parking lot: the mistakenly large swath of fence placed way outside of the parking lot means that some poor federal employee gets lots of practice with the weedeater…the cows look at all that wasted food and say ‘dude!’

Two Differently Beleagured Vegetation Control Agents: off season cows and BLM worker

Wildlife is Here

The annual return of the Golden Crowned Sparrows just happened right on time. They are so punctual – a new bird song is here…the sound of winter. Simultaneously, the last of the swallows left, though the barn swallows have been gone a little while already.

An odd bird behavior observed- please comment. A pileated woodpecker flew the longest straight path available across the farm from the SW to NE, 40 feet up, calling the entire time. What was it saying?!

Less odd is the bird commotion related to the run-over walnuts. Ravens, juncos, and many others feast on nutmeats.

The Angels of the Night, foxes, are keeping us alert with their odd vocalizations.

Gray fox on the Farm, photo by Holly Frank

The Work! The Heat!!

The idyllic weather, where we gazed at the bluest of sky in our short sleeves with a slightly cooling breeze, transitioned to the roasty-toasty wilting, apple roasting, bird panting, killingly-hot heat wave that has been repeating ‘round this time since 2019.

Hot Heat. Painful Heat all the way down to the Coast. Satellite images illustrated a blog of hot air advected northward from one of the many tropical storms spinning northward into the tragically warmed Californian seas. Lightning scourge lit up the Channel Islands, a few strikes onshore north of LA and into the Transverse Range and then, luckily, the ‘instability’ dissipated and the thunder subsided. One more such storm is lined up. Before that, the Central Coast will cool.

The last heat wave was ‘only’ 94F and set the sunward apples to scalding. This heat wave will undoubtedly cause one of our Great Drops with sunscalded apples; hopefully, with the farm reaching 100F we won’t see the 30% loss we did when it was 105F 3 years ago. Farming was hard enough before the Oiligarchy set us up for this climate crisis.

Yes…Panting Birds

The rubbing of antlers makes for oak bark scar. Luckily, we left 2 other post 2020 fire sprouts…

Deer Rubber

The bucks are scoring. They are scoring trees with their antlers. Deer particularly like the young oaks, which probably bend right…trunk diameters flossing into their itchy-est nooks. Smoothly silvery bark scars green and brown, bug-eyed ecstatic deer head tossing forces shred through bark down into wood, guaranteeing a scar that will last years as the tree works to heal.

2026 is (another!) mast year for coast live oaks

Acorns, Anyway

It is a Mast Year among the coast live oaks. That is, acorns abound on the oaks as thickly as the apple trees are festooned with apples. Jays and acorn woodpeckers squawk and cackle with glee, instincts driving their fanatical carbohydrate-gathering forays. Back-and-forth from tree to storage spots they bolt and flap. Into granaries go the woodpecker nuts. Into secret ground holes, carefully memorized, go the jay nuts. We await the giant flock of band tailed pigeons’ attention turning from cover crop grain to the oak harvest. The acorns are about to drop to turkey and quail level: they will focus on the roadways where vehicles grind the nuts into more easily gathered portions. With the right conditions, this will be a third year since the 2020 fire where a mast of acorns creates a carpet of woodland oak seedlings – trees for future generations.

It is a particularly celebratory acorn year as the first coast live oak saplings that we’ve stewarded since 2008 have created acorns. As 300-year-old Molino Oaks fall apart, a new generation is taking their place and the acorn harvest continues as it has for hundreds of human generations. We learn how to cherish oak trees, care for them, and help them proliferate across our beautiful farm. We look forward to nut-creation from the Oregon oaks and Valley oaks we planted years ago in the hedgerow…when? Will some of those be ‘sweet?’

Sunset on the shortening days of late summer 2026

The Work

How do we keep up the intensifying work through the heat waves? Luckily, they don’t last long. The harvest is upon us and the work to keep up with it is unending. 11,000 pounds of apples will need to go into picking bags and buckets in the next 8 weeks. 10,000 pounds of winter squash will need to go into boxes in a short while. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of tomatoes go into buckets to be sorted and boxed. Peppers, galore, as well! And, Two Dog Farm is looking to harvest Chardonnay very soon! The shortening days make for the appreciation of every hour of sun for the work that needs done.

Apple Bounty

Did I say 11,000 pounds of apples? What does this look like? I will put more photos on our website post (go ahead- follow us!) where we also print this news (and more!). It is dizzying what that many apples looks like on that many trees.

The Fuji apples, which did so well last year are at it again. The Gala apples, which skipped last year are bending under apple weight. Many other varieties are weeping downward from the prolific fruit. Perhaps not as many as last year…the Wickson Crabs…but still…many!

According to The Prophecy, we will create 350 gallons of juice: 300 to sluice into fermentation bottles (so that it lasts). Will we have enough fermentation communitarians for this grand experiment, which is only beginning…many trees just getting big enough to contribute!

Shortening Days, Abbreviated Working Hours.

Summer at Molino Creek Farm

Only a bit on recent Farm highlights and then off on a tangent about production….

Fall color on one of the Community Orchard’s apricot trees

Fall is appearing across the farm- the wannuts and apricots are changing color! Tomatoes are also changing color- but for the ripening….lots and lots suddenly coming on.

Bodhi reports regular Great Horned Owl activity and another owl, with a screechy-noise…that is a whiny underaged great horned owl making its terrible youngster noise. He also reports the oddity of Bonny Doon skunks and opossums in the middle of the road on the night after full moon- whatsup with that?

Sylvie spotted an amazing coast garter snake wandering the grounds as well as a huge praying mantis in her beans.

A Praying Mantis in Sylvie’s Beans – Photo courtesy of S. Childress

Folks are taking home giant, 1 pound lemons as well as the last of the Persian limes and oranges….testing the first of the lamb haas avocados (are they ripe, yet?).

The hot weather broke and then we got cool weather, even drizzle. The apples are growing big- two more weeks before the harvest begins!

– The Aforementioned Tangent –

Recently, I’ve been wondering how to quantify the sum total of what is produced and processed on these Molino Creek Farm acres in terms of food, poo, and biomass. Here’s a summary.

Coyote Poo? Full of Chardonnay grapes…etc

Poo

One hundred thirty seven acres of land rich with wildlife makes a lot of poo, every year. The assimilative capacity of the land for animal excrement is astounding – otherwise, we’d be up to our neck in it! A pigeon makes 25 pounds of excrement a year, and I assume smaller birds some fraction thereof. Our farm has around 30 wild, naturally occurring pigeon-sized birds (band tailed pigeons and mourning doves) throughout the year. We have 140 California quail, say half pigeon sized. And, there are easily 80 goldfinches and 400 other small birds, mostly juncos, sparrows, towhees, etc…say one quarter pigeon sized. Bird feces on our land per year: around 6,000 pounds- 3 tons!

Furry animals vary on poo production. We have 10 deer year-round; a deer makes 1200 pounds of poo a year. A mouse makes 20 pounds of poo per year and a low estimate for our part of California is 10 mice per acre: 28,000 pounds of poo! (The whole wild world of the North Coast of Santa Cruz County smells like rotting mouse poo after the first rains.). Add in 50 squirrels (40#/year) and a low ball 200 gophers (30#/year) on our farm, and you get 8,000 more pounds of animal poo. So, our 137 acres of critters makes around 54,000 pounds (27 tons) of animal poo per year. That’s 4 dump truck loads! All of this poo gets assimilated into the land and helps to grow what we see around us.

Black Beans? Nay! Deer Poo – oh, so fresh…

Non-Animal Production

Our farm is a mixture of natural areas and cropland – each has its own story to tell in terms of production.

In terms of produce, within the 6-8 row crop acres and the 3 acres of orchards, we can make 12,000 pounds a year of a combination of apples, citrus, and avocados, 6,000 pounds of dry farmed tomatoes and 10,000 pounds of dry farmed squash…along with a few irrigated crops like peppers and onions. In the winter, the 25 acres of crop lands make another average 4,000 pounds/acre of biomass in cover crops: 100,000 pounds of biomass that gets tilled into the ground for extra fertility and soil building.

In the wildlands, there is still more production going on. Our 20 acres of redwood forest puts on around 1800 pounds of dry mass per year per acre, so 36,000 pounds. An additional 60 acres of shrubland and grassland makes another 330,000 pounds of biomass per year. So, wildlands are growing 366,000 pounds of dry biomass annually. Not all of that biomass represents sequestered greenhouse gases, but certainly some of it is. As our redwood trees get bigger, and as we help to protect them from catastrophic tree-killing wildfire, they will sequester more and more carbon.

Imported Additions

Farms often import soil amendments, and Molino Creek Farm is no exception. Some years, we bring in a couple of dump trucks of compost. Many years, we are adding feather meal or some other form of organic fertilizer to help grow food. Recently, we imported what looks like charcoal – ‘biochar’ – from the disposal of dead trees from the surrounding conservation land’s efforts to reduce future wildfire impacts. These inputs are not cheap and it takes time/effort to spread them where they need to go. And so, we like to rely more on cover crops than imported additions, but still our soil tests tell us we need to add some more nitrogen. Total pounds of inputs on average – around 35,000 pounds.

I would be remiss if I didn’t add that we do also import diesel fuel to run tractors, around 200 gallons per year. Our well water for irrigation is pumped via solar power to tanks and then gravity fed through water wise drip systems. The groundwater has to be seen as another ‘imported addition.’

Teeming with Life

The bounty of living things, the manure it creates, the human-captured or wild productivity, and the minimal imported farm additives is fascinating on this small farm. Another small farm has been popularly featured in the film “The Biggest Little Farm.” The film helps people understand what is possible with careful farm management working with wild creatures, growing organically. What do we compare these small farms with? City land? Conventional, large scale agriculture? Wild lands in parks?

I visit all of those other land use types and rarely do I see the kind of bounty that I’ve experienced on small farms that allow nature space and work with nature in the crop lands. If you haven’t visited Statton Island’s rice farms near Davis, California in November and December, you are missing a breathtaking experience – more birds than you would imagine could land in one place…big birds: cranes, geese, and many more.

I’ve also experienced the devastating effects of ‘other’ types of farming. A recent drive across the pesticide-reeking Central Valley had almost zero bugs smashed on my car, contrasting with 20 years ago where it was thick with insect spattering…what happened? Huge crop fields up the Salinas Valley are seemingly lifeless, just like farmers like…so they don’t have to worry about insect damage or bird dropping contamination.

How you spend your grocery money…who you support and why…can make a big difference in wildlife conservation. Why not make wise choices?

Midsummer 2026 On the Farm

Molino Creek Farm grows cut flowers- like these beautiful asters, available at Palo Alto Market on Saturdays

Fire History, Redux

Monday was the 6-year anniversary of my first break from fire fighting mayhem, when I got to go to the beach for an evening, cool down, and breathe fresh air…then right back to the fire watch. Today is the 6^th year anniversary of our first visit by firefighting professionals for that CZU Lightning Complex Fire maelstrom. After a call to 911, CALFIRE came with a helicopter to put out a conflagration down in the Molino Creek canyon where a few old growth redwoods remained. Satisfied that the spot fire was out, they left us to our own patrols, again. It would be two weeks before the evacuation order was lifted.

Another Tropical Storm – Lightning?!

We’ve got our eyes on the possibility that the remnants of Tropical Storm Iselle will spin our way with lightning and “erratic” winds sometime in the next couple of days. It isn’t quite as hot as it was prior to the storm in 2020 (back then, it was 105F) – the heat wave only got to 92F today, probably a bit hotter tomorrow and the next day. Please, let it not get hotter than that! 20 percent humidity – dry, dry air, drying out the vegetation, preparing it to burn.

The Timber Fire- across the Monterey Bay down in Big Sur

Other Fires

The fire to our South, lit by a camp stove accident, The Timber Fire, has been burning for 17 days…now at 19,000 acres and 20% contained. We watch and sometimes smell the smoke, which makes for pretty sunrises and sunsets. The warm weather accompanies clear views, so we get to see the smoke plume spike skyward miles away, down in Big Sur. The smoke then spreads inland, a broad gray smear stretching East.

we chip away at mowing- first over the hurried water lines, so they don’t melt in the ground

Fire Work

Iselle is the third tropical storm to threaten a repeat of 2020 – we expect more this super El Niño year. That anticipation makes for consistent scuttling to prepare for the fire – there’s never enough time and the work seems never to end. A few blades of dry grass can damage irrigation risers, and a patch of high grass at the base of one of our hedgerow oak trees will scorch the poor thing, robbing us of shade and windbreak. Fire hoses still need testing and stretching, people need training on portable pumps. But, we are making progress. The rains are still at least 7 weeks away and we hope they come heavy enough to put the fires at bay.

Fear of fire keeps us mowing. The latest focus is to create a 100 foot buffer around the solar panels, which we would prefer not get scorched from flames. The mower makes a huge cloud of dust as it hits gopher or ground squirrel throws. The grass it leaves behind is chopped fine and lies thickly 3” deep rather than the 3-4 foot tall, aerated fuel that would throw flames 8+ feet or pitch heated smoke uphill in a wind-fueled roiling flame cloud.

Critters

Fox continues to entertain. Sylvie’s midnight jaunt to the orchard irrigation helped her encounter a friendly fox. Gently speaking to it, the fox calmed then rubbed its face on the ground, scent marking. We regularly hear fox barks. An emergency vehicle’s siren set off a pack of coyotes below the farm last evening – they sang on and on, way after the siren had gone into the distance.

The 8-strong flock of turkeys roams about leaving droppings and enormous fleshy footprints. They don’t make the gobbling noise much.

The deer have lost the velvet on their antlers and now they rub tree bark off on favorite mostly somewhat flexible tree trunks, mainly coast live oaks. I haven’t heard their antler clacking jousts, yet – looking forward to hearing that! The 3 deer that shelter inside one of our ‘deer exclosure’ fences are grazing on tomatoes. Many of the branches are chopped off. One can watch them graze for hours on tomato plants. Neil and Levi from the 2 Dog Farm Crew helped a bit to patch the very holey fence but then Neil had to go to urgent care with his face puffed up like he’d been in a fight- poison oak is thick along that fenceline, in places! There’s still a lot of patching to do.

Turkey and California ground squirrel prints

Molino Creek Farm’s Really Truly Dry Farmed tomatoes – famous the world over!

Harvest!

The harvest is ON!! Two Dog Farm is taking dry farmed tomatoes to market. Judy reports that Molino Creek Farm’s first avocado haul to the Palo Alto Farmer’s Market was a Big Hit – “creamy and flavorful.” People rarely get to taste avocados that have been left on the tree long enough to develop to their full potential. Those Bacon avocados had been growing and ripening for 19 months – and they are a relatively quick variety to ripen. The Lamb Haas are just starting to maybe get ripe…some Community Orchardists are testing the first ones that look like they might be ready. Those won’t get to the market as Community Orchardists will mop up even 200 pounds of fruit, which it looks like we’ll get. Two Dog Farm and Molino Creek Farm are busy harvesting a wide array of crops and cut flowers in their irrigated fields.

Meanwhile, we wait for the Really Big-time Harvests. Despite the deer browse, Molino Creek Farm’s tomato patch is burgeoning with fruit, spurred onto ripening with the heat waves. And, our apple orchard has never been so loaded with fruit. The trees droop with thousands of pounds of apples. Looking down the rows, I wonder if I’m looking into opposing mirrors- an infinity of fruit! Each variety is starting to get its signature color. I polished up one last Saturday and it shined a dazzling array of hues: beautiful! We soon get to taste the wide variety of our 50+ types as they ripen one at a time. It appears that the first boxes of Galas will get to market in 2 weeks and we’ll have to start the cider press going at the end of September, a month early. Boxes of gala apples will spur that pressing but so too will the Russian quince, which is getting ripe fast.

Oh WOW – The Bounty!