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The Slowness of Extreme Heat

Happy Interdependence Day! I’m happy not to live under the tyranny of a monarchy AND I’m glad to be part of a community that recognizes the centrality of interdependence. The Molino Creek Farm Community relies on one another, exercising our various strengths to foster healthy farm life at its center. We include teachers, woodcrafters, a midwife, farmers, orchard tenders, bookkeepers and administrators, activists, road technicians, and natural lands managers. Many others join, from near and far. Together, we make this land sing: it depends on us, we depend on it, and everyone depends on each other. Nearly 4 years after the last wildfire, we feel that interconnectedness more than ever.

Name that shrub: one of our many hedgerow plants

Evening Scents

Each evening and early in the morning, the air is filled with the “seminal” smell of the male flowers of tanoak. It hits you strongly, suddenly: the pollen must release all at once after the evening arrives. As the sun was beginning to set, before the emanation of the heavy tanoak smell, there was a more subtle, pleasant, sweet aroma: thousands of white flowers unfurled from the field bindweed, a ground-hugging invasive morning glory- like vine of the tilled fields. There’s no detectable smell from a single bindweed flower, but en masse they sure smell pretty.

Summer Fruit

There is a pinkish blush on the first dry farmed tomatoes, but other fruits are riper. The 2 trees are young yet, but the first aprium crop is coming on: it looks like we might get 20 pounds to share among our community orchardists. They are delicious and almost make up for the lack of real apricots, which we can’t seem to produce in our cool coastal clime. The star of the show is cherries, but again too few to get to market: we anticipate 300 pounds of fat, dark red sweet cherries from the 18 trees that the fire spared. The 25 other recovering cherry trees in that block, grafted onto resprouting rootstock, will make their first sizeable harvest next year…starting in 2026, we’ll be back to ‘normal’ with 3,000 pounds plus of annual production if the stars align.

Next up this season…plums and prunes! The apples are silver dollar sized, at least, and growing. And, the avocado fruit have just set – if we can keep them moist enough, we’ll have a crop starting next January.

Sweat Investment

Even the mornings are hot as we greet the dawn ready for chores. First up: fuels reduction! Clipping, raking, and hauling the dry vegetation away from the buildings, water tanks, solar arrays, and pipes. Piles grow in the fields far away from danger…5 months from now and we’ll set them ablaze in the mist and drizzle. Today’s fuel will be tomorrow’s shrub-eradicating fire, each pile moved on top of a plant we want to eradicate.

The roar of mowers, whine of weedeaters, and buzz of saws soon obliterate the extended dawn bird chorus. When our own machinery isn’t running, we can still hear the neighbors working downhill towards us, maintaining the regional shaded fuel break along Warrennella Road. This past week we thank Brion Burrell for his artistic machinery management to reduce acres of French broom and other fire dangers to nothing, making the land around us healthier and more resilient.

Neighbors and Farm partnered in clearing French Broom and fuels away from water tanks

San Vicente Redwoods cleared an ancient meadow of post-fire French broom pulse high above the Farm

Early morning still: trucks trundle and people amble towards the irrigation controls. We reach down to turn valves, starting water flowing. Then we pace the water lines, inspecting for leaks. Earlier, ravens or mice have made holes in the plastic irrigation tubes, and out pours too much water, hissing loudly, spitting into the air, creating mud and disaster. Repair kits, a thorough soaking, and a bit of work later things return to normal and the cycle of wetting has begun on one more patch, once again. We are applying 45,000 gallons of solar pumped irrigation water from our well each week to grow orchard trees and row crops. That water makes tens of thousands of dollars of income and thousands and thousands of pounds of delicious food. And it takes lots of attention, coordination, and work to manage.

Wild Life

Those dawn treks for irrigation reveal fresh snake tracks, coyote scat, and weasel footprints. Gone are the days when you could easily see snakes, but they are still active around the farm. This past week must have been the right moon phase for reptiles to shed their skin. Fence lizards are still flakey. Shed snake skins have appeared, always trailing into gopher holes.

Gopher snake skin- as typical, entering gopher burrow

The regularly yipping coyotes are feasting on a big crop of juicy blackberries, as seen in their purple, seed-filled scat. Weasels are feasting on mice, and we hope they soon eat the surprising, sudden appearance of ground squirrels.

Very late but they finally appeared: dozens of California quail fluffies. The quail babies peep like easter chicks as they tumble and run along dusty trail and road, proud parents standing guard. The first younglings can fly, but most are still too young. A mother turkey is also shepherding a second round of just 3 much larger, still flightless and fluffy babies. High on the ridge, the purple martin chicks are in the air, noisy moist-sounding deep chirp-whistles give them away. They’ve done well this year. Maw and Caw greeted a third raven…a child from the past?…this morning – sometimes that one sticks around a few weeks, we’ll see.

Noise From Below

With the heat and extreme dry, we hope that no one sets the world on fire with fireworks at the beach tonight. The week leading up to this evening has been sporadic with preparatory explosions. The King Tides have made the beaches narrower, and the signs and Sheriff shoo people away, but still we wait with trepidation. May all we hear is the continued crash of the large ocean waves, lulling us to sleep with all of the windows open on these warm summer nights.

Fire

The advent of human control of fire was a pivotal moment in the development of our species. Human use of fire has been changing in some ways and remains steady in others. Recently, it seems that the use of fire is becoming more and more remote for more and more people. Is that good or bad? Join me for a few moments to examine the state of human relationship with fire.

In the millennia of humans’ past and on into our present, we have used fire for heating, cooking, pest control, trash disposal, transportation, and war as well as for the creation of food and fiber. I intend to revise this essay and welcome suggestions about other major uses for fire. Fire is a powerful tool.

Fire for Heating

Consider the evolution of using fire for heating: from the first flame to the storage of heat in stone, masonry fireplaces and chimneys, metal wood stoves, furnaces and, most recently, forced air central heating. Do I understand correctly that conversion of wood to fire for heat, even with super-efficient, clean burning woodstoves, is no longer legal for new construction in Santa Cruz County? Soon, even mountain folk will lose their expertise and familiarity with keeping their homes warm using locally produced fuel, easily produced as a land management byproduct making for improved wildfire safety.

Cooking Fires

My host gently wiggles and pushes three-foot branches, 3” in diameter into the fire to renew the steady heat beneath a tortilla-cooking comal. Smoke rushes out through the roof. Mayan peoples in Belize showed me this indoor cooking method, which is similar to that which many tropical and subtropical cultures have relied for generations. Elsewhere, grills over charcoal, “spits” turning above flames, and wood-fired ovens are other methods for fire-cooking food. Cast iron wood-fired cook stoves are antiques. I haven’t seen one used for a decade.

Have we entered a new era for cooking with fire? Can anyone confirm the rumor that gas stoves are no longer permitted with new construction? I understand that there are concerns about indoor air pollution as well as thoughts that such methods will unduly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the last cooking fires in our region is employed by those ‘roughing it’ using portable gas-fired stoves, some of which have become ultra-lightweight and highly efficient. I would be remiss not to also mention wood-fired appropriate technology cooking units, fed by surprisingly small handfuls of branches to prepare family meals. These have been targeted to developing countries with increasing shortages of fuel wood.

Pest Control

A member of Sonoma’s Kashia Pomo tribe recently spoke to a group I was with about the importance of burning the understory of oaks for pest control. He pointed out insect holes in an empty acorn shell and noted that his ancestors would have burned the understory of oak forests to reduce this damage and improve the acorn crop. I’ve heard similar things about pine nut pest management.

How many other pests might have been once controlled by different uses of fire?

Food Production

Precluding the use of fire for pests, fire has been, and is still being, used for other aspects of food production. Tribal peoples use fire to increase productivity of seed crops. Burning releases nutrients trapped in dead vegetation into the soil, increasing plant growth. Native ryegrass and brome grass stands that are burned produce more, heavier seeds. Burning meadows increases the amount of clover and other wildflowers which serve as either salad greens or seed crops.

The principle of fire releasing nutrients for the next crop also applies to rice farmers in California. Burning rice fields was once a more common method of returning nutrients from “crop residue” to the soil. Some farmers have turned to selling rice straw or flooding fields so that waterfowl help break down crop residue.

Other fire-prepared food crops include morels, beef, and grasshoppers. Morels are especially numerous after fire-spurred nutrient release. Ranchers have long used fire to reduce the cover of unpalatable shrubs and increase herbaceous forage to benefit livestock production. Perhaps fire is still used to round up grasshoppers that are subsequently roasted and coated in chili powder and salt for a tasty, crunchy, protein-rich snack.

Fire-Grown Fiber

I haven’t encountered anyone burning for fiber production, but have a few ideas. Burning to reduce shrub invasion into grasslands would make those areas more productive for sheep, and, hence, wool (fiber) production.

Native peoples have burned various plants in various ways to increase fiber production. Around our region, hazel, willow, and iris burned in the right way would make it possible to harvest more and better fiber for cordage and basketry.

Trash Disposal

Travel in rural areas of the Americas and you’ll no doubt encounter the distinct smell of incinerating trash. Especially unctuous is the dioxin-tainted odor of burning plastic. I know of a certain gentleman who very recently was regularly burning 50 gallon oil drums of trash including plastic baby diapers, polluting an otherwise pristine area of Big Sur. I wonder how common the practice is at this moment in the USA? Burning plastic creates a very dangerous chemical called ‘dioxin’ – if you think it quaint when someone burns such trash, think again. This practice is on the rise and killing people.

Fire for Wildfire Fuel Reduction

Carefully planned pile burns or broadcast burns are increasingly being used to dispose of vegetation that would have otherwise been a fire hazard. I’ve written more about these practices in this and this essay.

Riding the Fire

Internal combustion engines burning fossil fuels, releasing ancient carbon, and powering vehicles is a leading cause of global warming in our nation. Not long ago, the hungry burning work of steam engines propelled society ‘forward,’ destroying forests for fuel, leading to California’s hardwood crisis in the late 1800’s. Quieter, fireless electric engines are a revolution at hand, but there’s a sound like distant thunder propelling people in much different ways.

War Fire

Sanctions aside, war is mainly a fiery affair. Bombs, bullets, flame throwers, and napalm are the fire-based war weapons of modern soldiers. No doubt too many of us have been exposed to media portrayals of more ancient warfare involving flaming projectiles meant to kill or destroy property. The most ‘modern’ of fiery death, atomic warfare, is too close at hand with entirely different types of flames.

Could war really be over if we wanted it enough? Let’s quell those violent flames starting by putting out those types of fires closer to home.

Fire – For Better or For Worse

Next time you light a candle, if you even do that anymore, take a moment to reflect on the use of good fire or bad fire. As humans become more distant from their roots, more unfamiliar with tools that we have long used to steward our world, it seems we need to make a greater effort to raise future generations to be comfortable using fire in the best of ways. We must also learn to turn aside from the power of less productive flames, as tempting as that power might be. Burn brightly! Burn well.

-this essay modified from the one originally published at BrattonOnline.com, a weekly blog from Bruce Bratton and team: sign up or miss out!

A Bun Dance

What do you do when there’s so much fruit that you can barely hold still? A Bun Dance!

What do you do in anticipation of a Great Big Harvest? A Bun Dance!

What does Mother Nature create when you take good care of the land? A Bun Dance!

(This poem built from Brock Dolman’s original notion of A Bun Dance)

A climbing rose in the Orchard hedgerow: full of clove scent!

Abundance is what we have. Perhaps over-abundance. It is fruit thinning time. Apples, pears, and plums all make more fruit than their branches can hold or that the market can bear. People like big tasty fruit: thinning makes the few bigger. Our pollinators do such a good job, there’s too many fruit for the branch strength. The meditative stroll into the orchard to inspect, fix water lines, and bask in the beauty suddenly changes: SNAP! Oh Shoot! A quarter tree has broken off, the top tilts onto the ground, a big ugly splintery break shines bright with freshly exposed, blond wood. We don’t want to see that, and too often we DO – budding orchardists must get better at their thinning jobs, “For the Sake of the Trees,” so we can do A Bun Dance.

Apples on a new tree that has already been thinned, Schwew!

Heat and Drying

Suddenly, there was heat. The transitions between the seasons have been sporadic and forgiving. Winter faded into Spring with not a sudden cessation of rain but stops and starts of dry periods, rain storms coming farther and farther apart (“Sprinter”). Now, we have no expectation of further rain. Likewise, the transition from Spring into Summer brought us a bit of warmth and then really chilly, foggy spells (“Sumring”). This past week, we had Real Heat: up into the 80’s for the first time yet. The wind blew and blew from the East and then the North East – very unusual directions, carrying the dry Basin and Range or Desert air through to the Coast. You could almost smell the sagebrush and creosote bush (and sometimes you can). Just like that, things dried right up. The grass got straw colored, the soil got dusty, the orchard trees where the irrigation had not yet run started to wilt.

New Songs

With the onset of heat, still more migratory birds have arrived: the brilliant sky-blue lazuli buntings and red-marked black-headed grosbeaks have added their serenades to the morning air. The warmth also brightened the dawn chorus, now a melodious orchestra right at first light, nary a gap between song, bird talk filling the air, overlapping, notes complimenting and colliding, no conductor beyond Pure Joy itself. Windows open to welcome the cool night air, this chorus is made more clear and delightful.

The Struggle with Weeds

Farmers have planted the crops, weed battling commences. Some say that the great Central American civilizations collapsed because they couldn’t keep up with the weeds. A Monsanto representative who grew up in Sub-Saharan Africa argued with my opposition to Roundup herbicide, exclaiming: “What would you have us do…break our backs manually controlling weeds?!!? That’s inhumane!! That’s going BACKWARDS!!” Cheerful chatter floats up from the fields below as a crew with scuttle hoes carefully weeds between 2 Dog Farms’ just-germinating dry farmed winter squash. Organic farming shuns the synthetic chemical herbicides: not welcome, not allowed! The weeding crew here instead wields long-handled hoes with good posture and big hats, and they are full of conversation and laughter. At the same time we all get pumped to see the millions of weed seedlings quickly growing right next to the crops: time to get to work!

Suddenly Crickets

The long days have become warm. Some people were even growly about the chill, the fog, and the drizzle that have become our most frequent visitors as this long Spring crescendo slowly approaches Summer. The complaining people were particularly happy about today, and tomorrow will even be warmer. But this cool, moist spring has spread a vibrancy rarely seen across California’s central coast. The biggest grasshopper I’ve ever seen around here plopped onto the ground in front of me today and tonight the crickets have at last begun the summer’s starlight orchestra. The warmth of the day quickly fades as the night grows dark, and cricketsong wanes, replaced by a rare silent night, peculiar to the particularly cool spring. There is no wind, no echoing waves, no trilling crickets, and only a few sporadic hoots exchanged by scattered great horned owls.

Late Morning, Fog Dispersing

Sunny, bright sunrises are rare. Mostly there is the muteness of first light, glowing through dense fog. Wet grass. Puffed up quail sitting in pairs, barely moving. Slow motion rabbits tentatively beginning their daytime nibbling. The sun brightens, the fog grows thinner, and gradually bird songs escalate, becoming more diverse, varied, louder. The first bright rays carry sudden warmth, sending birds into the sky: hawks soaring, ravens patrolling, swallows chattering, swerve. The purple martins carry such huge wads of grass to line their nest cavities that they can barely fly.

As the sun takes full charge, it evaporates the dew, and a young coyote yaps and howls first from the forest edge, out of sight. She seems dissatisfied with her vantage point and trots out into the middle of a field to yowl and bark some more, glancing furtively about after each vocal session. This sets the neighborhood dogs to barking, and our coyote friend glances over her shoulder, seemingly annoyed at her domestic cousins’ primitive and unmusical repetition. Eventually, she moves on, and the morning noises go back to being dominated by bird song. Noon approaches.

Contrast of mowed, green and unmowed, brown

Drying

At every glance, there are contrasts between drying and still wet, gold versus green. Where we passed once with a mower through a grassy field, the cut area evaporated less water and is still wetly green whereas the surrounding tall grass absorbed the soil moisture and is already drying. Five foot tall tawny grass stands or falls over, crisscrossing, heavy with seed. A million things are hidden in that meadowy mess: snakes, rodents, bugs, spiders, and bird nests present a gallery of surprises as I collect native grass seed for restoring areas of the farm. The seed must dry in paper bags to be stored until first rains, to be tossed into the footprint of prescribed fire or along the tracks of mowers.

Flowers Still

Despite the drying, it remains a very floral spring. Different types of vetch have only just entered their peak bloom. Poppies are in full display, big orange patches, rabbits eating their flowers. Monkeyflower is also in peak color, whole hillsides glowing peach-orange. Nearby, the post fire chaparral giant yellow bush poppies are blossoming, creating a peculiarly sweet, cucumber scent. That chaparral air is thick with resinous blueblossom odor accentuated sometimes by the bitter-sweet yerba santa, which is displaying clusters of lilac flowers. The forest understory is bejeweled with rosey globe lilies, bobbing and lush. The last native iris flowers are fading.

Ah, the promise of Lapins cherries for late June (nets up soon!)

Fruity Promises

The orchards are producing ripe citrus while thousands of other fruit grow marble- to golf ball-sized. We compare different types of navel oranges, contrasting them with Valencia, complimented by sweet Honey mandarins. The last of the limes are coveted. In the apple orchard, the fruit has set and is rapidly growing; it is fruit thinning time! Some of our apricot relatives are thickly laden with young fruit. The bigger patch of Lapins cherry trees will soon need netting. We peer into the canopies of avocado trees, hoping to glimpse at least some fruit set; last year was grimly non fruitful…these trees are notoriously unpredictable.

Watering

To keep the fruit fattening, we have started rounds of irrigation. That routine keeps us on our toes, especially the first cycles of water flow as the need for repairs are numerous. Inadvertent mower damage, winter rodent gnawing, or just plain mysterious breaks makes for geysers, gushers, and pouring leaks that must be detected before large tanks are drained. We seek leaks by noise more than sight. This was the first week that water flowed to most orchards as well as the 2 Dog vineyard. The irrigation will run through November, tens of thousands of gallons each week…mostly pumped silently by solar power. Irrigation efficiency has us using around half of what would be considered normal, let alone that a sizeable portion of our produce is dry farmed with no irrigation at all!

We are looking forward to the summer…and hoping not to get Too Much Heat (or fire!).

Dry, tall grass – a tangle that includes Calfifornia brome grass for restoration seed

Fog, and Fog Lifting

Tall black burned tree trunks hazily emerge into view through the thick fog. Days upon days of fog prevalence make many scenes more mysterious. That eerie scene of black tree poles joins other fog-induced memories this past week: puffs of blowing dense fog hiding and then revealing drippy, dark groves of live oaks; awakening to a wall of silver cloud obscuring everything beyond the window ledge, and one evening’s approach of fog…suddenly pouring over the farm’s western ridge and down the hillsides towards the farm like a wave of terrifying suddenly-released floodwater. Each morning every spider web is illuminated by silver moisture, every leaf and blade adorned by shiny droplets.

Us Moist Critters

The dawn bird chorus is delayed and the songs fewer because all animals are made chilled and sleepy, enveloped in low clouds. The brush rabbits shake the wetness from their pelts between bouts of meandering nibbles. Extended families of quail wander slowly along roads to avoid vegetation soaking their feathers. In the absence of bird song, there is a more peaceful constant patter of dripping. Sweaters, jackets, and long pants are in order for spending time outside. The richly humid air makes breathing feel refreshing and helps accentuate late spring farm scents.

Peak Perfume

The transition between spring and summer is the season of peak perfume. Eight foot tall bolting poison hemlock emits its telltale dusty, bitter odor, which carries far in the fog-moist air. When the clouds lift and the day warms, sweeter, resinous scents are released from the sage, coyote brush, and fir. Fresh-cut-hay smell is omnipresent across the fields and down the roads as mowers constantly challenge the burgeoning grass. Warmer days bring surprising clouds of sweetness, begging for a pause to ponder the origins of scent: madrone, French broom, lilac or lupine could be the source, but maybe there’s something new to discover. I squint to the distance, upwind for patches of flowers, then shift my gaze closer to see if there are bunches of hidden flowers. There it is! – clusters of tiny poison oak blossoms sparkling with nectar and wafting notes of clove and citrus.

Fog recently drapes the ridges surrounding Molino Creek Farm

Drying

The drippy fog does little to keep the inevitable drydown at bay. Deep soil cracks split and widen. Dust cakes vehicles and brush along the roads. This is the first week that the farm must irrigate everything or the plants will wilt and begin to die. The solar well pump runs continuously and the diesel generator will start shortly to push greater volumes of water to the grapes and storage tanks. The summer pattern of orchard watering commences: zig-zagging across acres of trees, digging 8” deep into the soil to test moisture, adjusting irrigation strategies, turning valves, recording data, monitoring storage tanks, and communicating between many farmers to assure smooth operations. For now, cool days keep this work less hectic, but one eyes the forecast and makes plans for hotter spells.

Molino Creek Farm’s amazing onions, freshly planted and regularly irrigated

Snakes, a Month Late

April is normally snake month, but the cool, wet start of this season delayed the emergence of our slithery friends. Sylvie and her brother Isaac reported a surprising night time rubber boa, crossing the road despite the drippy fog. Smooth, fresh snake tracks cross the dusty roads, always wisely perpendicular. An irate hissing baby gopher snake lunged at my leather gloves from a patch of freshly pulled weeds. We are constantly surprised by scaled creatures jetting away from disrupting orchard management: a swift yellow-bellied racer snake, head held high, escaping…giant alligator lizards making for safer ground away from hoeing. Wherever we look there are oodles of lizards and snakes, an homage to organic tilth, the diversity of plants, and the wealth of prey that result from good land management the collective respect for nature found at Molino Creek Farm.

Cherries, lushly growing with irrigation and nestled in fog drip

An Unusual Dreariness of Spring

Drizzle and fog surprised us this past week as dew-covered wildflowers blossomed, buried in tall soggy grass. The weather forecasters had said it would be sunny, but something changed and suddenly the outlook went to partly, and then mostly, cloudy. Gusts blew tiny misty droplets against the windows. Trees caught the mist, making showers in rings, illustrating ‘driplines’ on the previously dusty roads.

Drying

But the mist and drizzle were not enough. The soil is drying. The 2 inches of late rain two weeks ago can no longer forestall the normal drying of our Mediterranean summer. A day of stiff, dry winds from the north wicked away the moister 2” down into the soil and the drying keeps reaching deeper. The long days keep the plant transpiration pumps pumping. The prairies won’t be green much longer. The orchard trees need water starting now.

Eye Hurtingly Beautiful

The flowers bursting forth in the apple orchard are stunning. Artists! Ganderers! It is time to bask in the dizziness that only a grove full of apple blossoms can impart. Sauntering around the farm, I take what I expect will be the normal short tangential turn into the apple orchard. Soon, I am stumbling around, not paying enough attention to footing, going from tree to tree, from one palette of pink and white and red blossoms to another, slightly more white or slightly more pink…some petals more lush, some clusters more diffuse…some flowers displayed in widely spaced massive shelf platforms…others arranged in small, tightly spaced clusters of polka-dot-like puffs for long distances along branches. Petals falling like snow on the breeze. Pale green points of new leaves poke forth from buds. Lush grass and flowers in understory tufts. Bees, hummingbirds, and flocks of tiny peeping juncos dart and dance with the beauty. An hour later, driven out by the dwindling daylight, I emerge from the orchard bedazzled and grinning from the ‘short tangent’ of my evening walk.

Soil Fields

In stark contrast to the orchard full of life are acres of brown, tilled ground. Life there is under the surface among clod and crumb where worms and millipedes and a million tinier things wriggle and crawl. It is cool and damp below the plowed surface where no plant now grows. We conserve a winter of rain by making the top foot of soil into mulch, and it takes a lot of turns of the tractor to make that happen. And so we set the stage where the drama of dry farming tomatoes is starting to take place.

First Tomato Day

The greenhouse grown tomato seedlings are tall and lanky and so take delicate hands to carefully place them in holes dug deep through the loose, tractor worked ground. The first seedlings went in the ground today, April 24, 2024! There are so many more plants to nestle into their homes. The big empty fields fill slowly, thousands of deep knee bends, hours of meditative labor, months before getting any income from this year’s crop. Such is the gamble and the hope.

Our First Ground Squirrel

Ground squirrels have been spreading across the landscape. They probably were here before and probably were effectively poisoned out when poisoning the landscape was in vogue. A single ground squirrel bounds across the road into various hiding places down by the big walnut tree many times a day, seen by many people. This squirrel is a keystone species for our prairies, making deep burrows that are critical for other creatures to make it through the hot, dry summer, and through fires, too. Burrowing owls need those holes for nests. Golden eagles’ and badgers’ favorite food is ground squirrels. Ground squirrel burrow complexes also may assist with groundwater recharge. The squirrels make habitat for wildflowers as they graze down invasive grasses. Bubonic plague is ubiquitous in ground squirrel populations, too! And, they undermine houses and roads with those burrows. Farmers and ranchers think of ground squirrels as pests for eating their crops. What are we to do with this first explorer of an astronaut squirrel?

The Individuality of Trees

Just as every apple tree has character, the live oaks too show individuality. We are fortunate to have several groves of live oaks on the farm that survived the 2020 wildfire. One grove thrived because we had mowed around it and then were vigilant with wetting them with fire hoses when the fire raged – it was too close to the barn and other buildings to allow it to burn. The various trees of this grove are displaying the range of traits typical of coast live oaks. New leaves are flushing: these ‘evergreen’ oaks nevertheless mostly replace last year’s leaves around now. The fresh leaves are emerging at different times and in different shades of green, depending on the individual tree. Some are already in bloom, long pollen bearing tassels waving in the wind. Other trees haven’t shown any blossoms yet at all. The lush new growth is forming densely green, bushy canopies, These deep-rooted trees will continue to be that kind of vibrantly alive for a few more months…long after the grass has dried brown.

Lupines!

Each year, as a result of our careful stewardship, we get more and more sky lupines. This year is the biggest year yet. Patches of sky lupines are mostly mixed with California poppies. There is something so very right about the mix of wide-petaled, fiery orange poppy flowers mixed with lines and waves of spikes of whorled blue-and-white lupine flowers. It hasn’t yet been warm and still long enough to get the grape bubble gum scent clouds emanating from the lupine patches. Between these fields of wildflowers and the orchards full of blossoming trees, the bees have lots of choices. We are glad they are getting enough food to grow big families on our farm, a haven for pollinators.

Suddenly Spring Sprung

The Spring Equinox was a few weeks ago, and the natural world around the Monterey Bay is full of signs of the season. From wildflowers to birds, from the gophers to the grass, life is waking up. Forest bathing or any sort of time in nature is good for the soul and actively seeking out personal interactions with the signs of the season allows us to stay in touch with ancient rhythms of life…slowing down…nurturing our roots in this wonderful place.

California popply in a sea of Madia, which flowers later. There is lupine and brome grass, too

Wildflowers

We’re already past the first wildflowers of the year, but we haven’t missed many. Footsteps of spring is still in bloom- patches of bright yellow color splash across shallow soiled areas in grasslands. Nearby in those same grasslands and in the adjoining shrubby areas, you can see peopleroot, aka wild cucumber, a romping vine pushing up spikes of wonderfully scented cream-colored flowers. Still in those grasslands, poppy flowers have opened: the first ones are always the biggest, tulip sized! Santa Cruz’ Moore Creek greenbelt, Monterey’s Point Lobos, and the grasslands at Fort Ord are all good places to see grasslands’ unfolding spring wildflowers.

Get to some chaparral and you can see the first Ceanothus flowers alongside the waning honey-scented manzanita bloom. Fort Ord is a fine place to see a rare type of chaparral with unusual manzanitas and ceanothus species. Henry Cowell and Wilder Ranch State Parks have some nice patches, too. Report back on the state of the wildflowers in chaparral or grasslands, please!

Swallow Arrival

The first barn swallows returned to Santa Cruz County’s North Coast on March 19, 2023. They traveled from somewhere way south – the tropics where they spent the winter getting fat on different types of bugs. They arrived just in time to eat the early season bees, mosquitoes, and moths. They left when this place was dusty and dry and returned to a vibrant, green, moist landscape. They are just settling in and will soon be scooping up mud to repair or build new nests. I haven’t seen any other swallow species, yet- have you?

Furry Critters

Gophers are throwing soil with gusto, having just woken up for the Spring. The voles have been awake and active for a while, already. Baby voles are dispersing into new areas, and the very violent interactions between voles and gophers has commenced.

Young brush bunnies emerged from their birth dens about 2 weeks ago, half the size of the adults and so very cute. About a month ago, I encountered an adult brush bunny ‘thumping’ – something I’d read about as a youth in Richard Adams’ book Watership Down. An anxious-looking bunny was rushing between shrubs, ducking under cover and then thumping its hind legs onto the ground so hard as to make a drumming noise. It had its eyes on me- very odd, since I thought I had previously had a fairly trusting relationship with the local bunny families. Perhaps this individual was an interloper from another family as this behavior was a one-time thing.

Long tailed weasels are feeding on gophers, voles, and young rabbits as are coyotes and bobcats. It had been a long time since I saw any bobcats, but two appeared in the area in the last month, so maybe their population is rebounding around Davenport.

Grass

It is the season of grass. Get to a weedy wet patch and you’ll see the most remarkable bright shiny green of Italian ryegrass, an invasive species that reflects light brightly from its leaf blades. The cold nights have tinged some grasses red or purple. Disease from the moist winter makes other grasses turn yellow or orange. The first grass flowers are emerging, but most are a ways away. I was surprised to see some foxtails already, normally a later spring grass flower. How tall with the grass grow? You can see it gain height by the day right now, but not long ago it just got slowly thicker across the ground. The longer and warmer days make for rocketing grass growth. Later rains keep it getting taller, but without rain grass drinks up the soil moisture and patches start to brown on shallow soil quickly after warm spells.

Trees

This is the moment of Spring where we can enjoy the colorful signs of the genetic diversity of coast live oaks. Some coast live oaks unfurl their spring leaves earlier, some later. Examine patches of coast live oaks and see the personalities shine with varying leafing out timing, and even varying colors of new leaves. I like the more maroon new leaves, but the paler spring green trees are also wonderful.

Buckeyes and big leaf maples are breaking bud. Rare in our area, patches of black and valley oaks are also starting to think about leafing out. I recently travelled through the Sierra Nevada foothills and saw the blue oak forest waking up. I love to catch blue oak bud break as patches of that forest turn the most amazing purple-blue right as their leaf buds start to swell, before the leaves unfurl. Now is that time.

Time Passing

The moments of Spring pass quickly, so that if you miss visiting natural areas a few weeks in a row, you will miss an entire sub-portion of the season. The birds will come to you, though – keep an eye out for the swallows wheeling in the air, harbingers of spring! If you haven’t planned on visiting your favorite lupine patch, start planning: they are a few weeks away, but a spring without lupines isn’t ever quite the same.

-this post originally published by Bruce Bratton at his wonderful weekly blog, BrattonOnline.com – donate, subscribe, and so forth and you’ll be regularly in touch with so much around the Monterey Bay

Misty Stillness

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

Native brome grass and poppy, laden with moisture

Composting Fields

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

Standing Crop

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

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

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

Cherry Buds Swelling

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

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

Native Wildflower Spring

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

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

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

Pulsing into the Dry Season

This is the hardest-work season for the farm. Everything needs doing, and it needs doing all at once: mowing, tilling, planting, pruning, burning, weeding. It’s a race. We’re racing to keep the fields mowed before the birds invest in nests amongst the tall, inviting cover crops. A tractor changes from a purr to a rattle or a high screaming whine: oops! It broke. Backup tractors and backup tools come out- there’s not time to fix things! We chase the weeds and cover crops, tractor-chopping them into little pieces before they set seed.

New Farmer!

Its Bodhi Grace’s first year actively farming at Molino Creek Farm as he takes the helm of the big fading orange, old Kubota tractor: back and forth, back and forth. We manage to have two generations as members of the Collective: what a celebration! Go Bodhi! His infectious smile cheers us all. Good posture on the tractor seat, he rocks out with music through headphones that somehow manage above the din of the tractor mowing. For the first time, the tractor has a big colorful umbrella for shade.

Mowing the Fava Bean Cover Crop in the Old Apple Orchard

Drying, Tilling

The fields are nearly mowed, but still things resprout until the soil gets turned. We poke at the ground to make sure its not too wet to till as we don’t want to compact the soil and we don’t want the drag behind disc to churn up big mud clumps. A couple of weeks of dry warmth and already the mower throws up a few puffs of pale brown dust from the shallow-soiled portion of a field.

Birdsong

Spring’s bird songs have flourish, notes elongated and fancier than wintertime conversational peeps. The first male barn swallows returned last Saturday night, greatly changing both the soundscape and the visual show. Now, fence posts and rooflines emit the swallows’ metallic squeaks and burbling. Crisscrossing the sky, jetting swallow silhouettes grab attention mostly because of the absence of many months. The swallow women were weeks behind the guys last spring; I’ll count this time.

Bluebird’s flashy blues and finch’s purple reds are especially vibrant with breeding plumage. Beaks agape, heads thrown back, song sparrows furiously belt out long and complex solos from atop the tallest white-flowering radishes. Are they proclaiming nesting territory, or are they just celebrating the longer days and the finally warm sun? It has been a long, wet, cool, blustery winter. The unusually poor weather undoubtedly claimed lives.

Late Winter Harvest

Even this time of year, there’s a harvest going on: citrus! Each day presents a few more ripe fruit from the 250 pound harvest of seedless, somewhat surprisingly sweet Persian limes. These limes are yellow-when-ripe, and that is surprising to many. We’ll first distribute to the Community Orchardists and then to Two Dog Farm, who take them to market or to their chef who jars delicious lime marmalade.

Oranges, too, are coming ripe. Navels, Velencias, day by day a little sweeter, a little more juicy.

Sun to Rain

The week’s dry heatwave will break the day after tomorrow and the world will transform for many days to clouds and drip. Mist will blow across the fresh-mowed fields and showers will soak the already thirsting ground. Puddles will fill for already longed-for bird baths, and the newts will march once more, moving towards creek or grassy tunnel system.

An Unknown Bee Visits Flowering Currant, a hedgerow plant at Molino Creek Farm

Bees

Petals close and nectar slows with cooler, cloudy weather. Bumble bees will be hungry. Flowering patches and warm days create quite a buzz. I’m a newfound bee watcher and notice a new bee every few days; today, it was loudly buzzing, honeybee-sized, gray, furry bees… shy and furtive, and very fast. The first bees of spring are still around- giant bumblebees either gracefully bopping between flowers or klutzily fumbling in the grass, seeking burrows for raising brood.

We hope you enjoy the emerging spring.

-this post simultaneously made on Molino Creek Farm’s website

Bad Things Moving

We humans move bad things around, and Nature quickly suffers. But I am not one of those people that believes that everything humans do is bad for Planet Earth. To the contrary, I have researched and written much about the things we do that are essential to restoring and maintaining Nature. We do lots of good work, we should do a lot more, and things would not be altogether better without people. However, humans’ propensity to carelessly move living things great distances is not one of the good things we do. After recently learning about the cause of the disappearance of certain species of local bumblebees, I have been focusing on the pathogens that humans are transporting around the globe.

Plant Pathogens

We don’t have to explore far, or think back very far in history, to see the signs of human mistakes in the kingdom of plants. In the 1990’s, I drove past Waddell Creek on Santa Cruz’s North Coast and gasped when I saw huge patches of tree skeletons – dead and dying Monterey pine trees succumbing from the introduced pine pitch canker disease (Fusarium circinatum – origin Mexico and/or Eastern US). In the last decade, I’ve been similarly shocked at hillsides of brown leaves as forests of tanoaks and live oaks died due to sudden oak death (Phytophthora ramorum – origin East Asia). These are the most recent and widespread results of human carelessness and greed.

Millions upon millions of dead trees are piling up across the world right now due to people vectoring plant disease around the world. Especially with climate change, this is not the right time to be killing trees. Without recalling history, we are doomed to repeat it. We should have learned by now as those recently introduced plant plagues are repeating the devastation of the not-so-distant past. The eastern US lost its dominant forest tree, millions of American chestnuts, to chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica – origin East or Southeast Asia) starting around 1900. A little later, wave after wave of Dutch elm disease (Ophiostoma ulmi 1910 and O. novo-ulmi 1965 – origin Asia) killed millions of elm trees in Europe. No one living recalls the forests of old; soon, no one will recall the beautiful tanoak forests of Central California.

Animal Pathogens

Similarly, human carelessness (and greed) is causing misery and death to many of our wildlife friends. Brucellosis (Brucella ssp. – origin Mediterranean) causes big grazing animals to get sick and sometimes abort their babies. Cattle ranchers worry about the proximity of wild grazing animals that carry the disease. Conservationists are concerned about ranchers wanting to cull wildlife that infect cattle herds. Besides through unregulated hunting, elk, bison, and bighorn sheep populations have probably been depleted through brucellosis and other introduced diseases. This disease also affects humans who become infected through unpasteurized milk or undercooked meat from infected animals.

Another animal disease that humans spread to the detriment of many other species is called chytrid. One type of chytrid (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) has caused serious decline and even extinctions in toads and frogs. This disease spread from African clawed frogs imported into the US for the first generation of human pregnancy tests (1930s – 1960s): inject urine into the frog’s skin and it made bumps if you were pregnant – easy, accurate….and a complete disaster for the frogs and toads of the New World. In the late 1980’s, I saw the last of the Golden Toads, a beautiful orange-gold species native to a small patch of cloud forest in Costa Rica. Chytrid found its way into even that remote location, as it found its way into many other seemingly unlikely far-away places, killing off millions of beautiful and sometimes narrowly geographically restricted species. Long-term monitoring plots in Costa Rica and elsewhere in the tropics plummeted in diversity and abundance of frogs. The disease also caused the decline of our local California red-legged frog as well as the frightening annihilation of the Sierran yellow-legged frog, both of which nevertheless survive.

Resistance To … Change or Learning?

My most recent lesson in invasive pathogens was recently with bumblebees. As I engage in restoration and land management across the Central Coast, I recently received notification that the Western bumblebee has disappeared from much of its historic range and now is being seriously considered to be listed as threatened or endangered by the State of California. If you pay attention to environmental media, you no doubt have heard about the effects of pesticides on pollinators. So, hearing about the local extinction of Western bumblebee, you might wonder how pesticides have affected local bumblebees even across the vast areas of parkland and forest where there doesn’t seem to be widespread pesticide application.

While we can’t dismiss the danger of pesticides in affecting pollinators, the more likely culprit for the far-ranging disappearance of this local species of bumblebee is Nosema bombi, a ‘microsporidia’ belongning to group of organisms that might be protozoa or fungi. A bunch of these types of organisms infect humans, but the species infecting, and the effects on, humans is ‘an emerging field.’ Meanwhile, that particular species has been a very serious problem for many bumblebees of the United States. How did it get here? The story again….greed and carelessness: you’d think we should know better by now.

The origin of this bumblebee-killing plague was Europe. Specifically, upstart profit-motivated companies seeking a market in alternative pollinators took our native bumblebees to Europe for breeding, mixed them with diseased European bumblebees, and then brought the disease back to the USA. In the mid-1990s! Companies are applying to do more of this kind of thing right now.

What’s To Be Done?

Each one of us can make a difference to thwart the greed and ignorance at the root of the ongoing introduction of pathogens to the US. I illustrated a very small percentage of instances: there are hundreds or thousands of other examples, even without addressing the pathogens mainly affecting humans (we are all too familiar with recent difficulties of global Covid spread). If even left-leaning media stories included mention of the possibility that pathogen spread has been weaponized for economic warfare, more politicians might be forced to address these issues, which are, after all, national security concerns. National security concerns get bigger pots of federal funding when the voting public gets concerned about them. So, click away at any media story featuring invasive species, introduced pathogens, crop pests, etc: the more literacy we build about these issues, the better. Also…vote for environmentally savvy candidates (if you can find them!). But what do we tell the politicians to do? We tell them to address greed by slowing global trade.

At this point in our knowledge base, we can’t blame ignorance: pathogen introduction is a result of greed. People want money, and they want it now. We have processes in place to detect things we don’t want to come across our borders, but we don’t use them enough to prevent new pathogens from entering. There is no national crisis driving speedy trade in insects, plants, and animals: we can slow down and be more careful. If the politician you support doesn’t understand this, they should. If a politician can’t say that they support a ‘slowing of global trade’ to protect humans and the species that they rely on…that’s a red flag.

-this post originally “printed” in Bruce Bratton’s amazing weekly online blog BrattonOnline.com – check it out!