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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!

Fast Forward: FIRE! Rewind: Ungulates

In the future, it looks like there will be a lot of fire in California. Whether that is Good Fire or Bad Fire depends on you…depends on each and every one of us. Although it might not be ‘natural,’ we need Good Fire because we messed up a long time ago by driving ungulates extinct. Can we rewind? Let’s see.

Infernal Invitation

Our part of Planet Earth is constantly producing tons of fuel for the next wildfire. The coastal prairies are the most productive grasslands in California, creating 4 tons of dry grass per acre every year. Oaks, madrones, redwoods, and Douglas fir grow fast and tall around here. Shrubby plant communities go from nothing to impenetrable, dense thickets in just six years, ready to carry another inferno shortly thereafter.

With plenty of plant biomass to burn, and because of climate change, it is only a matter of time and the right fire weather to set things ablaze across our landscape. Local tribes could get fires to carry through the forests every 4-6 years: that’s how quickly fuel builds up to carry flames. About 6 years after the last fire, we should start expecting the next one, especially if there’s the right conditions. 2 consecutive years of drought makes parts of plants die, creating the dry wildfire kindling. Next up…heat waves….and then wind….and then all that is needed is ignition. We expect more summer lightning to do the job of starting fires as climate change destabilizes weather patterns and sends parts of hurricanes spinning across California.

Compost Happens

People are wrong if they imagine that once plant leaves and stems fall, they quickly decompose into the soil. Lots of folks I talk to think that things rot…mushrooms break down plant parts, after all, right? The cycle of life is all about death, decay, and rebirth! In miniature experiments, many people work this cycle with compost piles, or at least they purchase compost and add it to their gardens. Compost is nature’s proof that decay happens, so it must be the same in the plant communities around here, right?

Mediterranean Mummies

Rot misconceptions are founded in moisture preconceptions. Half of the year, the hot part, is dry: no rain. The wet part of the year is cool. The combination slows decay. In the forests, from what I’ve seen no stem, branch, or trunk larger than 2”diameter will fully decay before it burns in the next fire. Rot resistant redwood needles accumulate in a thick mulch that carries smoldering fire. Grass stems in our prairies last 3-5 years if they don’t touch the ground or are grazed, so there’s lots of accumulation there, too. In shrubby areas, plants are so closely packed that nothing tips over onto the ground, so dead stems and whole dead bushes are held upright for years awaiting the next blaze.

Drier, Hotter, and Few Big Creatures

It hasn’t been this fire dangerous for very long in these parts. This coast was moister and cooler just 15,000 years ago. Pollen records show the departure of grand fir and the arrival of coast redwood around that time on the Santa Cruz coast. On the larger scale, California has been getting drier and hotter since the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada started blocking summer rain that came from that away. About 15,000 years ago, huge herds of animals went extinct here: elephant relatives, horse and camel relatives, bison, and many more grazing critters roamed in massive herds, grazing and browsing the landscape. This would have profoundly affected fuel accumulation and plant community structure. In that kind of situation, wildfire would have been much more patchily intense. Big grazing creatures crush brush, eat leaves, topple trees. Bears and ground sloths tear apart tree trunks. Dead plant parts plus big creature impacts plus moisture conditions would have made composting much more natural.

What Now?

Okay, so change is happening: what do we do now? Good Fire is the answer, and to make that happen will take everyone’s cooperation. Good Fire involves careful planning and enough labor to set ablaze large areas of nature…at the right time…at the right intensity…at the right season and interval. We will have to feel safe when people tend fires in our forests and grasslands, right up next to roads and homes. Not many people feel that sense of safety right now, but we are still learning and training, and getting better at working together and building trust.

Meanwhile

Meanwhile, how do we live around such a flammable and dangerous landscape? I see people clearing vegetation and trying all sorts of ways of disposing of dead plant parts. As fewer people burn wood for heat or cooking, that is decreasingly a means of wood disposal. People seem enamored with wood chip additions to landscaping, but wood chips only slowly decay and are a fire hazard for years. Some folks are ardent about hügelkultur and composting, but these systems are of limited potential, requiring intensive management and, often, summer irrigation to speed decay. I see many people attempting clearing and biomass addition – mulching, composting, and even summer irrigation – in our poor-soiled chaparral communities. These practices destroy epicenters of biodiversity, type converting precious habitat to flammable weeds and increasing the potential for pathogens to spread into the adjoining habitat. Better to carefully thin and prune back chaparral vegetation where necessary and have low-intensity wintertime burn piles.

In many other situations, wintertime burn piles seem a fitting solution while we await better alternatives, such as Good Fire. Burning piled up biomass takes skill and careful planning to do it right. There are good regulations which get you started on the right path to pile burning: they require not too big of pile and that the biomass is dry so as to create not too much smoke. Permissible burn days assure smoke doesn’t too badly affect human health. I suggest a few other items to the list of things to pay attention to when pile burning. First, don’t burn a pile where it sits: a fox skeleton was the first sign that taught me that. Poor fox, cowering in the pile of brush hoping we’d go away only to be set on fire! There are lots of other critters living under that pile of dead plants! Also, why not use that burn pile to do something else useful? For instance, use the heat to kill an unwanted tree, shrub, or weed. French broom seedbanks might be devastated by a burn pile. A jubata grass plant could be eradicated. A coyote bush that would otherwise start to invade a meadow could be taken out. Also, one might have a group around the bonfire for a social occasion. And, think about how the nutrients and burned bare patch might affect the natural situation: weeds (or natives) will grow stronger, fire-following plants might germinate along the perimeter!

Here’s to learning how to live in a new era on this wonderful landscape. Join a bonfire this winter and pitch some biomass onto the flames to make our community safer!

-this post originally published by Bruce Bratton in his laudable weekly blog at BrattonOnline.com

Rainsong from Creek and Cloud

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

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

Moon Growth

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

Dazzling Green

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

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

Flowers Unfurling

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

Pile It Up

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

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

Chores

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

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

Environmental Injustice and Accountability

Shall we all agree? Injustice shall not stand! But what are the ultimate measures of environmental injustice, and how do we make those responsible for violating those measures more accountable? Shouldn’t these be the primary questions we pose as ethical humans concerned with the welfare of future generations? As the which came first the chicken-or-the-egg statement goes, ‘no peace, no justice.’

Species Loss and Soil Loss

I posit that the loss of species is the primary measure of environmental injustice. And I would suggest that soil loss is, as a measure, just as important. It is sometimes difficult to make the case that a given species is critical to the welfare of humans. But any informed, rational conversation on the subject will eventually conclude that the most justice is served by ensuring all species survive. It is similarly difficult for most people to understand and discuss the importance of keeping soil in its rightful place. And again, if people take the time to have informed rational discussions on this matter, they will conclude that is absolutely critical that humans do everything in their power to ensure that soil is not lost…from any place.

Measuring Success

Humans have become expert at measuring things, and there are easily available metrics for monitoring species and soil health. The federal government of the United States has an Endangered Species Act and a Marine Mammal Protection Act and the State of California has its analogues. These two very powerful pieces of legislation demand a science-based approach of measuring the degree to which species are approaching extinction, publishing lists of species which have entered that trajectory, and demanding humans take the actions necessary to recover those species back to healthy populations. With those rules, we have progressed well in our species health measurements, database management, analyses, and predictions – oodles of very smart humans’ careers are spent on these issues. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries and California Department of Fish and Wildlife are the authorities responsible for protecting species.

Similarly, both the federal government and the State of California have strong legislation to address soil loss. The federal Clean Water Act and the state Porter-Cologne Act both address soil loss where it can most easily be shown to affect human welfare: in wetlands, streams, and rivers. Again, humans have become adept at measuring soil (aka ‘sediment’) levels in our wetlands and waterways. The acting authority for both pieces of legislation is the State Water Quality Control Board, acting with Regional Water Quality Control Boards…ours being the Central Coast office based in San Luis Obispo.

Progress?

We have had some success, but mostly we are failing to address species decline and soil loss. The Monterey Bay region has excellent examples of both the limited successes and abject failures with both issues. If you get to Moss Landing or Monterey and hop on a whale watching boat (and I hope you do!), you can predictably view endangered species that, due to legal protections, measurements, and adaptive management, have recovered somewhat from extinction. Hike at the Pinnacles, and you can see California condors which most people feared would go extinct not that long ago. Walk on some of our local beaches and you might see a snowy plover…another species who owes its survival around here to the Endangered Species Act. Same with the southern sea otter, marbled murrelet, and the central coast populations of steelhead and coho salmon. If I’m convincing you of humans’ ability to reverse species extinction, you are being premature. All of those species, and dozens more endangered animal species remain on the federal and state lists of imperiled species because they have not been recovered. And, many, many more species qualify for listing under the state and federal endangered species acts but the authorities haven’t spent the time to analyze them. Locally, only the peregrine falcon has been ‘delisted’ – no small feat! The reason so many species are so tenuously holding onto their existence: lack of accountability.

Accountability

Holding people accountable begins with measuring their success. After legal action by the Center for Biological Diversity, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been dutifully publishing 5-year reviews of the status of each federally listed species; the stories in those reports are not good, but their reports fail to go so far as to hold anyone accountable. Turning to our much-vaunted free press, The Intercept recently published an exposé that illustrates who should be held accountable for the lack of protection afforded endangered grizzly bears. That story, and similar stories I’ve documented from around the Monterey Bay, point to problems with the justice system. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the US justice system is seriously in trouble: there is no justice in the USA! As shown in that Intercept article, anyone can destroy the habitat of, or kill individuals of, any endangered species and easily get away with it.

Point Reyes Horkelia: another species about to be listed as Endangered due to bad public lands management decisions

Local Examples – Endangered Species

Whale species, snowy plovers, Ohlone tiger beetles, California red-legged frogs – all local endangered species with good documentation of legal infractions that have gone unanswered. There are films, witnesses, and reliable first-hand accounts (including by legal enforcement personnel) showing boat captains purposefully pursuing and interfering with the movement of – harassing – legally protected whales on the Monterey Bay…and these are ongoing situations. When interviewed, Federal enforcement personnel say that it is hopeless to enforce such infractions because they report to too few legal personnel and those personnel say such cases don’t stand any hope of holding up in court. Similarly, State enforcement personnel say that unless they catch, film, and have witnesses of someone in the act of killing an endangered sea otter (with ‘blood on their hands’ and a ‘body in their trunk’) there is no hope of legal enforcement of the many more frequent (and well documented) situations of human behavior negatively impacting that imperiled species. Again, they say this is due to limited legal bandwidth within their agency and the hopeless nature of the justice system in convicting anyone. In Florida, there is good legal precedent for finding parks agencies responsible for allowing visitors to trample endangered sea turtle nests. In Florida, as with California, state parks personnel are required to plan for such endangered species protection, even on popular beaches. Around the Monterey Bay, parks agencies routinely allow visitors to trample endangered snowy plover nests and squish endangered Ohlone tiger beetles: there’s documentation aplenty with both situations. As recently as this past year, park agency personnel have destroyed wetlands occupied by California red-legged frogs to ‘improve’ trails. In past years, park agencies have graded and graveled trails, destroying Ohlone tiger beetle habitat. When reports reach federal officials, they respond that they contact parks personnel, admonish them, receive apologies, and then they forget it…there is not one bit of justice served!

Local Examples – Soil Loss

I could, and will in a future essay, provide a similar litany of examples where responsible agencies have failed to enforce regulations designed to address soil loss. The San Lorenzo River is ‘listed’ as impaired by sediment- soil loss in that watershed is rampant and largely unaddressed. There is more to come on this.

Upper- and Lower-Level Accountability

What do we do? If voters don’t demand that District Attorneys enforce environmental crimes, they won’t. If we don’t demand that our politicians have environmental platforms, they won’t work to improve the justice system so that it protects species and soils. But is the fault really way up there at those ranks? Can’t we demand accountability at lower levels? After all, unless we work together at every level, we won’t succeed.

If you see something, say something. We must have compassion for the enforcement personnel who so want to do their jobs but feel disempowered. And let’s learn how to be good witnesses, how to provide the right reports, and how to help document the two primary root environmental justice issues. Evidence must mount from more people more frequently. We must also make sure that the evidence is well stewarded: I look forward to annual reports from enforcement agencies about the frequency of infractions that remain unenforced.

Finally, why do we allow parks agencies to keep operating so that visitors are destroying the endangered species that those parks were designated to protect? Why do parks personnel allow so much soil loss from roads, trails, farms, and buildings? This goes beyond enforcement. This is a political issue. No one wants such injustice.

-this essay originally posted by the wise Bruce Bratton, who aligns some of the areas’ best minds to post in his weekly blog at BrattonOnline.com – why not subscribe today?