plants

Happy Summer Solstice 2026!

Apples

It’s a common question: what do you do with all of the apples? We ask ourselves that, too. We’ve got this issue with oscillation: alternate bearing years having most recently been spurred by the Fire of 2020. Post fire 2021-few; 2022-lots; 2023- few; 2024 – lots; 2025 – few; and guess what…2026 looks like another ‘lots’ year. Other things contribute to changing harvest numbers, such as burnt up trees, age of trees, pests, heat wave apple roasts, lack of chill hours, etc. Nevertheless, in this macro harvest year we will (probably!) have to ask and answer the Big Question again, and we already know the answer: more juice, and more hard cider!

A farewell to spring flower in our grasslands replete with 2 native sleeping bees, droplets of drizzle.

My calculation for this year’s harvest is a record 11,000 pounds, nearly 6 tons. We’ll probably sell 2500 pounds to put up some capital for compost, irrigation supplies, and things we need to keep the orchard running. And, we’ll probably give 2500 pounds to the Pacific School and other charities. That leaves 6,000 pounds of ‘seconds’ apples going to either juice or into the deer-feeding (eg., pest destroying) compost piles. If we can manage the pressing power, that means we could make a record 250 gallons of hard cider! Last I checked, we have 5 cider makers in our midst and we’ll need everyone to pitch in, pick, haul, wash, sort, grind and press this year to make it work. Watch out for October!

Avocados

The other fruit to celebrate is the oily green avocado. The repercussions of the fire also play out here, and this is the first year since 2020 that we have much to harvest. Our Community Orchard is bringing home the Bacon, with thin-skinned avocado fruit on the less oil content side of things but still delicious. About a third of our 100 trees are Bacon and only 4 of the oldest trees are bearing this year. The warm, dry March and a plethora of pollinators made a big crop that will be ready next year. Meanwhile, we watch and wait. The other types we expect larger crops from next year are Reed and Lamb Haas, but we also have a few Gwen, Pinkerton, and Carmen Haas sprinkled in the groves. Bacon avocadoes are the fastest- ‘only’ 16 months to ripen; others take almost 2 years. The ground squirrels and gray fox are already sharing the harvest. One day soon we’ll learn how to cook with the leaves and in a few years maybe we’ll figure out how to extract the oil.

Does it count that we add other plant diversity with this invasive poison hemlock?

Organic AND Regenerative

Another frequent question we are asked is ‘Are You Regenerative?’ That’s a loaded question because there’s not really any way of measuring or verifying such things…not like our organic certification with CCOF. Sure, you can fill out a self-assessment checklist, and proudly attest to your professed stellar farm care, but what thinking third party goes for such balderdash? Anyway, we resonate with some of the apparent principles of the regenerative agriculture movement such as building soil organic matter, creating conditions for increasing (especially native) plant diversity within the orchard understory, and integrating animals into the orchards.

That latter one is a bit of a chuckler. ‘Chickens? Sheep?’ you might ask. Nay, much better: voles and turkeys, fox and squirrel, woodpecker and robin! Some may squint, “Are you serious?!” Yes- and we have evidence that anyone can see. Most recently, we’re seeing one large, fresh, glistening turkey turd every 5 square meters. We don’t need to care for those wild turkeys, they are self-sustaining! And, they are eating weed seeds, mopping up pests, cleaning up fallen fruit, and turning all of that biomass into fertilizer deposited right onto the fungal web that feeds the orchard trees. Plus, they are entertaining. And, if a coyote eats one of our understory flock, we don’t cry or call the wildlife department for a depredation permit nor do we raise apples to pay the bills for guardian dogs. If any of you readers know of any way we can help the turkeys feel more at home in our orchard, please let us know. And, if you are wondering about our other orchard understory animals…stay tuned for more fascinating Regenerative Agricultural Stories about integrating animals into cropping systems.

We’re good at raising lots of poison oak

Noise

What’s the noise around the farm? Vegetation control. Up above the farm, on San Vicente Redwoods land, the masticators are roaring and the saws are revving: they are doing more post fire forestry to make the redwood stands more resilient, to better protect Bonny Doon from the next inferno. On the Farm itself, the noise is mowers. Our discerning gaze turns to the color of grass: is it tawny, is it dead? There are complex calculations involving percent dead grass, relative humidity, nesting birds, proximity to infrastructure, and time left to mow before July 1 spurring us out the door, onto (or behind!) the tractors, and pointed in the right direction. Back and forth, strip by strip of cutting.

More Wild Birds

The size of a couple of bird flocks deserve mention. The goldfinches! Will somebody teach me the difference between the species? Whatever type of goldfinches they are, there are commonly flocks of 30 noisily descending on patches of the non-native dandelion seed heads. Rough cats ear seeds are apparently scrumptious to these seedeaters.

Equally noisy, equally numerous flocks of wrentits are visiting the oaks around the farm. The trees seem to squeak with a bit of an energetic russle then a confetti of tiny birds erupts, fluttering to the next oak. They sure seem to be having fun.

Farewell, Spring!

Here we are, on the advent of Summer and just at the right time this year we can say ‘farewell to spring’ with the namesake flower, which is in full glory right now in patches around our well stewarded grassland. Deep pink-red, large four-petaled flowers open with the sun and close with the night, creating safe sleeping spaces for the cutest of native bees, their pollinators. In other places, the summer bloom is on- tarplants with their resinous, odiferous leaves and yellow sunflowers brighten and scent the midday prairie. As we progress into summer, there will be more miraculous flowers dotting the landscape despite the lack of rain and the bone-dry soil. Week by week, the flowerscape changes. We hope for a mild summer without smoke or fire.

Happy Solstice!

A Wild Weather Ride

Sticky monkey flower is adding a riot of color to the hillsides around Molino Creek Farm

Each month, every month, there is a new shrub in bloom around our farm. This month the featured flowering shrubs are sticky monkeyflower and bush lupine. The sticky monkeyflower of California’s central coast is a striking and unique orange-yellow whereas Big Sur has a paler and larger flowered version and Down South it is downright red. Ours is special: friends don’t let friends infect the local genepool with monkeyflowers from thither.

Our bush lupine is also unique – a lavender jobby contrasting with the common bright yeller form down along the coast.

Bush lupine – our type is this color, but most of California has a yellow form with bigger leaves

Fruit Eating Birds

The native blackberries are ripening, juiced up from the late rains. Band tailed pigeon discovered them and are feasting along our extensive deer-deterring (somewhat) fencelines which prop up linear mounds of prickly canes. The large pigeons balance warily on the top wire and then dive onto a patch of berries, pecking and sucking up fruit. Their bills don’t even get purple-messy!

Impatient scrub jays and acorn woodpeckers are also eating fruit, but unripe fruit, in the apple orchard. Many rock-hard 2” apples are scored with bill marks and sometimes pecked holes. The unabashed woodpeckers sit on the top of orchard trees and fence posts, seemingly saying ‘look at me, I’m beautiful and innocent!’ They are Not. Innocent. But, they ARE beautiful with their stark black-and-white patterning and brilliant red-capped heads. And, they ARE fruit destroyers, but we grow enough for everyone.

Vermin

This, the 6^th year after the wildfire, marks the return of the blood-sucking vermin: ticks! Every foray around the Farm nets at least one feisty little creature, hard to dislodge from crawling on pants or skin. Young brush bunnies are straying farther from home, shaking their itchy, floppy ears, which are festooned with puffed up parasites. Imagine not being able to take those things off of you! Ugg.

Bigger ears are also wagging, but do we really refer to deer as vermin? Some do. Deer ears spoon out like radio dishes aimed right at me when I scritch by on the crunchy gravel road. ‘Hi deer!’ I say ‘It’s okay, I’m not gonna chase you!’ Some of the herd is becoming calmer near me, I think, with such urging. Or, is it more menacing? There are a couple of very large bucks that stand a little too close and eye me a little too intensely, and I hope I never have to toreador around their thrusting antlers. I hear they get more aggressive as their antler felt sheds – still a ways off. Now, their antlers are still growing, completely dark brown felted, the points dull and rounded. Tree bark is not freshly tattered from their rubbing. That’s a ways off.

Lion Sign

Mountain lion sign is becoming more common for the first time in 6 years. Scat on the main road. Scent scrapes on the trail down to the creek. I am searching for paw prints. And there is nary a coyote calling on the farm. They fear the lions: you know…that old cats versus dogs thing and isn’t it funny that its always the dogs that are more frightened?

The lions don’t venture out into the open grasslands down by the highway. It is there, at the gate, that one can hear multiple packs of coyotes singing at each other across the wide open spaces. Quite the cacophony. Quite often.

Gala apples are taking on color, but they won’t be harvested until September

Three Calls

Three calls are catching my ear when walking about: bluebirds, turkey hens, and song sparrows. The lazuli buntings have stopped their incessant singing- they were the last fascinating regular calls. Bluebirds have fledged their young and are travelling in small flocks, constantly foraging around the farm fields. Their moist-sounding low-slurred descending single notes are unmistakable and carry far. Contrast those watery notes with the drier sounding clucking of female turkeys and now you are on your way to the symphony. The hen-clucking is also nearly always evident as they keep in constant touch with their chicks. The early batches of chicks seem to have gotten et, but a new batch is sauntering around in loose pursuit of their family – two hens and a tom. A percussive ‘clucK, cluck, cluck!’ calls them to stay close. The much more melodious song sparrows sing their high and complex lyrics, showing up these other two. Song sparrows are quite common around here and their songs emanate from every patch of weeds.

Wild Ride

All these farm critters and we along with them have been party to a wild weather ride this past week. There was intense, thick fog and cold. Days struggled to get much into the 60’s and one morning was 45F! Then there was WIND…branch breaking wind, gusts coming from all over, random, crazy. The wind brought some clouds and even a few splattery drops of rain. Then, today, there was HEAT. 91F was the high and it is still warm after dark. It was the first Hot Day of the spring. The untilled fields are starting to turn tawny and us grass allergy folks just want every grass to whither and stop poisoning the air.

Crickets and snakes love the heat. Every farm trail and road had a snake today: gopher snakes of all sizes and a few yellow-bellied racers. The snakes loved the heat. I accidently disturbed a nest of 8 freshly laid, leathery southern alligator lizard eggs. They were smartly placed at the base of a giant bull thistle – protection!

The night song cricket chorus isn’t that deep, but it is the first night with much cricket song. Summer’s coming soon…the warmth grows, dryness progresses. What will tomorrow bring?

A Babyness of Plants

The highlight of the week has been PLANTING. Two Dog Farm has a huge patch of peppers taking root in beautifully prepared beds with drip tape efficiently irrigating the tiny baby seedlings into their new life in the real world: what promise! Molino Creek Farm has a patch of newly planted really, truly dry farmed tomatoes thanks to a close collaboration with the Two Dog Farm’s generous Bartle couple. Judy also had some help planting row upon row of onions this past week. And, those Bartles planted their winter squash seeds, the beginning of the annual unfolding of the Miracle where something appears (prolifically!) where nothing was, without any added water. There’s also Sylvie’s endeavors in some beautiful big patches…dry farmed beans, anyone? What experiments will this expert plant person reveal to us this year?

Hundreds and hundreds of new plants are gracing the fields of our most magnificent farm. Tiny green dots in a sea of freshly tilled rich brown soil. What a sight!

Each of these flowers will probably make a fruit!

Anti-Apple-Babies

On the other hand, there is the great procession against too many apples. So nice to have many hands’ help snipping or twisting off the too, too many baby apples. We are thinning the fruit. This year, it is time to hone our thinning skill, keeping more fruit on the apple varieties that would otherwise make “Whole Meal Apples” – as with Mutsu or Braeburn. With some apple types, you’d need a cart to carry a fruit to lunch if they were ‘properly thinned,’ and no one would enjoy a ‘lunchbox apple’ without leaving more apples per stem. The ground is getting littered by hundreds of marble-sized apple kids. Up on the stems: one apple per cluster where there used to be 5+. Long each bough: one apple every 4 – 6 inches! Those are our goals: high hopes!

And….here’s what a cluster of flowers turns into- a mess of fruit!

Thinned apples look like this- nicely spaced, and not squinched into a clusters

More Cool Weather

This past week has been another ‘the sun sure feels nice’ kind of weather. It has been creeping up to maybe a low 70F hour or two with nights in the low 50s. Foggy mornings, mostly. When the fog clears, the air feels a bit oddly dry. Perhaps the cold soil condenses out what moisture was in the air. “They” say it might get warm this coming weekend.

Baby Trees

Believe it or not, we are still rejuvenating our orchard…through grafting! The 2020 Fire still is echoing- the trees that inferno fried still have promise. Sylvie has taken to grafting desireables onto the few remaining post-fire rootsuckers. Here and there you encounter her artistry- grafting tape at the base of a rapidly sprouting scion. One graft from last year, a persimmon right inside the main gate to the apple orchard, is especially luscious with its bright green, glossy, big leaves. The many, many cherry trees Drake grafted onto rootsprouts from fire kill, in 2021, right after the fire, are getting to look more like adult trees than babies.

In 2025, Sylvie Childress grafted this beautiful persimmon onto some rootstock that had turned into a tree post 2020 Fire

Native Grass Seed

Judy, Sylvie, and I harvested a few pounds of native grass seeds recently. Hanks of seed slowly cure and dry in paper grocery bags warmed by midday sun. We have tens of thousands of California bromegrass seeds, the dominant grass on the Farm which has been getting ripe lately. This is restoration material. The farm has already been transformed in many places from thistles and other weeds to native grass swards. We’ll do more of that as we turn brush fields into prairie just by tossing seeds from one place to the next. If there is a prescribed fire this year, this pile o’ seeds will do just fine.

Frog Song

Frog song, forest tending, restoration reflections, and burn piles – just a few of the things happening at Molino Creek Farm this past week.

The geological substrate of the Farm: Santa Cruz Mudstone. (this one looks grumpy). This is on an old railroad grade bank- lower restoration site in an area planted with purple needle grass in 2010

Frog Song

The cement pond has lots of algae and lots of frogs, singing. This is the second season with a new regimen of pond management. In summer, we try to keep the pond swimmable with chlorine and such. As winter approaches, we stop with the chemicals and allow the pond to go feral. The algae starts growing and frogs quickly move in, and also the newts. The frogs are Pacific chorus frogs, which are relatively small but loud. They can change color in just a few hours to blend in better to their surroundings. For unknown reasons, they start singing louder and louder and then stop, then build up steam again and stop again…right through the night and sometimes in the day. Guests staying the Barn are quite close to the cacophony, which takes some getting used to if one wants to sleep. They are laying eggs which become thousands of tadpoles that gradually grow legs and hop away into the adjoining orchards where they help control pests. Well, I suppose no few of those tadpoles get eaten by newts, which also make eggs and newtlets in the pond.

Forest Tending

We are still cleaning up after the 2020 wildfire, and that cleaning up is helping to prepare for the next one. Bob Brunie has been hard at work getting a patch of Douglas fir in order. That stand adjoins our entrance road and presented quite a hazard during the recent wildfire: it was burning so intensely as to thwart any attempt to use the road, so it was briefly impossible to quickly respond to threats to uphill structures, which may have resulted in some wildfire damage. The fire left lots of dead trees and parts of trees – fuel for future wildfire and a repeat of the last one in blocking the road. So, Bob’s been chopping down dead trees, trimming up branches, and hauling out understory fuels to be burned in piles. We were concerned about Douglas fir invasion before the last fire, but now stands have become quite rare, so this project has become a kind of important forest restoration project. Plus, a shady grove is welcome on hot summer days and some wildlife species probably are glad for it.

Meanwhile, I spent a bit of time cleaning up burned willows and fallen conifers on another patch of farm ground- alongside our ephemeral stream where one day there might be some good camping spots.

Let’s reflect a little deeper on some other longer-term restoration work the Farm has been up to…

Bracken fern is plentiful in the upper restoration site

Scrub Transformation

Molino Creek Farm landmates and a network of generous community members have been working with nature to steward this land since 1982 and recently have been embarking on coastal prairie restoration. Photos from the 1980’s show much of this land as meadows. The legacy of indigenous land tending presented lush prairies to the first colonists who took advantage of the abundant forage to feed livestock. Barbara McCrary reported that her husband Lud’s grandfather’s journals noted landscape-level neighborliness with gatherings on this parcel to tend the hay crop in the late 1800’s. Only recently, because of changed stewardship, have the meadows been transforming into scrubland, but two wildfires helped reverse that and we’ve been taking advantage of those to nudge the ecosystem back to the very-endangered coastal prairie ecosystem.

Small flowered needle grass in the upper restoration site: rare situation- most of the area doesn’t have native grassland species, yet.

Recent Prairie History

Two wildfires, a prescribed fire, and large-scale mowing have been tilting two large sections of south-facing slopes towards the grassland direction. In 2009, the Lockheed Fire engulfed 270 degrees of the Farm and firefighters set back burns to one of what is becoming a south-facing restoration site. Firefighters fanned across the slope and, just in time, set the scrubland above Vandenberg Field on fire, pulling advancing wildfire away from one of our homes. The slope subsequently erupted in thistles and then reverted to scrubland by the time the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire once again burned it. With it went an area downhill in what has become the second restoration site (below Vandenberg Field). In 2024, the Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association burned that second site. After each of those burns on the second site, Moliñeros scattered locally collected grass and wildflower seeds, including across an acre that had been planted in 2010 in native grasses and coastal scrub species. Matthew Todd helped us last year to mow the uphill site, which had burned in 2009 and 2020 but was around 5 feet tall in poison oak, coyotebrush, and French broom.

The lower restoration site, which we have seeded, has lupines and poppies- here just beginning to flower

Restoration Now

Interestingly, the two restoration sites are evolving quite differently. For both sites, ecological reactions to the first fires were similar: very poor-looking soil, lots of bare ground, then broadleaf weeds (thistles), and then resprouting coastal scrub species. After 2 quick-succession fires and seeding, the lower site is transforming into very lush grassland. After 2 widely spaced fires and then mowing last year, the upper site has only rare patches of grassland and lots of broadleaf weeds/resprouting coastal scrub species. If the lessons from the lower site apply, that upper site needs another fire, and/or mowing…soon – and seeding!

It is most curious that the soil seems so poor during early stages of restoration and then gradually produces more and more lush grassland. Is it because so much of the nutrients are caught up in scrub biomass, and that has to decompose and become available for the grassland…or, is there some soil biome shifts occurring? Maybe one day we’ll know!

Burn Piles

A key component of this land tending is biomass disposal. If we don’t do it, Nature will! We were pleased that the 2020 CZU Fire burned up many brush piles, but we might have placed them better and surely lots of critters, thinking they were safe below all that biomass, were cooked alive. To avoid burning up critters, we move piled up brush to an adjoining spot to burn. Wherever brush is piled and rests for more than a few days, there are lizards, snakes, rodents, and sometimes even foxes hiding in the mess.

This land creates an amazing abundance of biomass, which presents a threat when wildfire comes. This productivity is evident in our row and orchard crops and equally easy to see in the growth of scrub, grassland, and forest. The post-fire cleanup has generated a lot more biomass to be moved around (MOOP!), mostly burned but maybe we’ll figure out gully stuffing and chipping at some point. We should probably aim for 70 burn piles a year to keep making progress; we are at 15ish now with more stuff piling up by the day and we have until April to burn it up (or wait until next December). Bonfire Fun!

Midsummer

At midsummer, we pass the midway point of the year, the middle of summer, and the Land changes before our eyes.

Leaves

There are drought-deciduous plants and seasonally-deciduous plants. Their sometimes-colorful leaf drop is starting to overlap. Poison oak is one of those deciduous plants that are in between: on drier slopes, crimson patches have been emerging for a month as that plant decides to drop its leaves, leaving only stems and berries. Buckeye trees are dropping medium-brown leaves, too: very little Fall color to add to the landscape’s palette. Madrone Fall has happened already, leaves littering the ground most crunchily, bark peeling on the hot days making pinking and crinkling noises. Madrone trees lose their old leaves but keep their new ones. Bare madrone trees are dead, as is too often the case with some scourge that is ravaging many trees.

I was just in the Eastern Sierra and the very first seasonal fall color was showing at 8,000 feet – branch tips of the brightest lemony yellow aspens were a treat, but very rare. Time to plan your leaf-peeping trip in a month or so. Our versions of seasonally deciduous lemony yellows will emerge in a while yet with hazelnut and big leaf maple, which mostly aren’t starting to lose their chlorophyll just yet.

Fruit

The grassland seeds have (mostly) fallen and the shrubland berries ripen while the woodland acorns grow fat. In abandoned agricultural fields, dead grass slowly sags horizontal, skeletons of radish, mustard, and hemlock rattle free their last seeds in the afternoon breezes. Perennial grasses in the more pristine prairies have dried, too, and just blue wild rye still holds a few seeds on its narrow, dense flower spikes. The bases of the bunchgrasses show a little green- real toughies! You would be lucky to find a single seed in the spent rattly seed cups of soap root and other lilies.

Side hilling strolls along the prairie-shrubland boundary reveals dark leaved coffeeberry shrubs thick with ripe purple-black juicy berries. Nearby, the mixture of ripening stages of blackberry offers a few small, seedy ripe fruit. Fruit eating birds (including band-tailed pigeons) and foxes have bellies full of these, as evidenced by their scat.

It will be a while before the acorns and buckeye nuts are ripe: they grow day-by-day. Acorn woodpeckers settle for bugs or last year’s cache of acorns for sustenance.

Migration

As the season progresses, wildlife moves. The last of the barn swallows have just fledged (this last week!) and are fast growing muscle to make their long journey south. Cooper hawk and kestrel will be free of the swallows’ vigilant fuss by the middle of September.

This year’s batch of adolescent dragonflies is patrolling the air from zero to 50’ above the dry grasslands and chaparral ecosystems, far from their natal homes. They dart about capturing the insects that have matured and taken flight after devouring leaf, shoot, and seed from the prolific biomass below. Below our feet, in the deep and complex matrix of gopher and ground squirrel burrows, newts pace back and forth stalking invertebrate prey.

On foggy days, chorus frogs that have been emerging from drying ponds climb further out on tree limbs or hop further from their wetland birthplaces to find places with richer food and fewer competitors. These talkative amphibians make their squeaky hinge croaks across the extensive canopies of Fort Ord’s live oak woodlands in the long days of misty-fog “summer.”

Big things are on the move in the ocean as well. My favorite summer whale is the giant blue whale, which is typically seen in the Monterey Bay from July – October. August sitings have been scant, but still, they are out there! Meanwhile, our population of gray whales are at the height of their arctic adventures, way, way north – feasting on krill and wondering if this year is a good one to sneak over to the Atlantic Ocean. This year is the third lowest ice sheet coverage in the last nearly 50 years… gray whales were hunted out of the Atlantic and may soon act on their yearning for those ancestral feeding grounds.

Fire Season

Monsoon season brought hundreds of lightning strikes to California last weekend ushering in the fire season across large areas of the state. We just passed the anniversary of the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire and, before that, the 2009 Lockheed Fire. Mid-August has been the time for the Monterey Bay to burn recently, but September and October are historically fire months as well. Our cool July and ongoing cool nights have combined to help keep things less dry, but coastal heat waves are quickly removing any residual moisture. As interior California heats up and typical conditions prevail, the moderating effect of the ocean keeps us cooler and sometimes moister so the fire danger is less. That hasn’t stopped fires from happening, though, including a roadside fire in Davenport not long ago. There are no terrific heat waves foreseeable for the coast and no predictions of remnant tropical storms carrying thunder and lightning, so thanks for those things (for now). A reminder, though- it is Not Too Late to clear fuels and otherwise prepare. Recall from Santa Rosa that fire can carry way into town, so work to do even there. Wondering where to focus? Zone Zero- the 5 feet out from structures…nothing flammable there!

Midsummer’s challenge: crunch some madrone leaves under your feet. The crispy noise, the beautiful patterns of fallen madrone leaves, the peely bark…some deep delicious experiences are in store for you if you can get there.

Rain, Mushrooms, Fire, and More

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

Water

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

A LBM, Little Brown Mushroom, by Cassandra Christine

Fire

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

Restoration

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

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

Working Fields and Orchards

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

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

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

Waterfall at Molino Creek Farm by Cassandra Christine

Welcome Fall

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

More Typicality

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

Fields of Tomatoes

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

Flowers

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

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

Fall Color

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

More Return of the Birds

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

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

Hey Rick, hay rick!

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

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

The Saga of the Santa Cruz Tarplant

copied here from The Four Seasons, Volume 10, Number 4

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The US Bureau of Land Management- Species Conservationists?

The California division of the Bureau of Land Management suggests that it is concerned about rare species, but what evidence is there for those of us considering their management of Cotoni Coast Dairies? It is crucial that public land managers take care of rare wildlife and plants – doesn’t it seem like public lands are the right place for species conservation? Let’s consider what we’ve seen…

Background

The BLM has some great policies to guide its management of rare species. It has a guidance manual, Manual 6840 “Special Status Species Management,” that says that BLM will manage not only for species on the USA’s list of threatened and endangered species, but also for species that are candidates for listing as well as those which State wildlife agencies consider priorities for conservation. The manual directs each BLM State office to keep a list of State Sensitive Species (both wildlife and plants) and to update those lists every 5 years in collaboration with State wildlife agencies.

BLM California has published the following lists of sensitive plants and wildlife.

California BLM’s Sensitive Species: Problems

Although BLM’s policies are good, somehow their implementation at Cotoni Coast Dairies, designated as one of 5 onshore units of California’s Coastal National Monument, has been faulty. For instance, plant species listed by the State as rare (Rank 1B) are automatically considered sensitive according to BLM policy, but the BLM California sensitive plant list is missing three of the California rare plant Rank 1B species that have been documented at Cotoni Coast Dairies: Choris’ popcornflower, Santa Cruz manzanita, and Monterey pine. In addition, although BLM’s State Sensitive Plant List has Point Reyes Horkelia, it is not noted as occurring under the management of the Central Coast Field Office, which oversees Cotoni Coast Dairies. Moreover, the last time BLM’s sensitive wildlife list was updated was 2009; it is missing many species recognized by California Department of Fish and Wildlife as rare, including some that occur at Cotoni Coast Dairies. Here are the Cotoni Coast Dairies’ wildlife species that would have been included on BLM’s sensitive wildlife list if the BLM California State Director Karen Mouritsen were following her mandated actions under Manual 6840:

*Common name*	*Latin name*	*Rarity Status*

Grasshopper sparrow	Ammodramus savannarum	CA Species of Special Concern (nesting)
Northern harrier	Circus cyaneus	CA Species of Special Concern (nesting)
Olive-sided flycatcher	Contopus cooperi	CA Species of Special Concern (nesting)
American badger	Taxidea taxus	CA Species of Special Concern
San Francisco dusky-footed woodrat	Neotoma fuscipes annectens	CA Species of Special Concern

BLM Central Coast Field Office: Problems

The staff at BLM’s Central Coast Field Office have described themselves as being ‘conservationists.’ If this is so, then they are prevented from carrying out their self-professed ideology by someone higher up in BLM, perhaps at the State BLM level under Director Mouritsen’s oversight. In 2021, Michael Powers is listed as the author of the “Biological Monitoring Plan, Cotoni-Coast Dairies unit of the California Coastal National Monument, Updated December 2021.” It is odd that there is a monitoring plan in absence of the science plan mandated by the 6220 Manual, which provides policy for managing units of National Monuments under BLM’s stewardship. This oddness continues when one more closely peruses Mr. Powers’ monitoring plan.

Section V of the monitoring plan is titled “Special Status Species,” but the section fails to mention the majority of wildlife and plants on California BLM’s sensitive species lists. The only species listed in this section are the California red-legged frog, steelhead trout, and coho salmon – these noted as ‘Federally Listed’ at the top of that section. The section of the monitoring plan fails to list the monarch butterfly, which was published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a candidate for listing as endangered a year before the monitoring plan, in 2020. According to BLM policy in the 6840 manual, federally published candidate species are to be considered sensitive species with such monitoring plans.

BLM Natural Resource Impacts

Some would suggest that plans are just plans and lists are just lists, but how do these things really matter? Someone in one of the California BLM offices ordered candidate species monarch butterfly habitat to be destroyed at Cotoni Coast Dairies (one day, we’ll know who!). Destroying that habitat makes it more difficult to restore healthy populations of monarch butterflies on Planet Earth. The increasing rarity of monarch butterflies that BLM has created places more burden on other landowners, both public and private to help monarchs not become extinct.

More broadly, someone evidently told BLM’s Mr. Powers not to consider the entirety of California State BLM-listed sensitive species in the monitoring and, presumably, management of Cotoni Coast Dairies. Since BLM State or local officials have not asked for help with budget, there must be some other issue, but political issues don’t seem logical. BLM’s policy states the following reason for analyzing, monitoring, and planning for the conservation of sensitive species: “to promote their conservation and reduce the likelihood and need for future listing under the ESA.” The majority of Americans on either side of the political divide support wildlife conservation. It is in everyone’s interest for species not to qualify for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Without concerted collaborative effort, it is likely that at least one of the sensitive plants or animals at Cotoni Coast Dairies will face listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the next 30 years. The Point Reyes Horkelia is probably the most likely species, but the Monarch butterfly is also quite likely. The BLM has no plans to monitor those species, so the agency won’t know if its management of Cotoni Coast Dairies is helping or hurting those species.

What You Can Do

Would you please help? Please write State Director Mouritsen and ask her to protect sensitive species at Cotoni Coast Dairies as well as throughout California. You might mention that she should:

Order the Central Coast Field Office to consider BLM California’s sensitive plants and wildlife at Cotoni Coast Dairies as required by BLM’s 6840 Special Status Species Manual.
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive wildlife list in collaboration with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as mandated by the BLM’s 6840 Special Status Species Manual.
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive plant list to include the State ranked 1B plant species documented at Cotoni Coast Dairies, as mandated by the 6840 Manual.
Respect those who care about natural resource protection as much as she respects those clamoring for access for mountain bikes at Cotoni Coast Dairies.
Publish a Science Plan for Cotoni Coast Dairies as required by BLM’s 6220 National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, and Similar Designations (Public) Manual

That could be a short email note….it would be fast to write! It could even be a cut-and-paste of the those bullets. What we need is numbers of notes to show the Director that there are lots of people who care. Here’s her email address: kmourits@blm.gov It would be great if you could cc me, so I have a record of the communications: coastalprairie@aol.com

-this article originally published in Bruce Bratton’s impactful weekly blog BrattonOnline.com

Lushness, Still, but Rapidly Drying

Gusty winds and cold nights faded quickly to calmer breeze and warmer days. Now, the grass bolts quickly and everything goes to bloom. Lushness seems on the edge of fading, we don’t know how long the green will last. Already, the thinnest soils are turning tawny in the coastal facing prairies.

Fading Mud, To Dust

After the ground’s gushiness fades, the farmers work the ground. The fields are getting tilled. Cover crops are almost all gone, mowed and integrated into the soil. With the farm roads dry, in comes a compost delivery: fine organic crumbly brown piles getting distributed into some important places, including the orchards.

Orchard Blooming

Orchard blossoms burst forth. The earliest flowers are past, cherry petals falling like snow, the first fruit seems to be setting…same with the plums, prunes, and apricots. Now, the apple trees start blossoming. Our one old gravenstein apple tree, with the earliest apples to ripen, is aglow in full bloom. Other apple trees are coming along, a diversity of flower colors, shapes, and sizes. Meanwhile, the vines…

Two Dog Farm Chardonnay Grape Vines Springing from Dormancy

Wine!

Recently, our Two Dog Farm Wine endeavor has started returning deliciousness. The Bartles opened a bottle of their very own Chardonnay at a recent gathering and oh! the praise rang high! The promise of a larger harvest looms for this fall. The neatly pruned and tied vines are flushing leaves and flower clusters.

Elusive Wild Things

Scat is easier to see than the furries. Coyotes, bobcats, and weasels talking sh**, carefully placed to make inter- and intra-species statements, scatting. A small weasel spotted in the orchard, chicken owners worried. No bobcats for so long. Deer tracks but no deer. Skunk digging but no skunk.

Flies.

And now suddenly a hundred types of flies buzzing about. Flies on poop, flies on flowers, flies frolicking in pairs tumbling on the ground. No face flies, yet, luckily. Clouds of midges, clouds of gnats. Different flies in the forest, different flies on the road.

Winged Friends

The purple martin colony returned from way down south. This is one of two colonies in Santa Cruz County. They have the most distinctive, amazing throaty deep chirps. Goodness, they make a lot of noise. Glad to be back, I guess.

And the stranger noises are coming from the ravens. Maw and Caw are greeting friends passing through with their cluck-clicking patterns, rolling upside down, dipping and turning playfully. Perhaps a bit of this greeting is the kids coming back to say hello. Just the pair, mostly, but then there are brief visitations. The pair stand watch in the freshly tilled fields looking for the lost or injured rodents for lunch.

Two flickers poke and explore something in the ground. The thrasher sings a most refined and eloquent soliloquy.

Flap flap flap! 40 band tailed pigeons wheel across the sky and settle back into the walnut trees. Catkin feasts! It is a good time for the flock, bigger than in recent years.

A Wild Phacelia from Roundabouts the Farm

Flowers

Walnut leaves unfurl with the droopy elongation of the catkins that survive by sheer number the feasting of the pigeons. Poppy displays wash orange across the south-facing slopes across Molino Creek and brighten the grassy balds along the highway. Whorled lupines poke up from the sea of grasses in patches around the farm.

The Harvest One Gwen avocado reminds us about the fruit that this portion of the harvest season will one day bring. One Gwen tree does not enough avocados make. Ironically, the fructification of Spring is the hungriest time of year. Pre seed. Pre fruit.

– also simultaneously published at Molino Creek Farm’s website