Western bluebird

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 6th 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?

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

A Preponderance of Fog

The memory of sunny spring days slipped behind a fog bank. The muffled quietness is emphasized by mysterious pattering drips echoing from the hidden depths of the forest. A single flute-like song from a hermit thrush serenades the slowly darkening evening as it becomes night. The winds have died. All is damp and chill.

Ground Birds

Somehow, the quail predicted this cold spell. Everyone has been asking where the puff ball baby quail are – this is the normal season, and they are late. The fluffy turkey babies are out, though. Passing carefully in our cars, they peep loudly after diving into the ditch, scared that momma will lose them. Mother turkey herds the children a bit, but not too frantically, not like the more fretful quail. The quail are in pairs and in a few small groups, the hens must be full of eggs awaiting the return of warmth. Wet grass is hypothermic to baby birds.

Box Birds

Bluebird parents dip and dive, scooping up caterpillars and bugs. Off they hurry to the nest box where squeaking kids beg noisily for food. Perched at the nest box opening, mother bluebird eyes the gaping mouths of her chicks, picks the lucky one who gets fed, and off she goes to find the next catch. Father bluebird returns with food, same story. They come and go all day, feeding the quickly-growing hungry young ones. In between parental feeding, the babies go quiet. A scrub jay perches on the nest box. Both parents alight nearby. It is a silent standoff for a few minutes until I scare the jay away. Nasty nest predators! Four of the five bluebird boxes have nests this year. Electric blue male bluebirds are quite the color show. We look forward to a menagerie of young in the not-too-distant future.

Lush

The land is lush. Wild oats are 5 feet tall, wild radish bushes 4 feet around, and wild cucumber vines hang heavily on our 7’ fences. A hike through the forest, even on trails has become a swimming breaststroke to part the tall, fast-growing post fire blueblossom bushes. The ground surface is buried under several layers of canopies, hidden holes hold worry for footfall ankle twisting. The native iris are already fading. Nuts hang from hazelnut bush branch tips. The live oaks on the edge of the meadows are dense with new growth and thick with leaves.

Tiny Fuji apples, just forming. Photo by Sylvie Childress, Molino Community Orchard Photojournalist

Orchard Fruiting

Apple flower petals have long since fallen and small fruit have formed. It is time to thin the fruit, to keep the branches from being too heavy, to make for bigger fruit, and to keep the trees from bearing only in alternate years. The first mow is behind us, but the regrowth is thick already wanting the next mow soon. Wide oat leaves and thinner leaved tufts of dark green weedy rye grass poke up from a thick mat of mowed material. A rich moldy smell permeates the air. Nearby, bell beans and vetch that we missed mowing the first round are vibrantly blooming and growing high. Between cover crop and understory weeds, patches of native strawberry are in fruit: the apple orchard’s first harvest! With the late rain, the strawberries are the biggest we’ve ever seen and oh so sweet!

Sylvie Childress, Photographer and Hand Model. Wild strawberries in the Community Orchard understory

Farm Work

Farmers are planting, and there are neat rows of seedlings nestling into freshly tilled fields. Onions and sunflowers as well as rows and rows of tomatoes are pushing roots into the soft brown soil.

Also, the mowers are mowing. As is too often the case, one of our BCS tractors went down and is off to repair just when we needed it most. Bob moved the sickle bar mower to the other BCS and off we went once again. Sheaths of grass are felled in neat rows, drying. The timing…as the thistles begin to flower and before the radish seeds get ripe. Earlier, regular we swiped the hay field with the mower to discourage nesting birds- those paths also add heterogeneity for swallow feeding, coyote loping, and skunk snuffling.

-this also posted at Molino Creek Farm’s webpage.

Bluebirds Now, Acorns Later

The bluebirds’ wet warbles call from fence lines, the birds swoop, scooping up grasshoppers from the dusty ground, picking off caterpillars from stalks of dry grass. Acorns fatten on the oaks, not yet ripe, not yet falling. The days shimmer from bright sunshine and a clear dark blue sky. It is nearly half way between the summer solstice and the fall equinox; the days are becoming noticeably shorter, the nights sometimes warmer, the cricket songs more diverse and louder. And, full moon is tomorrow.

Citrus Hill, now with oodles of new avocado trees growing up fast

The Silence of the Birds

The jays and acorn woodpeckers are more silent. Most of the birds have quieted considerably. Cooper’s hawk is terrorizing the entire range of bird life, but the quail are its favorite game. It is everywhere: flying through the apple orchard, winging around corners of buildings, soaring above the fields…full of the energy of the hunt. The northern harrier is more surprising, returning for stints and then disappearing for a day or hours – its hunting ground extends beyond Molino Creek Farm. Two red tailed hawks are constantly but less energetically hunting, sometimes soaring, often perched, watching, waiting. The night brings the barn owls’ metallic screech; these are as commonly calling as the great horned owls- the fire may have favored the return of barnies because there is less of the great horned’s favorite dense tall forest cover. There’s even a barn owl baby calling in the San Vicente creek canyon just over the ridge. I worry, though, since there are great horned owls…when will we find a pile of barn owl feathers in the field- that’s a repeating pattern: the great horned owls always seem to win.

Sunflower Show

 Judy’s sunflowers are making quite a show. What skill to keep a batch always coming into bloom through the entire farming season, making bouquets for farmers’ markets each week. Bright yellow cheerful sunflower heads…the dominant cut flower in the irrigated field alongside onions, zucchinis, cucumbers, and pole beans. She grows a lovely small patch of diverse market crops.

Sunflowers – for sale at local farmers markets

Apples A’ Hoy

Meanwhile, in the apple orchard the burgeoning crop of fruit is unbelievably large. Almost every branch of every apple tree is bent with full weight of fattening fruit, props holding them from breaking or resting on the ground. The frequent zipping by of the hawks have substantially decreased bird damage to apple fruit. Gala apples are always the winners: last to set and first to ripen. We recalled that the second week of September is the week of gala, but it might be early…

Oranges at Molino? Moooo

On Citrus Hill, near the Barn, we have been plucking cara cara oranges from the two trees we planted a few years back. The first substantial crop of cara cara has been wonderfully juicy and sweet: Score! Cara cara navel oranges are crosses between ruby red grapefruit and navel orange. Its flesh is redder than normal oranges. We are very very stoked to be able to grow a tasty orange: the others we’ve tried make okay juice, but they aren’t that good to eat just plain- cara cara oranges ARE good.

The view downhill of Molino…down Molino Creek Canyon to the coast

Night Walks

Shorter, hotter days create conditions for night watering of the orchard, leading to late night walks to turn off irrigation valves. This leads me to unavoidable opportunities for nurturing the nocturnal naturalist in me. Tonight’s observation: black widow spiders aka Molino farm road median lurkers. Over and over again I witnessed (for the first time!) black widow spiders busily building web networks 4” or less from the soil surface on the unimproved road median strips, emanating from web encrusted gopher holes that must be their lairs. Another nocturnal roadside observation: the emergence of many brown field crickets, now evident in the chorus from various areas. Also, slender shiny dark brown ‘night ants,’ tiny cockroaches, big greasy looking black field crickets, and a myriad of different spiders. No mammalian eye shine gave something away with my bright headlamp, darn.

Rodent Fiasco

The fact that this is an epic Rodent Year still is in force. Mark Jones reports hundreds of rodents fleeing the path of the mower. Every inch has been rototilled by gophers. Farmers are losing crops. Orchardists are seeing girdling, making for more urgent trunk clearing. Every storage shed reeks of mice. A family of 10 mickey mouse deermice greeted me when opening up the small orchard tool storage shed. The bunnies have proliferated in areas, as well. And that fox which we had been seeing down the road a bit…well, its moved onto the farm! Prints in the dust, leaping fox scattering to hide: welcome back Gray Fox!

Hoping you get some warm weather basking!

-this is from my weekly blog at Molino Creek Farm’s webpage

Dry Winter Skies

Ravenous

You might recall the strain of conversation about Maw and Caw our resident ravens. I just want to say that they are So Cute! Well, a little more: they love each other and you can tell it- constantly fretting about one another and this time of year gazing at each other, playing follow the leader and other games. They are well enough fed to have lots of spare time and they fill it with fun. If you travel downhill and along the coast, you find Other Farm Ravens, and not in isolated pairs…big playful troupes of them, paired, yes, but 20, 30, or 50 strong groups – noisy tribes hopping up and down flushing grasshoppers or something just like our two but more. Somehow, they seem smaller, too. I hope someone one day helps us find where our two nest.

Other Farm Wildlife

We’ve got Western Bluebirds in fine spring regalia in and out of the nest boxes already setting up shop. I think I’ll not mention the cacophony of blackbirds much – only to say that they are still noisy and beautiful.

What we don’t have are foxes or coyotes or skunks or racoons. I heard that there is distemper spreading through the predator community nearby- can anyone confirm?

This year had the driest January and February on record in many places around us- San Francisco for instance. Maybe not here, but maybe so. Bob Brunie was digging a hole to plant a new tree and found the soil dry to two feet depth. That’s weird for this time of year- very weird.

Winter Farming

Bob was planting a new peach tree- number 7 in the group of one day 8 on Citrus Hill. If someone wants to donate a nectarine or two, we’ll plant those, too. Whatever we do, we must set up irrigation to start running Soon for the orchards.

It has become mowing and weeding time- 2 Dog Crew has been tidying up the Chardonnay grapes so now the vineyard looks so neat and tidy.

The first cherry blossoms are emerging on the few trees that the fire spared. Maybe we’ll get a bunch of cherries this year!

Lapins Cherries – Starting to Bloom!

Around the Edges: Wildflowers

In the wild places of the Farm flowers are blossoming. A common plant is called bee plant, a Scrophularia with flowers some say are like Micky Mouse – a pair of upright petals are like Mickey’s ears. The flowers are carrion colored red-brown and attract meat “bees” – really wasps. But, honeybees and hummingbirds have figured out those flower cups are filled with nectar, so the plants get lots of visitors right now…meat bees haven’t come out yet. Wild radishes have sprays of light flowers like sea foam across the fallow fields. Across the steep hillsides near Molino Creek, trilliums and other native bulbs are starting to flower as the forest produces more and more spring flowers.

Beeplant- a nectar rich native perennial
  • this post from my regular blog at Molino Creek Farm’s website. I am a partner in that collectively owned farm in northern Santa Cruz County, California.