Twenty Years Later...

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Hard to comprehend where the time went but this month is 20 years since we purchased our property and began this adventure... Fortunately, every day is still a ridiculous amount of fun!

We're currently in a wet spell, which is definitely appreciated considering we have already seen multiple days north of 90 already this spring. The rain gauge reads 31.64" for the year to date. That considered, all varieties of fruit have set terrifically so far!

I enjoyed teaching the Master Gardeners about citrus last Saturday and then presenting the same slides to the California Rare Fruit Growers on Sunday before their annual Citrus Tasting. Greetings to anyone landing here from either of those amazing communities.

Fingers crossed for a productive, uneventful (from a fire/weather perspective) summer!!

Coming Around Again!

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It was a truly pleasant summer in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After the past few years of scorching sun and fires, foggy mornings were a welcome occurance. Incredible that we made it through without any truly brutal tripple digit heatwaves and without needing to break out the air purifiers once!

In fact, fire season is over... 4.74" of rain have fallen so far this fall. The band-tailed pigeons already migrated, wild turkeys are gathering, and our fruit crops are fat and happy! Lots of varieties are moving: Pineapple guavas, Pindo palm dates, Bearss limes, Australian finger limes, Yuzus, Bergamots, Meyer lemons, Buddha Hand citrons, Tunas (prickly pear cactus fruit), Fuyu persimmons, 'Wonderful' pomegranates and four varieties of Mandarins have gone out the door in the past couple of weeks.

Satsuma mandarins and Hayward kiwis should start hitting stores and restaurants next week. Thank you to all our customers. It is pleasure growing for you!!

The Year That Slid Away...

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This is our first genuinely rainy day of the 2024 season: 0.55" so far since midnight, bringing us to 0.91" for the year to date. Quite a bit of time has elapsed since our last post... The year, quite literally, slid away.

A few weeks after our update last January, a large section of Mountain Charlie Road began traveling downhill. We were cut off from schools, work, life... It was truly one of those 'you don't fully appreciate what you have until it's gone' moments. The road was out from February through the end of September. We are super grateful to have it back!!

That said, lots of photos above of the year gone by. Thank heavens the rain is returning... there is hope of another system rolling through later this week. It has been a very dry fall with a couple of fires in the past few weeks entirely too close for comfort.

Sending love and light to all who follow these musings!

New Beginnings

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Time and seasons slip away... much has elapsed since our last update here! We're already 12.44" into a new rain year. That's ~5" below our historical average for the first week in January, mostly on account of it being such a dry November. Fingers crossed for El Niño to pull us into the black over the next couple of months.

On the farm front, we're back around to citrus, although our yields on that front are also trending lower. Last spring's snow wreaked havoc on developing citrus blossoms. Even the Meyer lemons are only holding fruit on their lower/more shielded branches. That said, the fruit we do have is exemplary.

In other news, we recently received additional Organic Certification from The Real Organic Project. We support their mission to stop the corrosion of the organic label by industrial agrobusiness. We are also proud to be among the founding households in the newly incorporated Mountain Charlie Firewise Chapter. Lots more information and resources about the Firewise program can be found on their National website as well as the Firesafe Santa Cruz website.

Wishing all a happy, healthy new year!

Successful Seasons

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What a winter... over 70 inches of rain so far (and still falling as I type), and nearly 7000 pounds of citrus out the door. We finally "sold out" for all intents and purposes of full size oranges, mandarins and lemons yesterday.

The winter's weather included the President's Week Snowpocalypse, which blanketed the Santa Cruz mountains with 8-14" of the white stuff depending on elevation, as well as a carpet of power outages and broken limbs. The cleanup is still ongoing and was only compounded by last week's "bomb cyclone," which came equipped with whipping winds, power outages and blocked roads of its own!

Between squalls, the sun is becoming an ever more present visitor. Yesterday was outright warm. Birds are busy, buds are breaking, and plants are flowering everywhere... Already looking forward to mulberries!

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