Tour beautiful Oak Hill Farm during fall harvest and help support the all-volunteer Sonoma Overlook Trail

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Filed under Events, Fall

home_slideshow_1_0You are invited to join Oak Hill Farm owner Anne Teller for a guided walking tour of her sustainably-farmed fields of flowers, vegetables and and fruit orchards on Saturday, October 1st from 10:30AM -1PM.

Oak Hill, a 25-acre farm at the foot of the Mayacamas and known to many by its distinctive Red Barn Store, is one of Sonoma Valley’s treasures. The Teller family has practiced sustainable agriculture for more than 50 years and harvests 200-plus varieties of organically-grown vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs as they naturally come into season.

The farm is part of a larger, 700-acre property held in perpetuity as protected wildlands.  Anne will be delighted to talk with us about the Tellers’ commitment to sustainable farming and to stewarding Oak Hill’s incredible natural resources.

This is an easy, flat walk of about two miles round-trip. Afterwards we will enjoy a discussion with a light lunch and wine.

The walk is limited to 40 people and reservations are required. A donation of $45 will secure your space.

All proceeds go toward upkeep of Sonoma Overlook Trail. The public trail is managed on an all-volunteer basis by a group of Sonomans who donate their time to keep the trail in good repair, protect natural habitat, assist visitors and lead hikes.

To place a reservation email us at  LaurieSOT@gmail.com

To learn more about Oak Hill farm, please visit oakhillfarm.net.

We’re Winning!

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Filed under Invasive Species, Yellow Star Thistle

P1010218Faithful readers of this blog (all two of you, and one is my Mom) will know that we’ve been fighting the good fight against the invasive non-native Yellow Star Thistle on both the Overlook and Montini properties. The season for pulling it runs from mid-May to August. Now that we are in August, when the weed dries out and the seed heads drop off, we must quit.

But I’m here to tell you that we are winning the war. This is the second year that I can certify that all of the infestations on the main properties of both the Overlook and the Montini have been essentially cleared. Judging from the number and size of the plants we are pulling in most areas (see the small plants pictured), we are depleting the seed bank, which can be viable for up to five years.

We could not have reached this point without essential assistance from Rich Gibson, a biologist and a Sonoma Overlook Trail volunteer steward, and the Sonoma Ecology Center’s EnviroLeaders program. Twice, at least half-a-dozen teenagers from the EnviroLeaders Program came out and helped decimate the worst patches of Yellow Star Thistle on the Montini Preserve. Tony Passantino, the SEC’s EnviroLeader’s program manager, has been very willing to bring his team out to support our removal efforts whenever we called for help. And the teenagers who are a part of this program are willing hard workers and ready to learn about the environment and how to keep it great. We so appreciate their help.

Next season expect a call to go out for help in decimating this scourge. And if you see it, please consider helping. The situation gets better every year, but we are still years away from eradicating it completely. We can use your help to make YST only a memory on these properties.

 

California Naturalist Training in Sonoma

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Filed under Events, Plant Life, Wildlife

“California is an incredible place to be a naturalist.”

So begins “The California Naturalist Handbook,” the standard textbook for a rigorous UC-approved course designed to turn local nature lovers into trained California Naturalists. These knowledge keepers act as park docents and as key leaders in the “citizen science” movement helping to shape California’s future.

Right now, Sonoma Ecology Center is teaming up with the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources to offer this accredited eight-week course locally – and we’re looking throughout Sonoma and Napa counties for people interested in joining the elite and venerable league of California Naturalists.

The course results in real college credits – but even better, it turns nature lovers into certified graduates of the UC California Naturalist Program, making them valuable authorities on California’s plants and animals, geology and soils, water, climate, biodiversity and much more.

California Naturalist courses are available at certain locations throughout the state, but this is the first time such a course will be offered at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. The course, held Monday evenings from 6 to 8:30 p.m., will run from Sept. 19 to Nov. 19 at Sugarloaf Park’s Robert Ferguson Observatory. Speakers will include professors from local colleges and universities and experts from Cal Academy and the Sonoma Ecology Center.

The course also will include four five-hour fieldtrips (Oct. 8th, 22 and Nov. 12, 19) lead by field experts in and around Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. As their final project for the program, each naturalist-in-training will complete an eight-hour volunteer service learning project for a community organization. Participants of this course will graduate with a specialized knowledge of the oak woodlands indigenous to the Mayacamas Mountains.

“We are thrilled to be offering the California Naturalist certification training this fall as an expansion of our education programming at Sugarloaf,” said Sonoma Ecology Center educator Tony Passantino. “Bringing an accredited college course to this state park at the heart of Sonoma and Napa valleys is a rare opportunity.”

Montini Invasive Species Kept at Bay!

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Filed under Nature

The Invasive species removal day was a huge success for both Montini Preserve and the Overlook Trail. In total, 10 crew and volunteers came out to the event, including my Enviroleader Teen crew members and veteran Volunteer Roy Tennant.

The group met up at the Montini Water Tanks and dispersed into 3 smaller teams, each equipped with their heavy-duty trash bags as well as a handheld GPS device. In addition to pulling up primarily Yellow Star Thistle, each group documented the location and approximate size of the outbreaks on their digital way points. This information is being transferred to the Sonoma Ecology Center’s Geographical Information staff to be documented and mapped. This is crucial baseline measurement to determine if/and where we are making progress on fighting back the noxious plants from the Preserve. “We are depleting the seed bank each season and things will get easier and easier from here on in until complete eradication”said Roy.

Additionally, some of the other invasive plants like Harding Grass have already gone to seed this season but the mapping will give our staff and volunteer crew a jump on locations for 2017 that can be noted on the map below.

Montini Trail Map Pest Plant Locations

The primary locations that we dedicated our weeding towards was the rip-rap culvert adjacent to the Water Tanks fire road, the meadow at the Intersection of Spotted Fawn and Rattlesnake Cutoff and some really bad meadows along Norrbom Road on the cusp of both Montini and Overlook.
As Roy put it, “I think it is safe to say that the YST on Montini is virtually gone (this year)…This also means that for the second season running we will have completely eradicated it.”

A huge thank you goes out to Roy for his ongoing efforts in weed management. Your quietly diligent efforts at fighting back Yellow Star Thistle at the Montini and Overlook properties for the benefit of both hikers and habitat should not go unnoticed. A thank you to Joanna for getting the word out and supporting the Montini Preserve Volunteer efforts.

Look for other outreach events at the Montini Preserve coming later this fall!

 

 

Once More Unto the Breach

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Filed under Plant Life, Spring, Yellow Star Thistle

IMG_1263Lately I’ve been too busy with a more important project to get my daily hike in on the Overlook and Montini trails. But yesterday I cleared some time and made my way there. I knew that we were well into the season of the invasive Yellow Star Thistle, so I took along a feed sack to pull what I could.

Those of you keeping score at home likely know that the Overlook Trail Stewards have been waging war against this pest, and that war has been stepped up in recent years. Last year we were successful in eradicating it from the main Overlook and Montini properties. We knew it would be back this year, but we also figured that given how we beat it back last year it likely wouldn’t be as bad.

Having inspected a couple locations where it was bad last year I’m happy to say that it isn’t nearly as bad this year. We are indeed making progress, but we also know that this is a multi-year war and that it will require us to be vigilant and relentless.

This war is led by volunteer Steward Rich Gibson, who has called work days for groups to get together and take out both Yellow Star Thistle and Scotch Broom – another non-native that has a tendency to take over the landscape. Without efforts such as these our landscape would look very different than what it should be, and has been for centuries.