Habitat Restoration at High Ground
Organics
High Ground Organics owns 38.5 acres bordering the wetlands of Harkins Slough in Watsonville. The half of High Ground's farm that slopes down to the slough is in a conservation easement, protecting it in perpetuity from development or farming activity of any kind. This highly degraded and impacted land is being restored for native habitat by the intensive efforts of restorationist Laura Kummerer, assisted by grants from NRCS (the Natural Resources Conservation Service). Below are some of Laura's articles, written for our CSA newsletter, concerning the restoration project. Laura often hosts volunteer work parties, which we will post here periodically.
Restoration Saturdays, Winter 2008
Restoration Saturdays, Saturday November 22nd and Saturday, December 13th: from 10 am to 12:30 pm: Help plant thousands of native rushes, sedges, grasses and wildflowers on High Ground Organics’ Conservation Easement. We’ll plant from 10–12:30, followed by potluck lunch, warm drinks, and bird watching. Meet at High Ground Organics, 521 Harkins Slough Rd. in Watsonville. (Note: We will plant rain or shine because the plants are happiest with a little rain. Just bring a good rain jacket and solid shoes!) Call Laura Kummerer (831)761-8694 for more details. (If you can’t make these dates, but have time during the week, call Laura to schedule a special time for you to come out.)
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Laura Kummerer's Articles
Hope in the Wild Seeds, November 3, 2008 As I enter into the third year of restoring the damaged grassland on High Ground Organics’ Conservation Easement, I am surrounded by seed. Bags upon bags of native grass and wildflower seed are crowding every empty corner of my living space. Fifty gallon drums of seed stalks are stashed in to any dry, rodent free niche I can find on the farm. I feel like an acorn woodpecker carefully stowing away my precious harvest in a granary tree for lean times. Every time I walk by one of my “granaries”, I am filled ith hope in the transformative power of these bags bulging with the promise of new life.
These seeds are a culmination of two years of work. Small quantities of them were harvested at the beginning of this project from the few remnant native bunch grass and wildflower stands left around the Watsonville Slough system. They were then grown up to seedlings in the greenhouse and planted and tended in farm beds on the edge of the farm. We have harvested from them for the last two years and have turned the handful of seeds we started with into bushels of them. You may wonder why we went to all of this trouble for our seed when native grass seed can be easily purchased in a seed catalogue. Well, just as the CSA provides local produce that is grown in balance with the cycles, nutrients and soils of a local ecosystem, these locally collected native grass seeds have the genetic coding that evolved with the unique ecological processes of the Watsonville Slough system. We want to preserve the seeds of this region since they are uniquely adapted to the cycles of this area rather than buy seed that evolved to live with the cycles of the Central Valley or elsewhere.
I wonder if the acorn woodpecker enjoys harvesting and admiring the beauty of seeds as much as I do. The sensual process of gathering seed by hand is one of the most calming and meditative activities I know. When you collect seed time slows down and you get to know the plant you are collecting from in an intimate way. You get to really see the soft grey fuzz on the underside of the Blue Wild Rye leaves. You get to run your fingers up the tall, towering stalk of this bunch grass and feel the seeds release themselves into your collection basket. Each seed looks, feels and ripens differently. When you harvest you get to recognize these differences in your gut.
The Meadow Barley seed for example doesn’t ripen all at once. It ripens from the top down. So when you harvest you must make many passes. Sometimes it takes a month or more for every seed on the plant to be ready to be pinched off and put in your collection basket. The beautiful Purple Needle grass is the opposite. It can go from immature to fully ripe and falling off its stem within three days if there is a heat spell. Although the timing of harvest is tricky, the seed you do catch is quite beautiful. It is covered with the softest coat of velvety hairs which help to keep it from desiccating in the hot, California sun. If I was a microscopic insect I would pick the plush Purple Needle Grass seed to bed down on over any other. The California Oat Grass seed has another strategy for sending its smooth and delicate seed into the world. It folds its most viable seed between its stem and its leaf blade. In early summer the stems fall off the plant, but the seed is not released until the winter rains. You harvest the seed from this mounding bunch grass by raking up the dried stems that have fallen.
As I write this article the first rains of the season are falling outside. The rains are the call that the land is ripe to receive the beautiful array of seed that I have stashed away in my “granaries”. In a few days this seed will be thrown back out into the wild, where hundreds of years ago it thrived. Although I make it sound haphazard, we are not quite just throwing the seed to the winds. These seeds will be sown into the land that we have been clearing of weeds and thatch over the past two years with our rotational grazing and hand weeding program. The weeds that inevitably will come as the winter rains continue will be mowed and kept short for the next two years to give the slower growing native grass seedlings the time to take up their space once again.
This winter I hope these wild seeds will find fertile soil and flourish in their new/old home. Along with sowing seeds, we will be planting 7,000 sedges, grasses, rushes and wildflowers that were grown from tiny seeds in our greenhouse. It will take a multitude of hands to bring this planting to life during the nourishing rains of winter.
Directions to High Ground Organics
From the South:
From the North: Take Hwy 1 south to the Hwy 152 Watsonville exit. Turn right at the light onto Green Valley Rd. Follow this across the freeway, past the new High School, to where the road ends. Take the last dirt road on your left, immediately before the closed gate.