Thank you Professor Sea, a wonderful compliment coming for you…

Indeed, Willow trees are voracious feeders. They will consume all water within reach. They have to be planted very carefully, well away from gas lines, electrical conduit, irrigation lines, concrete decks and so. They will tear all the stuff up. But they are very fast growers (with a short lifespan). If you plant them well away from human-made improvements, they will offer shade to animals, food and nesting habitat for birds, and as they age out, new trees (oak and pine) will start to grow under them – eventually you’ve recovered a desolate landscape into something verdant and healthy!
One more thing – Willows have a very effective growth hormone in their bark. Cut up a bunch of smaller Willow branches and soak them in water – and presto you have a supply of rooting hormone for any other plants. Try pouting the solution on tomato starters…bang, instant growth!

Thank you very much Simon. It’s amazing what you can find just on a slow walk on the sidewalk at dusk around Sonoma town. I took a walk along the Arroyo Seco creek a few nights ago – saw owls, hawks, deer, rabbits; and found an injured Red Tail Hawk – gathered it up carefully and took it to the Bird Rescue Center on Chanate Raod in Santa Rosa. https://www.birdrescuecenter.org Wonderful team of docs and nurses carefully examined it and likely it will be released at our ranch in a couple of weeks!

Les – Thank you, how did you end up on the old Owl blog post from the Random Topics post? Anyway, there are definite specs for Owl box installation. I could recite them here, but the best place to find all those details is with BOMP, the Barn Owl Maintenance Program here in Sonoma. See these two web pages: http://www.bompco.org/index.html and http://www.bompco.org/poor-box-design.html
Warmly. Ken

4-6 dozen per week starting in June, I think you’d make an excellent fresh egg farm stand salesperson!

Couldn’t agree more. Helpful to have your expertise and commentary re honey bees. There is a lot we don’t know about this. But why not be conservative and eliminate chemicals where possible? At my scale, 2-5 acre vineyards, it’s somewhat affordable and definitely sensible to be organic. In the 25-500 acre farming challenge, they’ll have to find ways to reduce and eventually stop using Roundup. There might be one minor defense for using Roundup – when an area of ground has been scraped, cleared, or manipulated in some – for example an old heavily-trod horse pasture (like at our ranch) – huge numbers of invasive weeds rush to take over. To give the native grasses a chance to repopulate, some VERY small amount of careful spot spraying of Roundup (on the individual weed leaves) seems like a good way to overcome invasive weeds and encourage native plant growth. Thoughts?