Anyone who has spent a summer in Vacaville can tell you just how hot and dry it can be. Between the elevated temperatures during the day, and the steady winds which can come both day or night, it can be hard to keep your plants healthy and happy at their most sensitive stages. But that is only speaking of the plants you might be raising at home in your own yard, not to mention the various pests you might see coming out during these same conditions. Imagine the difficulty of trying to raise not just a plant but a tree whose lifespan will far exceed your own, in an area that lacks the convenience of a hose or irrigation system for water. In an area that lacks protection from the sun and the wind and from pests both large and small. Imagine going out year after year, learning each year from your mistakes to improve on them for the next year, just hoping to restore some iconic native trees to the hills above Vacaville in hopes of restoring a declining habitat and leaving a beautiful, living legacy behind for your family and your community to enjoy for years to come. That is what Bruce Hewett, Founder of the Browns Valley Oak Society, began doing almost ten years ago.
In 2017, while walking his dogs in the hills above Browns Valley, Bruce began noticing that the local, California native Blue Oaks, were dying back and that new trees were being eaten before they could grow to maturity. With each passing year, more trees would fall and leave more of the hillsides bare and without any cover. Bruce decided to take it upon himself to do something about that before the community lost all the local oak trees. He began to collect the dropped acorns from both the fallen and the still living oak trees. Bringing these home, he put them through a process of cold stratification to simulate the acorns going through a winter, for them to begin producing roots. Once the roots emerged, they would be transplanted into small containers to sprout and begin to grow before being taken back to the hills to be planted. But once the sprouted trees were taken back to the hills for planting, the various dangers to them began to be revealed. Excessive winds, sunburn, dehydration, and fire all contributed to the deaths of newly sprouted trees that he had planted. When not simply struck by acts of nature, the trees were targeted by cutworms, rabbits, deer, grazing cattle, and other pests, which would consume them and move on.
Many people, when faced with such overwhelming odds against their success, would have quit. But Bruce took each loss as a lesson to be learned from and slowly began to adjust and engineer new ways of getting the sprouts to maturity. Years of careful refinement have led to his most current solution: a border of local stones which helps to frame the planting area for each sprout, with a small cage encased with shade cloth overtop. While simple, these setups have significantly cut back on the losses of sprouts to various causes. The stones at the base of each enclosure work helpfully to keep water in and both rabbits and squirrels out. Each cage is carefully made of chicken wire and sized appropriately to the size of the sprout before being mounted to slender stakes with zip-ties. The cages are meant to prevent the deer and cattle from grazing on the sprouts, but Bruce has noted that in several instances he found that the cattle had pulled the cage off of its stakes only to then play with the cage and seem more interested in that than in grazing on the sapling. Each cage is also wrapped in two layers of shade cloth, which serves to cut down the amount of sun exposure each sprout receives, preventing sunburn. Bruce also noted, however, that the fine mesh of the cloth has also helped to cut down on the number of sprouts lost to local cutworms. And to further help prevent the sprouts from being taken by pests or disease, he has begun to plant not only Blue Oak sprouts, but Coast Live Oak and Valley Oak as well.
This seemingly straightforward design has come from years of working to protect the oaks and hundreds of attempts. Bruce noted that over the past nine years, he has collected and sprouted around four hundred acorns, which he has transplanted onto the hillsides. This is a monumental feat which he has accomplished primarily on his own. But despite the herculean efforts he has put forward, only a small number of sprouts have taken root and begun to grow. Now that Bruce has found a reliable way to protect the sprouts as they grow, what is needed is help. All the help that can be given.
The need for help is how I came to meet Bruce, and how the Browns Valley Oak Society has come together. While reading my local community Facebook page, I came across a post from Bruce asking if anyone in the community would be willing to step up and help to care for the oaks he had planted to help get them through summer. Three other members of our community and I accepted the call to take on twenty-one newly planted oak sprouts in hopes of getting them through summer. And in that, our fledgling project expanded from one daring leader to a team of five who all share the hope of seeing our local hills return to being a thriving, native oak forest. If you happen to see us gathering water or other supplies and carrying them up the trails above Browns Valley, do not be afraid to say hello and ask about how our oak sprouts are doing!
But if you are a resident of Vacaville, or specifically of Browns Valley, and want to help us expand our project, please reach out! We would love to have more of our fellow community members helping to collect the native acorns, sprout them, or to help us plant and maintain the sprouts along our hillsides! If you are interested in joining, please contact Bruce at 707-688-0165 or at BKAL1234@aol.com. My fellow members and I look forward to meeting with everyone interested in helping!
And until next time, good luck and happy growing!