The Land
The land where your favorite organic and biodynamic grapes are grown is home to a diversity of wildlife. With only about 10% of the Frey home ranch property developed for housing and winery buildings, the vast majority of the landscape remains wild for our wilderness neighbors. In this episode of the Frey Vines podcast, we’ll hear from our neighbor Cathy Monroe about the many indigenous plants and animals on the land. Please enjoy the full transcript below, listen to the podcast on your favorite streaming platform, of watch the episode on our YouTube Channel.
MOLLY FREY: Welcome to the eighth episode of the Frey Vines podcast, telling the story of organic wine. Today’s spotlight is on the land stewardship that is a part of our way of life at Frey Vineyards. Since the 1960s, the Frey family has made a home in Redwood Valley. Located in Mendocino County, in Northern California, the wild landscape above the Tomki Road Winery is filled with redwood groves, oak woodlands, and open meadows near deep woods. This land is home not only to the Frey family, but also to a diverse population of wild animals who also belong here.
Over the years, we have had the privilege of tending this land. Not only do we grow organic grapes on the flatlands, but we are committed to protecting the wild lands that surround the Frey properties on the hillsides and forests. This has helped ensure that our wild neighbors are able to live their natural lives without any toxic chemicals ever coming into contact with their native environment. About twenty-five years ago, a large portion of the wild lands were put into a land trust. Katrina and Jonathan Frey helped to make sure that the wild lands surrounding our family property would be protected in perpetuity from logging, as a conservation easement, with the Mendocino County Land Trust.
The Frey ranch borders neighbors who are also very invested in the protection of the wildland habitat surrounding our rural homes. With stewardship in mind, we made the decision to set up some “critter cams” around both the Frey ranch and our neighboring wildlands. Our neighbors also like to set up these critter cams because it provides helpful insights as to who is out there and how the populations are doing on the land.
One of our neighbors is an avid naturalist. Cathy Monroe has lived next to the Freys since the 1960s. She’s on the board of the Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS). She has been very gracious in allowing us to also set up several critter cams on her family’s property to showcase who our shared non-human neighbors are. I recently sat down with Cathy to discuss who we’re collectively finding with the non-invasive lens view of the critter cams we’ve placed on the property beyond the reach of where humans usually frequent.
CATHY MONROE: My name is Cathy Monroe. Pleased to have the Freys as neighbors, and we share a wonderful environment despite the fire going through here.
MOLLY: It was lovely to hear Cathy’s reflections on who is hanging out in the neighborhood and what she enjoys seeing the most.
CATHY: It’s very clear we have mountain lions here. I mean, we see evidence from their kills too, but they've, they've seen that sometimes (we always think of mountain lions being solitary and) they aren't necessarily solitary. The cameras have shown you know, more than one together.
One of my favorite things on the cams is on the main spring. I love watching a bear come to the spring and dipping their muzzle in there and just sipping up the water. You could just see they emanate this joy of water, so I think the cams are wonderful to watch just for that kind of opportunity to not just to see who's there, but to just see how they interact with the environment.
One of my other ones that I've, a favorite one was a skunk and a mountain lion going around the tree, figuring out who's in charge. So, it's kind of that those cameras really give us a chance to kind of peep in and see what's happening in the woods.
MOLLY: In addition to being able to identify the local population, the critter cams provide ecological information about our surrounding ecosystems. Cathy was clear on the…
CATHY: Importance of saving these habitats there. Uh, especially the water zones because water's critical to life. And you'll see like the birds will come in and bathe in the, in the little pools there. And then, and then we discovered and we confirmed it 'cause we saw it later down here, that we have, had, have had a Fisher, which is a very rare mammal in this area, and they were living up there too.
You know, there's, and, and, and because we have an oak woodland. There's lots of good food. Acorns are an important food. One of the, the plants that, um, burned up in where it was really hot. Um. Were the fir trees and, but, um, I'm sure that some are starting to come to resprout. 'cause there were a few, it was interesting the way the fire went, how it kind of went, followed the terrain. And so there are areas that didn't get burned. So there are mother trees there to spread seed. And then the oaks. The acorns are so incredibly important for food.
The madrone, the Madrone and Manzanita are important food sources, and I love the Manzanita berries, which are actually fun to suck on. You don't chomp on 'em because of the seed. Uh, they have a great flavor, but their, uh, Latin name is includes bear in it, ALUS, because it's a favorite food of the bears.
When I've had a forester come out here just to give me some advice, he was impressed with just the variety here. We have tan oaks and live oaks and, and black oaks and white oaks. But the variety then. It means there's all kinds of food out there for animals and general habitat too. Yeah. And then it's been. With the fire going through it's been really amazing to see the resilience of nature and how quickly like the bay laurels have come up. A lot of plants have been able to come up from base sprouts, and so even though they're not, I, I have, I, I look in one areas and I'll, I'll think, oh gee, that's a nice-sized tree, and then I'll look at the few trees which didn't get burned. I said. Oh, but that's where the can be supposed to be way up there. So it's gonna be a long time before we have the same kind of forest.
MOLLY: In 2017, there was a massive wildfire that came through the Frey Vineyards landscape and the entire neighborhood in Northern Redwood Valley. The devastation to homes, habitat, and human life was incredibly high. (PAUSE) It’s been many years since then, and we are finally finished with the rebuilding of the winery. For the wild animals however, the change in the ecosystem was also quite dramatic, with many trees dying in the fires. Part of the beauty of the critter cameras is that we have a window into the recovery of our wild neighbors on the land.
CATHY: But there is resilience in, there's already new habitat being established. and I know that we've trimmed some of these, uh, base sprouts to try to, to make more growth happen into trees instead of just bushes. But when there were bushes, they were good habitat too for the birds.
Such, such a variety. One of the things we've missed that is, has not reestablished well. We've had a lot of the duff destroyed in the fire, so we don't have that spongy dirt that's great for mushrooming because this used to be great mushrooming territory. Yeah. And so it's a different thing walking in the woods. Yeah. My nephews have found there's a few pockets that didn't get burned, so they know where to look for some chantrelles.
MOLLY: We’ve set up several of the critter cams that we feature on our social media channels on Cathy’s property. There’s a madrone tree in particular that always seems to have a diverse array of visitors. These critter cams have allowed us all an opportunity to dive in deeper to the connection we have with the land and the animals who live here. Being able to see firsthand through these videos who our neighbors are inspires us to continue to care for the land.
We also had the privilege of having a wildlife survey done by an environmental scientist through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on the Frey Vineyards property in the last several years. They had cameras that were able to record an incredible diversity of mammals, reptiles, and birds, too; they also had audio recorders that could identify eight different kinds of bats!
Also, many of our videos from the critter cams are available on our YouTube Channel as a best of the year series for the last several years, and we also make shorter reels that you can see on our social media pages, showcasing the diversity of wild animal life out here at the Frey Nature Reserve.
MOLLY: For questions or comments about the content shared here, Frey Vineyards or Frey wines, you can email info@freywine.com or call 1 800 760 3739. Our retail staff is happy to help you Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm Pacific Standard Time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Frey Vines Podcast, telling the story of organic grapes. We hope you'll tune in for our next episodes when we'll pluck more storied fruits off the Frey Vines.