#new cuyama

[unteriors]

Morales Street, New Cuyama, California.

[thoughtportal]

It sounds weird to say that carrots are having a moment, but social media has catapulted the humble root to a status resembling stardom. Anecdotal evidence suggests online carrot recipes trail in popularity only those for potatoes and brussels sprouts among vegetables, and Pinterest numbers support that: recipe searches for honey balsamic carrots on the platform are up 75% this year, while queries for roasted parmesan carrots skyrocketed 700%. Fresh carrots are an expanding $1.4 billion U.S. market, andAmericans are expected to consume 100 million pounds this Thanksgiving — roughly five ounces for every human being in the country.

At least 60% of those carrots are produced by just two companies, Bolthouse and Grimmway, both of which were acquired by buyout firms, in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

“There’s only two sources,” Adam Waglay, cofounder and co-CEO of Bolthouse owner Butterfly Equity, told Forbes. “We joke around — it’s kind of like the OPEC of carrots.”

Cartels are less funny for neighbors of the two producers in Southern California’s Cuyama Valley, who are calling for a boycott of Big Carrot over the amount of water their farms are sucking out of the ground. In 2022, Bolthouse and Grimmway together were responsible for 67%, or 9.6 billion gallons, of the area’s total water use. Local residents said they expect their wells to dry up if the carrot farms continue to use as much water as they do — Grimmway CEO Jeff Huckaby told Forbes his company has already reduced the amount of acreage it farms — and the two carrot producers have joined forces to defend their thirst in court. That worries local residents, who say they lack the deep pockets needed to wage a prolonged legal battle.

Cattle rancher Jake Furstenfeld places a boycott sign in New Cuyama, California in September.Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo

Water fights like this can take years to resolve, and often become a way to delay cutbacks, Karrigan Bork, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, told Forbes. “You see these rights again and again get trimmed back by the state or by courts,” Bork said. “In some cases, your savvy water users recognize that, and for them, just delaying that trimming back is a success, and the longer they can do that, the happier they will be.”

Price Concerns

Waglay uses the word “duopoly” to describe the two companies. Such market consolidationoften leads to higher prices, and the government has for years used increased consumer prices as an indicator of possible unfair competition. The U.S. Department of Agriculture declined to comment on any antitrust issues.

Since 2019, carrot producer prices have increased more than 40%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, outpacing the 22% inflation in the U.S. economy.

Carrot Top

Prices are near their highest since 2019, when Bolthouse was acquired by a private equity firm. Grimmway changed hands a year later.

Huckaby, the Grimmway CEO, told Forbes that the costs of a number of inputs have gone up, too. Packaging, fertilizer and fuel prices have all risen at a higher rate than inflation, he said, and California’s minimum wage has increased 27% since 2018. At $15 an hour, it’s the second-highest in the country.

Still, the carrot business has been a lucrative play. Total U.S. production value has increased 34% since 2019.

Duopoly Origins

Bolthouse, founded in 1915 in Grant, Michigan, started selling carrots packed in cellophane bags in 1959. In the 1970s and 1980s, production was centered around Bakersfield, California. After Bakersfield farmer Mike Yurosek invented “baby carrots” in 1986, consumption soared.

In the 1990s, Bolthouse ballooned into the largest carrot operator, reportedly shipping some 80% of California’s carrots. It amounted to half the U.S. carrot market in 1992, followed by Grimmway, founded by brothers Bob and Rod Grimm in 1969, and Yurosek’s family-owned outfit. Grimmway eventually bought out Mike Yurosek & Son. The carrot crop is now the tenth-biggest commodity in California, where one-third of America’s vegetables are grown.

Today, the industry’s growth could be limited by dwindling water supplies in the drought-prone Cuyama Valley, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles and 90 miles west of Bakersfield. But the companies behind the duopoly aren’t giving up without a fight.

Both businesses, which own their own manufacturing, are hitting a similar point in their ownership lifecycles. Private equity-backed businesses typically change hands every three to five years. In 2019, Butterfly Equity acquired Bolthouse from publicly traded Campbell Soup for $510 million in cash. A year later, Grimmway was acquired by Teays River Investments, a Zionsville, Indiana-based investment firm, for an undisclosed amount. That means both businesses are in the sweet spot of what most investors consider the hot time to unload an investment or take it public.

Los Angeles, California-based Butterfly has sold only one of its investments, an organic protein company called Orgain, acquired by Nestle Health Science in February 2022 after two years of Butterfly ownership. Grimmway is Teays River’s only current investment after exiting two others in 2019 and 2013. Teays River held those investments for eight years and one year, respectively.

Grimmway’s owner, which according to Pitchbook has $1.38 billion in assets under management, is backed by pension funds including the public employees of the states of Maine and Oregon, Texas teachers, the New York state Teamsters union and the Producer-Writers Guild of America.

Butterfly Equity, by comparison, has $4 billion in assets under management and is backed byexecutives of private equity giant KKR, where Waglay worked for eight years. The firm has done eight deals in the eight years since it launched. Butterfly also owns America’s largest striped bass farm, the largest free-range egg company, an avocado oil maker that controls 60% of the market, and a large whey protein manufacturer.

Water Rights

Bolthouse and Grimmway started working with each other in a way that competitors rarely do. They filed a lawsuit together in 2021 in Kern County, California to ask a court to decide how to split up the water of New Cuyama, where they farm.

What’s happening in Cuyama Valley is an example of the kinds of water fights that are surfacing across California. Farmers of a variety of crops there have depended on irrigation for decades. Those years of pumping water and spraying it over crops through sprinklers or complex drip irrigation systems have had drastic implications, including threats of land sinking, a receding water table that makes it tougher to dig wells and the threat of some of them drying out.

That’s why water use around New Cuyama could get reduced by two-thirds over the next two decades. To bring the region back to a sustainable level by 2040, water cuts of 5% started this year and will continue each year going forward. The Cuyama basin currently has an annual water deficit of more than 8 billion gallons, and much of the area’s carrot farmland may have to be taken out of production. Some experts say Bolthouse and Grimmway would have to reduce their water consumption by about double what the city of Santa Barbara, California uses annually.

But water-efficient sprinklers can only save so much. The carrot companies’ lawsuit has forced area farmers, ranchers, residents and even the area’s public school to rack up legal bills. In response, a coalition of locals launched a boycott of carrots in July. The boycott’s goals: for the companies to drop the lawsuit, pay all legal fees and to reduce the amount of water they pump. One flyer the boycotters distributed suggests a Thanksgiving recipe for brussels sprouts instead.

Both Bolthouse and Grimmway lease farmland rather than own it. They recently withdrew from the lawsuit, though the companies that own the farmland are still in it, and what the judge decides will dictate how much the companies are able to farm there in the future.

Expanding Elsewhere

Huckaby said the carrot boycott has taken aim at Grimmway and Bolthouse because they’re easy targets. Only 3,700 of the 13,000 acres that Grimmway leases in the Cuyama Valley are being farmed, according to Huckaby. “We cut way back and we cut way back and we cut back and no one else did,” he said.

The companies may have to find new farmland to grow carrots. The average American now eats roughly seven pounds of the fresh vegetable every year, with consumption up 2% so far in 2023, according to NielsenIQ.

Grimmway has already expanded its farming operations outside of California with facilities in Florida, Washington and other states.

Butterfly’s Waglay doesn’t deny that water is one of the biggest barriers that his investment in Bolthouse faces. “Water challenges,” he said with a sigh. “This asset has great access to water, but it’s going to get worse and worse, and you need to be planning for that and trying to work on ways to minimize that. That’ll be a long-term challenge.”

California water fights often result in residents and smaller business owners getting “outgunned in the courts by large commercial actors,” Pomona College environmental analysis and politics professor Heather Williams, an expert on water issues, told Forbes. The lawsuit is among the first of many, she said.

“It’s put into motion a race to the basin — pumping as much as you can, and putting that into production,” Williams said. “Water is property in California. It’s what a rational actor acting on behalf of investors is going to do. If they’re playing this game, they’ve got to play hard.”

Grimmway and Bolthouse can move on, said Williams, unlike most of the residents in New Cuyama. “These are their homes, their small farms. If the well goes dry, it’s worth basically nothing,” she said. “They can’t pay lawyers for ten years of litigation.”

[mariacallous]

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On a 20-acre parcel outside the tiny Southern California town of New Cuyama, a 1.5-megawatt solar farm uses the sun’s rays to slowly charge nearly 600 batteries in nearby cabinets. At night, when energy demand rises, that electricity is sent to the grid to power homes with clean energy.

To make renewable energy from intermittent sources like solar and wind available when it is most needed, it’s becoming more common to use batteries to store the power as it’s generated and transmit it later. But one thing about the Cuyama facility, which began operations this month, is less common: The batteries sending energy to the grid once powered electric vehicles.

The SEPV Cuyama facility, located about two hours northeast of Santa Barbara, is the second hybrid storage facility opened by B2U Storage Solutions. Its first facility, just outside Los Angeles, uses 1,300 retired batteries from Honda Clarity and Nissan Leaf EVs to store 28 megawatt-hours of power, enough to power about 9,500 homes.

The facilities are meant to prove the feasibility of giving EV batteries a second life as stationary storage before they are recycled. Doing so could increase the sustainability of the technology’s supply chain and reduce the need to mine critical minerals, while providing a cheaper way of building out grid-scale storage.

“This is what’s needed at massive scale,” said Freeman Hall, CEO of the Los Angeles-based large-scale storage system company.

Electric vehicle batteries are typically replaced when they reach 70 to 80 percent of their capacity, largely because the range they provide at that point begins to dwindle. Almost all of the critical materials inside them, including lithium, nickel, and cobalt, are reusable. A growing domestic recycling industry, supported by billions of dollars in loans from the Energy Department and incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, is being built to prepare for what will one day be tens of millions of retired EV battery packs.

Before they are disassembled, however, studies show that around three-quarters of decommissioned packs are suitable for a second life as stationary storage. (Some packs may not have enough life left in them, are too damaged from a collision, or are otherwise faulty.)

“We were seeing the first generation of EVs end their time on the road, and 70 percent or more of those batteries have very strong residual value,” said Hall. “That should be utilized before all those batteries are recycled, and we’re just deferring recycling by three, four, or five years.”

Extending the useful life of EV batteries mitigates the impact of manufacturing them, said Maria Chavez, energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The whole point of trying to deploy electric vehicles is to reduce emissions and reduce the negative impacts of things like manufacturing and extractive processes on our environment and our communities,” Chavez told Grist. “By extending the life of a battery, we reduce the need for further exploitation of our natural resources, we reduce the demand for raw materials, and we generally encourage a more sustainable process.”

Just as batteries have become crucial to reducing emissions from transportation, they’re also needed to fully realize the benefits of clean energy. Without stationary storage, wind and solar power can only feed the grid when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.

“Being able to store it and use it when it’s most needed is a really important way to meet our energy needs,” Chavez said.

The use of utility-scale battery storage is expected to skyrocket, from 1.5 gigawatts of capacity in 2020 to 30 gigawatts by 2025. EV packs could provide a stockpile for that buildout. Hall said there are already at least 3 gigawatt-hours of decommissioned EV packs sitting around in the United States that could be deployed, and that the volume of them being removed from cars is doubling every two years.

“We’re going from a trickle when we started four years ago to a flood of batteries that are coming,” he said.

B2U says its technology allows batteries to be repurposed in a nearly “plug-and-play fashion.” They do not need to be disassembled, and units from multiple manufacturers—B2U has tested batteries from Honda, Nissan, Tesla, GM, and Ford—can be used in one system.

The packs are stored in large cabinets and managed with proprietary software, which monitors their safety and discharges and charges each battery based on its capacity. The batteries charge during the day from both the solar panels and the grid. Then B2U sells that power to utilities at night, when demand and prices are much higher.

Hall said using second-life batteries earns the same financial return as new grid-scale batteries at half the initial cost, and that for now, repurposing the packs is more lucrative for automakers than sending them straight to recyclers. Until the recycling industry grows, it’s still quite expensive to recycle them. By selling or leasing retired packs to a grid storage company, said Hall, manufacturers can squeeze more value out of them.

That could even help drive down the cost of electric vehicles, he added. “The actual cost of leasing a battery on wheels should go down if the full value of the battery is enhanced and reused,” he said. “Everybody wins when we do reuse in a smart fashion.”

B2U expects to add storage to a third solar facility near Palmdale next year. The facilities are meant to prove that the idea works, after which B2U plans to sell its hardware and software to other storage-project developers.

At the moment, though, planned deployment of the technology is limited. B2U predicts only about 6 percent of decommissioned EV batteries in the US will be used for grid-scale storage by 2027.

“People are skeptical, and they should be, because it’s hard to do reuse of batteries,” said Hall. “But we’ve got a robust data set that does prove reliability, performance, and profitability. We’re at a point where we really can scale this.”

[weather-usa]

Thunderstorms bring severe weather to multiple states, claiming a child's life, as heat scorches the West

Strong thunderstorms barreled across the central and eastern U.S. on Wednesday, reportedly claiming the life of a young child, triggering flood advisories, and causing a series of travel delays, while a heat dome baked California's Central Valley, other parts of the West, and southern Texas.

In Livonia, Michigan, a 2-year-old child was killed, and a 2-month-old infant and their mother were injured when a tree fell on their house amid high winds from a storm, according to WJBK-TV. The condition of the mother and baby, who were hospitalized, has not been detailed.

See more:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/196222201/Weather-Forecast-for-Illinois

Separate storms were set to roll over the Midwest, lower Plains, Ohio Valley, and the mid-Atlantic region throughout the day and into the night, according to the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center. By morning, flash flood warnings were in effect across parts of north-central Texas, northwestern Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Philadelphia.

In Texas, the weather service in Fort Worth advised residents to stay indoors as floodwaters remained high and rivers were above flood stage. "Doppler radar indicated the heavy rain has largely come to an end, but it will take several hours for flood waters to recede," the weather service said. "Please do not travel unless you are sure roads are not flooded!"

In Oklahoma and Iowa, meteorologists warned of flooding along the banks, fields, and roads near rivers. Across Michigan and Ohio, forecasters said isolated wind damage throughout the afternoon would be the main storm threat.

Nearly 60,000 homes and businesses were without power across Texas late Wednesday afternoon, according to a USA TODAY outage tracker. Additionally, 59,000 utility customers in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota experienced outages, along with 26,000 in Mississippi.

Weather Forecast For North Carolina:

https://devpost.com/software/weather-forecast-for-north-carolina

At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, more than 350 flights were delayed, and at least 45 were canceled Wednesday morning, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website. The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded all flights at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

Travel disruptions extended to the Northeast as well. Flights at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport were delayed by more than three hours on average, while Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey saw average delays exceeding two hours. Departure delays were also reported at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.

Millions Under Heat Advisories

Climate and Average Weather Year Round in Kansas:

Much of the southwestern U.S., southern Texas, and California's Central Valley are under heat advisories as the first major heat wave of the summer brings anticipated record-breaking temperatures in the triple digits.

The National Weather Service in Los Angeles and Oxnard, California, forecasted temperatures up to 100 degrees across the Cuyama and Salinas valleys through the afternoon, as well as the Highway 14 corridor, which runs from Los Angeles to the northern Mojave Desert.

In the eastern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, temperatures were expected to reach the 90s to lower 100s. Heat advisories were also active across New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, where forecast temperatures approached or exceeded 100 degrees. In Las Vegas, the afternoon high temperature was expected to be between 107 and 114 degrees.

See more: https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-35036

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-35038

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-35040

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-35041

https://weatherusa.app/zip-code/weather-35042

Southern Texas, which has faced unseasonably hot temperatures since late May, could see afternoon highs of 103 to 107 degrees. The heat index, or "feels like" temperature, could reach well over 110 degrees in some areas, including Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Uvalde, El Paso, and the Rio Grande Valley.

The extreme heat is expected to continue into the weekend.

[newsokgr]

B2U Storage Solutions Announces Second Grid-Connected Hybrid Solar + Second-Life EV  Storage Facility 

LANCASTER, Calif., November 14, 2023 – B2U Storage Solutions, a leading provider of large scale energy storage systems using second-life electric vehicle (EV) batteries, announced today 6MWh of storage capacity is now operational at SEPV Cuyama, the company’s second hybrid  solar + storage facility, in New Cuyama, Santa Barbara County, CA. B2U will expand the facility  12MWh of storage capacity…

[tomchatt]

Dinner at @redbirdla in #dtla - Red Wattle pork chop, collards, Cuyama apples, polenta, mustard jus; New York strip, smoked potatoes, charred broccolini; bbq smoked tofu, shiitake xo, vegan kimchi; black truffle cavatelli with chanterelles; baby yams, pistachio mole, vegan chorizo; hiramasa crudo, blood orange ponzu, red shiso, puffed rice; shishito peppers with crispy quinoa; pao de queijo; spiced mocha mousse, cocoa nib, banana, vanilla ice cream #food #realfood #lafoodie (at Redbird) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoEVLm2OJRr/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thechembow]

Gifting Santa Maria

Apr. 11, 2021

We drove into the Central Valley this morning and over to the coast on a road not yet gifted. It was not heavy on cell towers, but it was good to continue the OR grid from inland to the coast in a new place. The grid is already very thorough. Just yesterday a few of our orgonites went with a friend to another new road which bridges the Central Valley to the mountains east of it in northern California, so the grid has expanded in two directions in the south and the north in the past two days.

The day started with an overcast DOR sky, which took some time to transmute as we gifted. The land was very green from a good rainy season. The green grass shows there is no drought. This past January there was a two day storm that dropped 14 inches of rain on San Luis Obispo County, where we gifted today. The green grass has been delayed in the mountains and the hills in Gorman are just starting to green now. It’s not because we didn’t have enough snow and rain, but because this winter was so cold. We don’t have poppies yet here but they are already blooming in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties.

The DOR started to lift as we gifted. As we were going through San Luis Obispo, the DOR clouds started spiraling up and away. As we had a lunch break in Nipomo, the sky was becoming very clear with dramatic spirals in the remaining DOR clouds.

We ended our gifting by doing a grid in Santa Maria, which is not a very big town, but a place where we haven’t yet gone street by street. There were surprisingly not a lot of towers. We already gifted a couple of the worst ones a few years ago, and Santa Maria was noticeably more pleasant that the last time we were there. The DOR was now almost fully lifted and the sky was blue with OR clouds forming in the distance.

We enjoyed more spiraling clouds as we returned home through Cuyama and Lockwood Valley. As we were walking into our house, we saw a chembow in the sunset. A chembow accompanies OR transmutation when freed water vapor is hit at the right angle by the sun. This was our first gifting since the ComputerVirus started, and watching the chemtrail crafts struggling was confirmation that they are still dying.

[mavjournal]

Blue Sky Center in New Cuyama, California by @andreas.raun. "@blueskycenter is non-profit rural impact center with the mission to regenerate the land, economy and community through equitable partnerships and share scalable models with other communities."

[rjzimmerman]

Every day, part of the “future effects” of climate change creep into “today.” California has experienced droughts and voluntary water cutbacks before, but this one feels different.....much like tomorrow is here today. Excerpt from this LA Times story:

Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking Californians to voluntarily cut back on water consumption by 15% compared with last year as drought conditions worsen and temperatures continue to rise across the western United States.

The governor on Thursday also expanded his regional drought state of emergency to apply to 50 California counties, or roughly 42% of the state’s population.

“We’re hopeful that people will take that mindset they brought into the last drought and extend that forward with a 15% voluntary reduction, not only on residences but industrial commercial operations and agricultural operations,” Newsom said at a news conference in San Luis Obispo County.

In addition, another story from the LA Times tells us:

The California Independent System Operator, which runs the electric grid for most of California, has issued a new flex alert for Friday, asking residents to conserve electricity as a heat wave sweeps the state.

Officials are calling on residents to cut back on their energy use from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. in order to ease the strain on the grid during the evening, when there’s less or no solar energy available.

During the flex alert, CAISO is asking consumers to set thermostats at 78 degrees or higher, turn off all unnecessary lights, and avoid using major appliances such as dishwashers or laundry machines until after 10 p.m.

The National Weather Service has issued excessive heat warnings across portions of Southern California, including the San Diego County deserts, Coachella Valley, Antelope Valley, interior San Luis Obispo County and the Cuyama Valley. Saturday will likely be the warmest day overall, forecasters said.

[polkadotmotmot]

Patricia Chidlaw - Motel, New Cuyama, 2014

[theoriginalmarke]

MONDAY’S MUSINGS

I’m thinking of packing up the bike and going camping tomorrow. Maybe. I’m still undecided. Since I’ve waited so long to make up my mind I have very few choices left. 

Two Hipcamp sites look interesting. One is about 90 miles north of here on a 30 acre site with cabins and a pool, and the other is another hour north of that on an organic farm with natural spring. 

I can also try one of the national parks for a “first come first served” space. I’m looking at a couple of places north of Ojai, about an hour from here. 

There’s always the campgrounds on the other side of the mountain that we always visit, but I’d prefer exploring something new. My first choice has been Fig Mountain, but they’re full right now.

There are a couple of Hipcamp places near Cuyama a couple of hours north, but the weather says 100 degrees this week. That’s a bit warm to be camping.

I may just wait a week, I have a lot to do today before I can even pack. I’m going to feed a friend’s cat in a few minutes, there’s laundry to do, a newspaper blurb to write, some things around the house that need done. Maybe I’ll just sit in the yard and enjoy our view instead.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to decide what I’m gonna do. 

I love you, Kitten. There will never be any indecision about that. MWAH!

Y’all have a great day.

[upknorth]

Nomadic shelter on wheels. Epic weekend getaway by @blueskycenter #getoutdoors #upknorth (at New Cuyama, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtJkG47Hr_1/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=4fynwfgwmn6y

[newsokgr]

Η B2U Storage Solutions ανακοινώνει τη δεύτερη μονάδα αποθήκευσης Hybrid Solar + Second-Life EV συνδεδεμένη με το δίκτυο

LANCASTER, Καλιφόρνια, 14 Νοεμ��ρίου 2023 – Η B2U Storage Solutions, κορυφαίος πάροχος συστημάτων αποθήκευσης ενέργειας μεγάλης κλίμακας που χρησιμοποιούν μπαταρίες ηλεκτρικών οχημάτων δεύτερης ζωής (EV), ανακοίνωσε σήμερα ότι η χωρητικότητα αποθήκευσης 6 MWh είναι πλέον λειτουργική στο SEPV Cuyama, το δεύτερο της εταιρείας υβριδική ηλιακή + εγκατάσταση αποθήκευσης, στο New Cuyama, Santa Barbara…

[coordinatesofher]

GLAMPING, CALIFORNIA STYLE

Much has been made about my stay here. I don't think I have ever received so many questions and comments on an adventure before. I suppose these unique structures are a huge point of intrigue. I understand fully, because that is exactly what got me to go exploring here in the first place. Adventure + Architecture... well, now, that's my formula for a good time. Sign me up!

GLAMPING FASHION VIBES:

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MORE FROM MY STAY AT THE BLUE SKY CENTER:

About a year ago, I spotted this place on Instagram. Immediately, I went to their website with the intentions of booking the next available spot. What I didn't know is that www.goop.com had just featured this location and along with that came three full months of bookings. So, I did what any good traveller does. I added it to my imaginary California bucket list and.... I waited... and waited.... and waited...

(The moment you realize your cup of coffee is empty...)

For about a month, I would check their availability every morning just on the off chance that someone had backed out. My daily coffee and Blue Sky Center calendar check proved to be worth it when one morning, they had an opening for the following weekend! And, so, I did what any good wife would do. I booked it for two without even checking to see if those dates worked for the husband. I figured, "Hey, if he can't make it, someone will want to come check this place out with me!" But, luckily, for both of us, the stars aligned and everything worked out perfectly to spend two nights at this little gem of a spot. 

We arrived in the afternoon having come from Yosemite. (It's a long story, but I have a tendency to add things on to a road trip that then make the road trip three times as long). Immediately, we were met by the owners and other guests and shown around the property.

Before diving into what the stay is like here, let me just say, this is in the middle of no where. You know how movies make you think California is filled with an endless sea of buildings and fashionable people and trendy little shops. Yeah, that's only really true for the major cities. The rest of California is beautiful, yes, but it's also 100% like the rest of the country's country farm land. And, this was no exception.

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Luckily, we still had quite a bit of food left over from our road trip which proved to be a huge asset to our stay here as the grocery store wasn't really a grocery store but rather a few shelves of random canned and boxed foods.

There is a kitchen that is really nice on site. It actually was one of my favorite spots on the property. The bathrooms are in a separate building which makes for an interesting mid-night potty break completely with creatures and such. All in all none of these minimal amenities were unexpected.

This is glamping. It is a quaint little stay out in the mountains. The canvas is not attached fully to the iron structure making it really feel more like a tent than an enclosed building. Again, not a bother for us because we expected a bit of a camping style stay. With that said, the beds were comfortable, blankets were cozy, and the stars in the night sky out of the huge windows made it all worth it.

There was wifi, but for the most part or cell reception was a no go situation. This was a welcomed break from the hustle and bustle of daily cell reception. We spent our days cooking or reading or napping without interruption. It was a wonderful experience all around and one that I recommend for a unique stay in California.

CALIFORNIA GLAMPING TRAVEL TIPS:

For this type of trip, pack like you are going camping and not like you are going to stay in a hotel/b&b. The kitchen is stocked with plates and dishwater and all that you would need to cook, but, bring your own food as the stores in the area are rather sparse. There are nice showers in the bathrooms. Bringing an extra set of towels and packing for a walk to the bathroom is recommended. Also, as previously mentioned, there are blankets provided but it is the desert and as such it can get quite cold at night so pack warm layers and good socks! Other than that all you need is a good book and a good hat and you are all set for a weekend in Cali to remember!

What to Wear Glamping:

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[lies]

Being a brief discourse on my Little Big Year, during which I identified as many bird species as I could within the confines of Santa Barbara County (CA)

327. That’s how many species I ended up getting.

Among active county users of eBird I finished in first place, one bird ahead of Mark Holmgren, whom I suspect could have beaten me if he’d tried, but who probably didn’t realize it was a contest. The only times I really made up ground on him are when he was on extended birding trips away from the county.

I’m pretty sure there were at least a few other county birders who beat me. My guess is that Nick Lethaby and Wes Fritz both identified more birds than I did in the county this year. But they mostly don’t do eBird, so who knows? (Well, they know, presumably. But I don’t.)

The one-year record for Santa Barbara County is 358, set by Wes in 2008. I finished well short of that, and looking over the list he got that year I doubt I could get into that range, at least in my current state of bird knowledge. Someday, maybe. 

I recorded at least one eBird checklist every day last year; at the moment my streak (which I’ve kept going) is at 382 days. A few times when I was sick I only did a 10-minute count in my backyard, but I always got at least one birding session in. I made a few brief trips to the Eastern Sierra during the year, and on my long-commute days was sometimes reduced to entering a 2- or 3-species list while walking to Starbuck’s through the bird desert surrounding my employer’s office in LA, but other than that it was all Santa Barbara County. I finished the year with 730 checklists entered in the county; the next highest total of checklists submitted was (again) Mark Holmgren with 547.

Fun facts: I had 845 checklists total entered during the year, including those outside the county, which ranks me 484th among active eBird users in the ABA area (North America north of Mexico). I’m not aware of any way to compare my single-county species total with those of other eBirders, but I think I'd probably be toward the upper part of that list, Santa Barbara being such a good county by ABA standards. But I dunno; there are a lot of counties, and a lot of birders more obsessive than I am.

My species total for the ABA area was 350, which ranks me roughly 14,000th among active eBird users in 2018. Tops in 2018 in the ABA area in eBird were Nicole Koeltzow with 775 species, which is amazing, and Barbara Combs with 11,147 checklists submitted, which is also amazing. Barbara averaged slightly more than 30 checklists per day in 2018; some poking around shows that she’s opting for maximum granularity; my guess is she’s basically entering a list of the birds seen in every 15-minute chunk throughout the day, every day.

Things I learned:

Birds are not evenly distributed in the landscape. I mean, I knew that already. But now I appreciate it more.

They’re really out there (those rare/difficult species I’d always seen in the field guide but never in person) — except when they’re not.

Finding is better than chasing.

Different kinds of birding are their own discreet knowledge domains. I was a beginner at most of them; still am at some. But I’m learning.

So many rungs on that ladder. I’m a way better birder than I was at the start of the year, but I’m more aware than ever of how far below the real experts I am.

Avid birdwatchers are a flash mob waiting to happen. All it takes is a report of a rarity (”Mississippi Kite at Alisal Ranch!”) for them to suddenly coalesce. I now know most of the top 20 people in the county eBird rankings from last year, but when I started they were just names. That’s almost all from hanging out with them at the site of reported rarities.

eBird is the best. I love eBird.

Favorite bird I saw this year: Prairie Falcon. I saw this species first outside the county, on March 30, during one of the trips I made to the Eastern Sierra. I first saw it in the county during the birding trip I made to the Cuyama Valley on April 29. I also saw it once on Lake Cachuma, and once along Happy Canyon Road north of Lake Cachuma. But the place I saw it the most, on four different visits, was the place I’m going to talk about next.

Favorite place: The intersection of San Miguelito Road and Sudden Road in the hills south of Lompoc. I can’t really describe why this spot is so cool to me. It’s just a grassy valley with a few farmhouses and cows. But in that grassy bowl are about 100,000 ground squirrels and a lot of amazing raptors. It was the last place I went in 2018, on New Year’s Eve, after I’d more or less given up on adding any new species because it was too windy at the other spots I’d chosen. I’d given it the old college try but the birds just weren’t cooperating. So I decided to stop trying, and just go to my favorite spot. So I went, and had a glorious time watching three Golden Eagles and a bunch of Red-tailed Hawks and the one Ferruginous Hawk that hangs out there, and then, blasting straight overhead before it landed on the hillside west of me and ran around harassing squirrels, my fave:

I appreciate all the nice comments people have made about my silly obsession this past year. If you have any questions I’d be happy to go on (and on) about it some more; the Ask Box is always open.