Pajaro Valley Magazine April 29, 2022

THE LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE OF THE PAJARO VALLEY

APRIL 29, 2022

Season in bloom Watsonville orchard offers U-Pick roses

A supplement to The Pajaronian

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PETAL POWER

Birdsong Orchards owner Nadine Schaeffer inspects a rose from her field.

TRAVEL P7 | HOME OF THE WEEK P9 | PHOTO GALLERY P10

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Spring blossoms Watsonville’s Birdsong Orchards offering U-Pick roses

APRIL 29, 2022 | PAJARO VALLEY MAGAZINE

By JOHANNA MILLER

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VALLEY VIEW Birdsong Orchards is located off of Lakeview Road in Watsonville.

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Johanna Miller

ight-and-a-half years ago, Nadine Schaeffer and her husband, Jason Wehmhoener moved to a rural eightacre property off of Lakeview Road in Watsonville.

The couple, who had both grown up in farming communities in the Midwest, were looking for a change after working for years at tech careers in Silicon Valley.

“We watched the fruit trees get cut down to build really ugly office buildings,” Schaeffer said. “There came a time when we were like, ‘We’ve got to do something other than this.’ And I’m so sad about climate change—angry, honestly … I needed to put my energy somewhere else.”

When they bought the farm, it had been abandoned since the 1980s. While it did have some fruit trees, as well as a close groundwater supply, the land itself had gone fallow.

Orchards, a sprawling farm home to 200 varieties of fruit trees, more than 100 varieties of roses, and a small menagerie of cats, dogs, chickens, llamas, an alpaca, and two emus, some of whom were rescued from the CZU Lightning Complex Fires in 2020. ➝6

IN BLOOM Birdsong Orchards rose U-Pick is open Saturday and Sunday by appointment only.

PAJARO VALLEY MAGAZINE | APRIL 29, 2022

Johanna Miller

Johanna Miller

“There were literally mountains of garbage everywhere,” Schaeffer said. “Eleven garbage trucks worth.

The owners had dug holes and put trash right into the earth. And nothing worked in the house … the electricity, sewage, nothing.”

Today, Schaeffer and Wehmhoener live at what is now Birdsong

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APRIL 29, 2022 | PAJARO VALLEY MAGAZINE

BLOOM

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The farm is open to visitors for U-Pick roses on Saturdays and Sundays, by appointment only. With Mother’s Day approaching, Schaeffer said they expect an uptick in visitors.

“Mother’s Day here is always a wonderful day here,” she said. “Lots of people bring their mom, their partners … It's just a great time.”

It was four years ago that Schaeffer decided to start planting roses.

At first, she thought she would sell them to the floral and wedding industry. But Covid hit just as they started to mature.

“Suddenly nobody was having big weddings,” she said. “But then a friend asked me: ‘Can I just come by and pick some roses, and give you money?’ and I realized … This is it.”

Schaeffer said that she considers three factors when deciding what rose variety to plant: fragrance, disease resistance, and the fullness of the flower.

“I like roses that have a lot of petals, that are really big and fluffy,” she said.

Birdsong’s rose venture continues to grow, which is why it remains reservation-only. They host no more than five guests per hour, giving them the opportunity to enjoy a nice quiet stroll through the fields.

“U-Pick has truly been the most enjoyable thing,” Schaeffer said.

“People are just happy when they come here. You can’t go wrong with roses. Everyone loves them.

Most rose fields … it’s about ‘You can look, but don’t you dare touch.’

Here, you can touch and cut whatever you want, take what you like.

Here’s your bucket, and have at it!”

But Birdsong is more than just flowers. The orchard, located at the top of the property, includes pears, apricots, plums, peaches, figs, mulberries, cherries, apples, persimmons, pomegranates, walnuts, mixed citrus and other specialty fruits.

Schaeffer says that the orchard’s diversity—there are no more than two trees of the same fruit variety—helps with longevity and labor costs.

“You hear about total crop failure all the time,” she said. “But here, if one of our trees doesn’t bud fruit, another will. There will always be plenty. And if you grow a diversity of perennials, it’s much less work. You don’t need a large crew to come all at once for harvest. Mostly it’s just me and my husband, and a few people who help once a week or so.”

The fruit trees are not U-Pick; those interested in purchasing fruit can sign up online. Sales for 2022 will begin in late June or early July.

Schaeffer said they are thinking about planting a row of sunflowers on the property, to offer young visitors a chance to pick. The rose fields, she said, are not ideal for children.

“The thing is, roses are mean.

They have thorns,” she said. “So

FARM FELINE One of Birdsong

Orchards’ many cats strolls through a bed of roses.

we can’t allow kids out in the field.

People really want to bring their kids out, and I understand that. So maybe if we had sunflowers, there’d be something for them to pick.”

Schaeffer said that she wants Birdsong Orchards to be accessible to as many as possible. They try to keep their prices affordable so that everyone can enjoy a day of U-Pick.

“Nurses, people who work for the county, college students, older people, genderqueer people … I want that kind of place where everyone can come and enjoy themselves,” she said.

Birdsong Orchard’s U-Pick roses are by appointment only. The exact address will be provided after sign up is complete. For information, visit birdsongorchards.com.

TRAVEL DRAMATIC LANDMARK

The reflection pond at Balboa Park near downtown San Diego.

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reviously in this travel tale, my wife Sarah and I left the desert over the mountain ridge and into San Diego along Highway 8 past El Cajon, La Mesa and into Pacific Beach. It was here, in 1969, that my family arrived after living on the 32-mile long island of Guam for two years.

We checked into our favorite spot, The Beach Cottages, built in 1948 along the shore and the mileslong Boardwalk, a wide concrete path heavily used by locals and tourists year round.

This was the beach town where the four kids in my family moved away from home, where my folks bought an older Spanish-style house on Emerald Street and where both of my parents died of old age.

This is where I graduated from Mission Bay High School in 1972 and where I got my first job at LaJolla Car Wash. And it’s where I met my first girlfriend, Lori, and I bought my first electric bass guitar for $20 and played music with a bunch of different bands.

I got to know San Diego pretty well, the rocky shores of LaJolla,

Balboa Park, the drug-infested Ocean Beach, Point Loma and Mission Beach.

Once my folks bought me a nice 3-speed bicycle, the doors of this place opened even wider in my sophomore year; I must have put 100,000 miles on that bike. Once I moved away from San Diego I continued to visit my folks there for decades and watched the changes come and go. Though the main drag of Pacific Beach, Garnet Avenue, has certainly been gentrified—Starbucks, Togos, McDonalds, etc.—there’s still a flavor of

PAJARO VALLEY MAGAZINE | APRIL 29, 2022

By TARMO HANNULA

Tarmo Hannula

From the desert to the sea

a small gritty beach town to it, in my view. On this trip we drove out Pacific Highway to downtown and saw the Gaslamp District, a hunk of downtown where city planners took great strides to preserve and boast some of the area’s older, interesting buildings.

At the center of it all is Horton Plaza. When we came here in ‘69, this spot was a raunchy, run down hang out for druggies and a lot of drunk sailors trying to find relief from their duties in the Vietnam War, with San Diego being the largest military base in America, with its vast harbors. Horton Plaza back then boasted scores of XXX movie houses, ratty bars and littered streets. Now Horton Plaza is a splashy shopping mall and much of downtown has been spruced up.

We then drove a few blocks to Balboa Park and walked past the Old Globe Theater, the lovely reflection pond and marveled at the bounty of gorgeous buildings and landscape. Placed in reserve in 1835, the park's site is one of the oldest in the U.S. that was dedicated to public recreational use.

Balboa Park hosted the 191516 Panama-California Exposition and in 1935-36, the California-International Exposition, both of which left dramatic architectural landmarks. The Spanish Colonial Revival architecture here is breathtaking, on top of the numerous dazzling gardens, the Japanese Friendship Garden.

We took Highway 8 to Highway 5 north to LaJolla and parked at LaJolla Cove, one of my family’s favorite spots. The is the home of UC San Diego, the famed Scripps Institute and the ritzy Girard Avenue, the main drag of downtown, that boasts a mix of high-end boutiques, gift shops and the like as well as the popular Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

In the final leg of this story we head north to San Marcos, Paso Robles and home.

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FEATURED HOME

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Real Estate of Mind Provoking thought since 1990

Crazy is all relative, of course. As in…

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Nem que posapel I D A DV ERTO RI A L relativePA craziness.

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Privacy in an oak-studded hillside

Lu Haussler, J.D.

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APRIL 29, 2022 | PAJARO VALLEY MAGAZINE

LOOKOUT POINT A house finch settles into a colorful perch.

Tarmo Hannula

nibble near the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.

Tarmo Hannula

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ON THE HUNT A western gull searches for a

Tarmo Hannula

RUFFLING FEATHERS Snowy egrets engage in a dramatic dance at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River at the Main Beach in Santa Cruz.

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