Sonoma Mountain Institute

CJ and his team have been busy on the ranch in Petaluma again this year. They have had the typical on-going projects such as: cleaning the azola, weeds, and tules from the ponds, clearing of underbrush and burning the piles, clearing downed trees, cutting, and splitting the remains for firewood, equipment maintenance, road maintenance, working on compost piles, pulling of star thistle, and growing small oak starts. However, this year they were able to sneak in some other large projects such as going to the Godfrey property and helping mill timber. CJ brought the milled wood down to Petaluma and used it on projects such as re-framing the barn.  They helped work on the rainwater catchment system so the water that runs off of the barn roof can go into two 5000 gallon storage tanks.  This water is pumped up to our storage tanks at Hilltop and when those four storage tanks get full it overflows into the large pond.  A few extra projects that were completed were helping set up the solar panel trailer to run the water pump, more bird houses were installed, the barn was cleaned out and re-organized, a new boat deck was built for pond weed removal, and a new metal tea tank stand was built.