Family Day on the Ranch 2025 was HOT!
Our first Family Day on the Ranch, in 2024 started with unexpected rain, arriving in BIG DROPS early Saturday morning. Extreme heat accompanied our second Family Day, held at Abbey of New Clairvaux on the Saturday prior to Labor Day weekend. That’s farming!
Our festivities were held just off the banks of Deer Creek, a bit northwest of the Abbey’s church building. Guests strolled through the educational booths, learned to fly-cast, practiced their casting skills, and wee ones cast to a “fishing booth” covered with local wildlife photos, showcasing the animals one might find in the creek nearby.
It wasn’t the largest crowd, and it wasn’t the best day spent in the field, yet we learned, played, and experienced the splendor of this working ranch, permanently protected in conservation easement.
NCRLT Staff and Board had lots of help to make the day a great experience for all!
Chico Area Fly Fishers set up practice booths to learn technique, and long targets to practice casting motion and timing. Watching those with lifelong fly-fishing experience was inspirational and informative! Guests tried their hand, and with patience and persistence, steadily improved their techniques and at times surprised themselves with their accuracy! We displayed a variety of aquatic invertebrates, which along with the fishing booth phots, complete the ecological profile of local watersheds.
Friends of Butte Creek shared interactive, engaging salmon life cycle displays, coloring pages, and had a wonderful pictorial of spawning salmon, streambed enhancement efforts, and more!
Clockwise from Top Left: Young guests enjoy Chico Fly Fishers fly-casting technique booth; NCRLT Staff assist a young guest with the bait-casting competition; Chico Fly Fishers volunteer coaches a young apprentice on his fly-casting technique as he attempts to catch a line of twine; aquatic invertebrates to show Deer Creek ecology; Friends of Butte Creek booth with coloring pages for salmon-life-cycle, and awesome people!
Abbey Ranch manager, Carlos, provided an overview of current agricultural production, including watermelons and pumpkins planted for seed production by a third party contractor, prunes and tree nuts sold on contract, and the well-known vineyard growing award-winning wine grapes. The water conveyance, solar infrastructure, and work habits of the Trappist monks were part of the ensuing conversation.
Our steadfast volunteers braved the high temperatures, persevered through foraging ants in their lunch bags, and outlasted the heat-induced low turnout to make the most of a Saturday spent outdoors. Volunteers, Staff, and Guests enjoyed root beer floats, carefully served by our CDFW representative and Your Land Trust Executive Director, and featuring Shubert’s Vanilla Ice Cream – in homage to the properties’ roots as a Dairy Operation.
Your support of developing projects such as Abbey of New Clairvaux, whose conservation easement acquisition was funded by Department of Conservation’s Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program making Strategic Growth Council’s California Climate Investments, ensures that generations in our community will be welcomed to experience both rainy and blazing-hot summer days on a working ranch with the people who make it happen!
Thanks to all our guests, conservation organization sponsors, volunteers, staff, board of directors, and landowners for helping make 2025’s Family Day on the Ranch a memorable day for all.
CDFW representative and NCRLT Executive Director scoop Shubert’s ice cream and pour root beer for our guests to enjoy a classic summer treat, in homage to the property’s roots as a dairy operation.
