Long Shadows
Checking the heifers seems to have become a bit more frantic for me now, as we’re generally short one or two that were very close to calving on our prior trip up the hill. In two sections of fairly steep and brushy ground, it takes several hours to get around in a pickup, but we’re probably as effective as we’d be on horseback all day.
Our heifers are two year-olds when we breed them to low birth-weight bulls to hopefully eliminate the necessity of having to pull any. But so much like people, some mothers are better than others – the newness can become confusing, some heifers regularly losing track of where they left their calves. As the calves hit the ground, each field of heifers becomes a community as they begin to form nurseries, leaving one to babysit while the others graze. Just how they determine who is next in line to relieve the babysitter remains an unanswered question, but it could be an example for humans as one way to get along.
Our calves come with September’s long shadows, the beginning of our year. The remainder of last year’s calves will sell in town today. The circle of seasons seems to tighten with little time to catch our breath before we start again. With the majority of the hot weather behind us, we're looking forward to shorter days and some ample rain.
Comments
By chance is your mother's grandfather, John Cutler, the same person who once owned property in Silver City?
Posted by: Diane Gladieux | August 23, 2008 7:47 PM
Diane –
Thanks for visiting Dry Crik Journal. For more personal info about John Cutler, see entries in the “Yesteryear” category.
Alive during the boomtown era of Beulah (Mineral King), John Cutler may have owned property in Silver City just below Mineral King on the East Fork of the Kaweah River – but I doubt it. He migrated from Illinois to Amador County during the Gold Rush, then settled south in the Visalia area in1852. Most of his cattle activities in the Sierras centered around Big Meadow, near Horse Corral, between Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, in the Kings River watershed.
My mother’s father, John Floyd Cutler, owned a cabin at Doyles Springs above Wishon on the Middle Fork of the Tule River, the next watershed south of the Kaweah. Before the days of air conditioning, many of the early San Joaquin Valley families had camps and cabins in the mountains to escape the summer heat. Though upgraded substantially, Mineral King, Silver City and Doyles Springs, among others, are currently mountain communities or clusters of cabins still utilized for that purpose.
John Cutler married Nancy Rice after arriving in Visalia, I believe, a widow with two children, then between them they had several more children including A. R. Cutler, my mother’s grandfather. I remember A.R. in his 90s during the 1955 Flood, I was but 7.
Best,
J
Posted by: John Dofflemyer | August 24, 2008 9:12 AM