DRY CRIK Journal

#603 - August 20, 2007

Appropriately, our year begins when the first calves come, most generally with our first-calf heifers exposed to the bulls two weeks before the rest of the cow herd. This year we’re calving our replacement heifers across the road from the house, presumably away from the bear problems on Greasy Creek that we experienced last year. Even after forty years, though, it’s an exciting time for me as the first calves hit the ground, the balance of expectant mothers in various stages of bewilderment and hormone flow, instincts honed as they dilate and udders ripen, some more ready than others for a calf of their own.

Rain to germinate new feed is normally 45 days away when ideally the calves are old enough to handle a little more milk and pick at the green. It has felt like an early fall and winter during this breezy summer where volatile weather patterns continue around the globe. Simplistically equating volatility with storms, I’m hoping for early rains and green feed. We’ll see.

#609 - August 25, 2007

But it is a time for hope, for the culmination of nine months and a week or two of carrying a calf, for a plan coming to fruition that will be ultimately dependent on rain. Wednesday, we sell the rest of last year’s calves. Daylight shrinks into longer shadows as we are eager to begin again.

#642 - August 25, 2007

Interestingly, 2 of the 3 red heifers kept as replacements have calved already, out of 5 of the 50 heifers with calves on the ground. We're happy!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After several successful hatches last summer, the quail remain centered around the house and horse troughs, our leaky faucets and sprinklers, pipe threads stretched by last winter’s freeze, all to keep coveys of various-sized quail chicks close by. Little puffs of feathers, they are literally ‘born on the run’, shepherded with intense titters from the adults, male usually on point while the female cowboys her brood to and from protective cover. More often than not this year, we’ve had to stop to let them cross the driveway. The roadrunners have returned, new red-tails perch on fence posts and the Cooper’s hawks bravely watch from the oaks above the garden.

So much of our own nature can be validated by observing the quail’s wild show of domesticity, our entertaining respite come evenings, certainly worth stopping-for during the day. So too have the feral hogs fallen out of the dry canyons, drawn on the scent of damp earth. Knowing better, we let a couple of poor sows with two tiny piglets apiece linger too long too often around the pond in the horse pasture as it dried-up, compassionately clapping our hands and throwing rocks to ease them off.

Robbin’s garden, raised beds of sandy loam and horse manure collected with the skid-steer, includes tree-like peppers and eggplants in rows requiring irrigation morning and evening when temperatures approach 100 degrees or more. Small enough still, the piglets came back last week to slip under the fence at night and cultivate the onion bed, then spread the word and returned, despite our more drastic deterrents, with a herd of hogs to uproot the vegetable plants like a Valley orchard toppled for a new sub-division. Devastation and heartbreak, it’s now war.

Harmony with hogs doesn’t come easy, and I defer to porcine poet David Lee for further insightful metaphors liking these beasts to humans. But it ain’t easy being smarter than a hog, any peaceful balance is hard-fought and seldom sure.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jody Fuller & Robbin

In the flies and dust, the girls brought our steer calves to the scales before we had to wait for the trucks.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)