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Minutes old, this 105 pound bull calf is hooking-up for the first time with one of the heifers we bought near Carson City on our way to Elko in 2006. Two weeks late and a little smaller than the rest of Robbin’s registered Herefords, she had her first calf just fine despite my worrying.
We begin our new year with the autumnal equinox, a substantial weather change beginning on the 7th that has delivered nearly a half-inch rain in the past three days with a storm formed off the coast. September is ‘generally’ too early to start the grass unless it keeps raining – we’ll see.
9/20 0.05 0.00 0.05
9/22 0.05 rain rain
9/23 0.40 0.46 0.43
10/13 0.20 0.07 0.13
10/30 0.22 0.76 0.33
11/12 0.28 0.45 0.26
12/8 1.53 1.78 1.55
12/19 1.03
12/21 0.22 1.42 1.40
1/5 1.72
1/6 0.31
1/7 0.04
1/9 0.04 2.42 2.00
1/24 0.68
1/25 0.08
1/27 0.12
1/28 0.68
1/30 0.05
2/4 1.45 3.50 3.50
2/20 0.73
2/23 0.96
2/25 0.68 2.40 2.40
3/30 0.14 0.20 0.15
5/26 0.95 1.26 1.35
Total 12.61 14.72 13.55
Already at two weeks old, this calf wears the stamp of his daddy, a Potter's Emmett Valley Angus bull sired by Brussett Mayor 59 (our cow 415).
With fresh cholesterol concerns not too many years ago, one was hard-pressed to find a tender, flavorful steak in a store or restaurant. On the ranch, we were crossing our cows with leaner breeds because meat-packers wanted what they thought would be a more marketable product. And despite the industry’s naive sojourn into TV advertising, per capita consumption was down. More than any other single influence, I credit Costco’s long shelves of USDA Choice beef for changing minds of both producers and consumers and for educating a generation who had never tasted a decent piece of meat.
Today’s media-driven drama for food safety demands more accountability on the ranch. Anticipating Animal ID legislation, we began numbering our replacement heifers in 2004. But despite our reluctance to comply with political and public pressure, at least we know where this calf came from.
One may wonder why, in God’s name especially, I might post the following poem, but the reasons are several. Poetry, I believe, is a stream running parallel with hands-on experience, the song we hear that makes even the most mundane, or in this case the unspeakable, richer. The metaphors that find their place in a second sight that comes naturally to people dependent on all the elements of a land-based culture (whether they write poetry or not) is simply the humorous and easily-accessible silver lining for a lifetime of so many dark clouds. If this is indeed true, one can write poetry about anything!
The topic is timely with today’s technology, fraught with fear for so many and subsequently postponed with tragic consequences. For all those reared in this macho culture, it’s no big deal: I felt and remember nothing. The only discomfort is the 24-hours of fasting/cleansing and shaking-off the drugs after the fact. If the poem assuages one cowboy’s fear, it serves my purpose.
DR. BROWN
As evening crawls up the mountain,
we critique our town performance with
a gin and tonic, a day’s preparation for
an early-morning colonoscopy behind me,
I remember being wheeled between
rumpled beds of patients recovering,
rolling down a narrow crowding alley
to the chute. Corral short of humor,
I compare nothing outloud. Small cubicle
with wear on big machinery, I search
for a cable coiled like a lariat hanging
somewhere. Tall, outdoor doctor asks
if I’m “all pooped-out,” as if for the
first time. Urgent nurses kind, but
after a second dose of drugs: nothing.
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