DRY CRIK Journal

After a warm ten days in the high 60s and low 70s, we have accumulated .60” in the past three days – gray, with ‘on and off’ showers out of the tropics. Thankfully, the Central Coast and Valley seem to have received even more moisture from this slow moving system, with more light showers slated for the weekend through Tuesday, when temperatures are predicted near freezing bringing, perhaps, a light dusting of snow to the Valley floor. Perfectly timed, it’s just what the doctor ordered for the grass, off to its best start in years.

Sierra snowpack light, most record keepers note that precipitation is 60% of normal this season, half-way through our third straight, dry year for California – the Bay Area north registering 50% of normal. But we may be setting-up for a wet Spring yet – it’s been awhile since we’ve seen the creek churn beyond its banks.

Excited about this year’s Gathering, I’ve been chomping at the bit, packed and ready to escape the Golden State for days. It appears that the WFC staff has pulled-out all the stops to make the 25th a special occasion for everyone. I’m certain that no one can see it all. But too wet to do much here. And with the world in a mess, it will be a luxury to see and visit with old friends.

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Of all the horse videos out there, I can think of no other that offers as large a scope or so much practical information ‘to help you help your horse’. In this matter-of-fact, two and a half hour presentation, Joe offers both technique and reason around horses, from catching and bridling to tack and equipment that will help almost anyone become a better and more knowledgeable rider. Distilled from a lifetime with livestock, Joe presents more solid horse sense than the average equestrian can absorb at once, but the DVD menu is quick and easy to navigate for selected replays.

And most pleasantly, “Meet Joe Bruce” is not about self-promotion, but rather compassion for people and horses in basic, understandable terms, each topic separated by his favorite Latin quotes and their translations that I think contribute to the tone of this unique video produced by Emily Kitching of Eclectic Horseman. With Buffy St. Marie lending two songs to the effort, this is a one-of-a-kind video. If you have anything to do with horses, you need to “Meet Joe Bruce” – even the best cowboys will learn something!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check-out Matthew J. Wrangle's transect through the foothills to the Great Western Divide: http://www.crowscry.com/matthew

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brent Huntington

Kyle Loveall & Chuck Fry

Kyle, Spencer Jensen, JCD, Jody Fuller, Bob Dofflemyer, Jeanie Magan

Jody & Jeanie

Red Tail (on our way off the hill)

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What rock have I been under? Wylie’s new CD, “Hang-n-Rattle” is a delicious treat, and perhaps one of the freshest collaborations of poetry and music to rise from the simmering cauldron of cowboy poetry, now 25 at Elko when it will be released. Paul Zarsyski puts his distinctive pen to eight of the fourteen tracks, and the cross-bred heterosis from these two artists makes each track a real thrill. Check it out for yourself: www.wyliewebsite.com/hangnrattle.htm

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You can see the question coming dressed in naked innocence
across pastoral meadows hemmed in pine,
or spot a calculator’s ambush reflecting in the distance
to multiply and weigh your bottom line

by the head or by the acre like a bank account in town
where lifeless numbers gather in a fog –
an empty string of zeros marking time upon this ground
like punchers in a picture catalog.

It’s enough for twenty bulls to keep us busy fixing fences,
enough to buck two hundred tons of hay,
enough to make us laugh at the crassest incidences,
and enough to get religion every day.

The answer doesn’t measure much until you sell it all,
repay the loans and mortgages for the chore
of living with what the weather left, living with the call
to keep improving what you’ve done before.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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For the barn, I was taken at Lowes
by the ratings on the box
of an outdoor lamp made in China

that matched my every-night-for-twenty-years
bright-white bulb, a USA mercury vapor no one makes
anymore – not since Lumberjack was felled

before the Bush & Clinton years of plenty easy credit –
a 70-watt, a high-pressure sodium’s dull-amber glow
lost in the blackness like the far flame of a friend’s fire.

But with cool electric-blue, 50,000-hour LEDs to replace
the white-hot halogen spots that twinkled on & off defused
by too much heat in a knotty pine ceiling, my eyes choose

to rest easy upon the barn’s eave as I forgive the politics
of who made what, trying hard to replay the details
of the days and nights when we slept on the ground.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 7, 2009

We branded our first bunch of calves under overcast skies, Wednesday, as fog and high clouds have returned to the Valley below the 2,000-foot elevation, damp and cold this past week. Starting none too soon with well-timed rains thus far this season, our calves are really growing - and will be a handful before we’re done this spring!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 3:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Taking pause at the beginning of 2009 to assess the landscape, the political and economic climate, I am hopeful – but not encouraged by cattle futures off 25% of last year’s prices, or by the return of “IOU currency” for this budgetless, bankrupt state, or by California’s municipalities that have begun laying thousands of people off without a revenue stream from the State, when the real ‘trickle-down effect’ as exemplified in Sacramento began with political irresponsibility. For the most part, capitalism, global capitalism, as defined by Wall Street, is without ethic. As we all hold on to the hope that the bald-faced arrogance of Rod Blagojevich is not the norm of our democratic Republic, we have come to realize that nothing is certain.

Farmers and ranchers live with three uncontrollable variables, year after year: the weather, the marketplace and an unpredictable amount of political meddling. We have some confidence garnered by surviving extreme droughts, down markets and vote-getting government programs to be both hopeful and wary as we look down the road to our annual paychecks. And as we search for new ways to be self-sufficient and self-reliant, there is a sense that these old virtues may come back into vogue.

I take pride in my involvement with cowboy poetry and the Western Folklife Center because they celebrate a hands-on culture steeped in self-reliance and self-sufficiency, a culture dependent on the health of the land that is involved in community, a culture of accountability and responsibility that has survived hard times. Will Rogers and Woody Guthrie gave people humor and hope as well as a framework in which to think of themselves. Short of their reincarnation, I recognize the talent of many like them within the Elko community. My New Year’s wish is a greater voice for them all!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)