DRY CRIK Journal

We have come to this, now – this place,
wherever sheltered, this point in time
rushing towards us like a locomotive –

when the conclusion of all things rests
in one long moment if we’re lucky
watching the tree frog explore its territory.

We have learned to shut the hawkers out,
banging their wares in the alley, the needy
politicians with puppy eyes, and the orators –

all of them pushed to the dusty corners
of this moment on someone else’s landscape
for over sixty-five million years.

The two strains of tree frogs that exist today predate the dinosaurs, having survived the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) extinction event that is thought to have occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tarweed
Greasy Creek
August 30, 2009

Tarweed
Greasy Creek
August 30, 2009

Oil is expressed from the seed and used as a table oil or lubricant. The nutritious seed can be dried and ground into a meal. From scalded seeds, the oil can be used for soap making. Flowering tops were used for a poison oak remedy. Leaves used as a tonic for inflamatory rheumatism. Northern California Indians made a cough syrup by drying the buds.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Come September, coyotes prowling first calf heifers
learn the sound of engines slowing, stopping, quitting
and the prolonged silence of a hollow point spinning
through space, speeding over dry grasses home.

A man assumes dominion, plays god, and brings
the wet and slick, back feet first, out into the light.
Head heavy, first blink, fluid-rattling life begins
limp at first, craving touch, wanting tongue.

Word gets around, mostly nose-to-nose bulletins
on the ridge trails, in the saddles above it all –
silent canine tales of fresh calves, the comings
and goings of humans and the white diesel pickup.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1st Calf, Angus Cross, 3 yr. old heifer - #830

1st Calf, Wagyu Cross, 2 yr. old heifer - #9136

Robbin and I fed our heifers this morning checking for calves and calving problems. In years past, we always waited to breed our replacement heifers as two year olds, so that they’d calve at three. That meant we had to keep them sequestered away from our bulls to keep them from being bred as yearlings – an impossible task. This year, as an experiment, we bred the yearling heifers to a Wagyu bull, a Japanese breed from which Kobe beef is produced. Known for its marbling characteristics, we were looking for the Wagyu’s low-birth weight, not exactly sure what the calves would look like. We rented the Wagyu bulls from Snake River Farms http://www.snakeriverfarms.com/ who have contracted to buy all the calves when weaned.

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

Arrival and departure of an overnight shower (.01”) from a southern disturbance has lowered temperatures into the 90s and cleared the air for the sweet smell of wet, dry feed and the beginning of a new season, heavy heifers waiting on the moon to calve. Hope for a wet year rides on loose talk of the return of El Niño after three dry years, as buzzards gather early for their thermal glide south.

Date         Dry Creek*            Greasy Creek            Paregien Corrals

8/23                0.01
9/14               trace
10/14              1.82                        2.15                           1.98
10/20                .02                          .02                             .05
11/13                .10                          .15                             .15
11/28                .19                          .13                             .15
12/7                  .05
12/8                  .63                          .81                             .51
12/11                .51
12/12                .24
12/13                .79
12/14                .12                        2.10                            1.80
12/22                .65
12/23                .06                        1.16                              .69
12/27                .04
12/30                .21
12/31                .07                          .31
1/13                  .86
1/14                  .11
1/18                  .32
1/19                  .35
1/20                  .51
1/21                  .65
1/22                1.03
1/23                  .14
1/27                  .03                        3.95                             4.00
2/5                    .14
2/6                    .29
2/7                    .90
2/10                  .40                        1.95
2/20                  .05
2/21                  .46
2/22                  .49                        1.11
2/24                  .55
2/25                  .64
2/27                  .76
2/28                  .75
3/3                    .12
3/4                    .64
3/6                    .02                        3.60                             6.75
3/9                    .08
3/10                  .03
3/13                  .47                          .70                               .55
3/31                  .04
4/1                    .15
4/5                    .50
4/6                    .05                          .75                               .85
4/12                  .89
4/13                  .93                        1.85                             1.73
4/21                1.91
4/22                  .05                        2.10
4/28                  .01
4/29                  .03
4/30                  .03                          .27                             1.76
5/11                  .01
5/18                  .11                          .27                             0.25

Totals            22.00                      23.38                            21.22

* measurements taken at daylight when possible

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August promises rekindling. The sun slides
south along the ridge to her torso as she sleeps,
dark hair cascading into the creek at dawn
and sunset – cold starlit nights, she breathes.

August promises oak and manzanita fires,
branding irons for calves swelling yet in bellies
ambling to water. One by one they rise,
released from shade to plod the dusty track

across dry bleached feed, dead roots encased
in rock-hard clay. Few at water at once,
black hides meet in passing grumbles and
salutations – known each other all their lives.

August promises sweet darkness and storm –
thunder and all the churning furies that stir
the flesh and cleanse the soul, wash summer
dust into one more chance to be reborn again.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No matter the cash rebate that pays tax and license,
a man could have instead, two nice houses with split shake
roofs on five acres between here and Visalia forty years ago

and not need to install bumpers, hitch and headache rack
to keep it intact, not have to figure where to keep stretchers,
pipe wrenches, rifle and chain saw when he needs parts

in town. It’s become a crime I continue to commit, paying
more for less utility that I swap for heated seats and Sirius,
for all the snap and power an old man can handle.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One could say there is no peace,
never peace everywhere on earth –

some become soldiers, well-honed
tools of the powerful and afraid,
of the unreasonable, of the inhumane
in each of us – and some become

what they must to survive them.
Some become prey, feed and fodder
for the stronger, and the rest of us
become many feet on the treadmill.

But there are moments, epiphanies
lurking and waiting to spring
and spread wide and feathered wings
around us. We must slow down

to be caught, we must be watchful,
learn their track and sign, know
their scent and become familiar
with where they haunt the wild.

And when they find us, stretch
the senses and forget ourselves.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

                …to define an ideal as something you can’t
                possibly have but can’t possibly help wanting to have.
                          - Robert Frost (“The Claims of Poetry”)

Feet slipping slightly, slick
tennis shoes on mossy cobbles,
loose sand and gravel vacuumed beneath,
the current tugs heavily at blue jeans
in the Middle Fork of the Tule River
to balance swimming with placing
a Western Coachman against
a riffling dark cut bank. Upstream,
fly line lashed behind you sparking water drops
into the dawn streaking between pines
and cedars along a river strewn
with boulders roaring, casting into
blinding light, half-century back –
your silhouette remains impatient grace.

Packing our biggest rainbows home
in creels wrapped damp with ferns,
we paraded them as men -
as word spread like a rock ‘n roll
from cabin to cabin buzzing
from transistors. A decade later,
I brought you Kristofferson on vinyl
and you taught me instead
the philosophy of ‘catch and release’.
This is how it goes, looking back:
broad vectors swept into directions
running parallel with time – with the
music and the good sense to angle
towards words we can set free.

                                                    - for JEG

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Topping-off the tank, six thousand gallons
set above the barn, troughs and our pickup
parked in an oak tree’s breeze, he suggests

that most people don’t know how to wait.
Twenty-five gallons per minute driven
by a generator, we swap a little gasoline

for a week of stockwater while we load
and feed hay three miles down the road –
and hurry back to keep from eroding

the mountain from its granite rocks,
we find this shade. Perhaps they wait
too long to go to bed and get up late –

and always late they never catch-up
and lose their minds along the way.
Alternately stealing glances uphill

between the Live Oaks, overflow pipe
empty, we light another cigarette to pursue
the practical balance of work with art.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We’ve been in a cooling trend since the record high of 112 on July 19th, falling into the low-90s to begin this week. Yesterday’s high of 82 degrees was a pleasant taste of autumn for both man and beast – gusty, breezy and clear with billowing thunderheads capping the Sierras most of the day.

The pace on the ranch has slowed as we continue to ship steer calves and the late pairs that we’ve been feeding to town. By next week, we ought to have our yearling cattle pared down to just our replacement heifers. Our two bunches of 1st calf heifers, last year’s yearlings and two year-olds, on either side of the creek are close to calving as we approach the end of our year and the beginning of the next. As always, the accomplishment and fresh beginning feel good.

We’re looking forward to an early fall, so much the general consensus around here that we’ll be sorely disappointed if it doesn’t happen. Loose talk of the return of El Niño also keeps us hopeful for a change from the past three dry years. Water continues to be a contentious issue in California, certainly more so during dry times. Some of our stockwater tanks dried-up in July, some will in August, but surprisingly, most of our springs are holding-on as cooler weather helps.

It’s supposed to warm-up next week.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

                                           Clearly it is time
                        To become disillusioned, each person to enter his soul’s desert
                        And look for God – having seen man.
                                           - Robinson Jeffers (“The Soul’s Desert”)

Relegated to rooms, little wonder humans
become dull and predictable, become old
within tight pens hung with many diversions

to keep them calm – little wonder comfort
and convenience rule this claustrophobe
with something new each day to work for

into the future. No man is immune, not
even the natives, not even the Great Blue
Heron fishing from steep, concrete sides

of the Friant-Kern Canal. Progress begets
fresh opportunities to be swept away,
new addictions to cling to as we turn

our backs on the inhospitable ground,
the jagged edge of granite lake reflections
we’d grind into gravel if it would pay.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After much consideration, I have decided to resurrect Dry Crik Review online. Though 'Volume VI' is not yet complete, you can follow our progress at the link below:

http://www.drycrikreview.com

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 4:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I barely remember the man
who built the barns
tourists still stop to photograph,

his face now gone – rough-cut fir
in the rafters, mangers worn by horses,
their galvanized tin given-in to rust.

How fragile he must have been
here raised to live on the edge
of unimproved and steep ground

clear to Generals Sherman and Grant,
and beyond the Kaweahs and Kern
for just a few horses and cows.

We’ll never know his nightmares
nor how he notched and set the timbers
squared and measured in his dreams.

Inside dry, they weather storms
and the demons of changing times.
Lasting secrets only barns can tell.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)