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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.
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.
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.
Weaning Pen
Leaving Dry Creek
Belle Point
The Nevada steers travel very well, but once across the Flat and into Belle Point, their heads went down. With a mile to go to get to water, it didn’t make much sense to them to leave last season’s dry feed.
To Water
November 20, 2006
Up over the ridge and down "the elevator" to Lake Kaweah. At minimum pool this time of year, there's quite a bit of well-cured Bermuda grass below the lake's highwater mark.
Sulfur
October 17, 2006
The Brindle Cow posing with her second newborn calf on this weblog signals a cycle of seasons for “our perspectives from the ranch.” Recognizable, she is a reminder from where our cattle have come over a period of forty years: Hereford background influenced by Beefmaster. No beauty queen, she remains in the cowherd because of her fertility and her ability to raise a calf.
Likewise, we hope to continue to produce new and insightful perspectives. Thus far it has been fun and, at times, addictive to share what we do with you. Much like the perfection we never achieve on the ranch, our journal has become snapshots of what we see and think in this ever-changing business as we attempt to maximize our harvest of grass over the longer term. Primarily dictated by weather and terrain, it must be remembered that ours is not the only way of doing things, as most of the rest of the West calves in the spring.
Because Robbin and I believe in the lasting values inherent to the ranching culture, survival skills on every level, we hope that we might enhance a public and contemporary understanding of the community at-large. Too boring, I fear, for box office attractions, the culture clings to its word and individual dependability, to hard work and repetitive responsibility, and most often with the deed to the ranch at risk. It can be a commitment that becomes one’s whole life, almost like religion.
We begin again and wait for rain.
August 10, 2006
Paregien Ranch
February 14, 2006
Don't tell anybody, but some of our cows have names! Branding at our neighbors up the road today whose cattle graze the long ridge below [February 20th's post] with snow.
February 14, 2006
The heifer calf above gets branded today. Snowing in Mendota on the Central San Joaquin Valley floor as I post - dark outside with clouds. We're working @ the 1,800 foot elevation and hope to get our branding done. In any event, it will be cold for California cowboys. More than likely, a day to talk about for awhile.
January 23, 2006
January 23, 2006
Accustomed to the camera now,
the circling and circulating
through the bunch to frame them
in the light � to the twig
on her hip or the pebbles
at his feet, they step up �
closer together
and seem to know to pose.
Ragle Springs
November 29, 2005
Ragle Springs, Sulphur
November 29, 2005
Brindle Cow & Calf
December 17, 2005
Brindle Cow @ Rabbit Flat
November 4, 2005
The horned-brindle cow won�t stop
at alfalfa flaked to forty-four others
along the dirt track through
a mountain woodland, moves-on
to a spot beneath an old Blue Oak.
Up and down, she sniffs the ground
as we stop to watch her roll and contract,
twist her heavy head above her back.
You slip away to photograph,
as I write these first few lines
and miss the birthing, the quick
slide of the sack, and by reading
her ears I know you are behind her
taking pictures -
never had one
of your own.
She eats and licks placenta
from its face somewhere below
the dry and brittle thistles,
the frayed and flared umbilical
swings fire-red in the sunlight
beneath her tail. Her bag freshens
as she chews, colostrum
rushing to charge each teat.
I breathe deeply, fully as you suggest
as I wait, October dust and forty years
of cigarettes choke my wind away
and she, hardly a heiferette,
ages with us in this belonging -
each tied as one
along her underside to suck �
a black bull calf.
June 18, 2005
August 16, 2005
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