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It seems we’ve been juggling lots of things as my daughter and grandson have arrived from Kauai for his birthday, corral repairs while getting ready to brand another bunch in Greasy, reading poetry in Reedley – a delightful evening at the Mennonite Peace Center – and another .70” rain last night while organizing another chapbook, UNEVEN GREEN, in my sleep. It’s a beautiful morning on Dry Creek – spread a little thin, but no urgency.
...and another branding under our belts yesterday - quarter of an inch at daylight, half-inch now, fire in the woodstove, we're enjoying the morning inside.
We are so thankful for our neighbors who give-up a day to help us brand, or several days in the course of a season, or many months over the course of our years here. We try to pay them back when they brand their calves, trading labor like has been done in this community of ranches for generations.
I often wonder why the world can't work this way, take this template as its own because it works, and has worked over the long run. I wouldn't dream of telling my neighbor how to run his ranch, nor he consider telling us how to harvest our grass best. We might discuss it, but out of respect for one another, we're not compelled to manage more than we have. It's common sense, an endangered resource in domestic and global politics that begs the question: why?
But we're tickled today, a real Thanksqiving that includes our neighbors, friends and family. Thanks for all your help and let 'er rain!
There seems to always be the discussion of when we had green grass last year, or the year before, one that usually concludes hazily. But this journal serves that function photographically, and our rain events quantitatively.
Sulphur Ridge from the Lower Field
Sulphur Peak
November 11, 2010
Of little nutritional value, last year’s regular rainfall left us with plenty of old feed to carry-over that helps hold moisture and also serves as protection from frost. And though it doesn’t appear from a distance that there’s much green on the hillsides beneath it, the new grass is coming along just fine. High temperatures have been in the mid-60s with a rain forecast for next weekend. It’s been like spring.
Another volatile rainstorm left .62” in the gauge this morning – currently low clouds along the foothills eclipsing the sun, temperatures near 60 degrees.
Robbin has started our first fire of the season in the woodstove, a symbolic gesture we share with reverence as our grass season is well underway, our psyches so intertwined with rain and the promise of grass that we can look forward now to branding calves and getting a jump on the work that’s always waiting. It’s been a long weekend, a long week before to make time for the weekend, and the several months of feeding to keep the cows in shape to cycle for when we put the bulls out at the end of the month. Our season has officially begun!
The little rain stalled off the coast for days arrived before 11:00 p.m. and been here since with gusty winds, electricity’s been off twice - lit the candles, waiting for daylight to see
how much a little is. Regardless, it's just right for the new grass.
A slow, overnight rain left .44" in the gauge this a.m. that should finish germinating our new feed, green that is spotty, at best, as a result of the inconsistent thundershowers earlier this month. Forecast temperatures for the remainder of the week range from the high 60s to low 70s that ought to get our grass season underway with more rain slated for Thursday & Friday.
With some calves nearly two months old, some cows are noticebaly thinner despite increased hay rations. We will continue feeding for a couple of more weeks at least, until the new feed gets established. Big sigh to know our season has finally started.
Lighting, wind and thunder was a wonderful change yesterday, but only amounted to six hundredths rain, showers possible later today. Last rain on the 10th wasn’t quite enough to get the grass started, so we’re still feeding hay.
Unseasonably warm this past week, the first lone ships floated-in from over the Pacific on Friday, near 90 degrees. With more of the fleet docked atop the Sierras last evening, temperatures dropped on a steady southern breeze. This morning’s dark smells like rain, but no showers yet. Significant weather change, it ought to be a nice day.
Awaking to steady rain several times before midnight, a little over a quarter inch by this a.m., it may be enough to get our grass started. A few showers forecasted as the clouds clear and temperatures rise to the low-80s by this weekend. Beautiful!
Very pleasant weather with high temperatures dipping down into the 70s, the low pressure is still stalled and pulling tropical moisture out of the Pacific to inundate Arizona – Central California is getting Gail and Amy’s leftovers that have been cooling over Nevada on their way back into our area – just light showers from all-day clouds stacked against the Sierras.
Unseasonably chilly in the mornings, suddenly it has begun to feel like a colder winter waits ahead.
Rather unusual weather this past week as a stalled, low pressure system off Baja slowly unwinds, kicking a little moisture, but mostly clouds, over the southern Sierra foothills. Just enough precipitation each afternoon to wipe out the tracks from the day before. Temperatures have eased from 100 degrees into the 90s, making it pretty steamy. We’re expecting mid-80s with a 50% chance of rain today. Sprinkling this a.m. as I write.
It had to be tough in Los Angeles yesterday as 113 degree heat broke all-time records. Temperatures here on Dry Creek, 200 miles north, hovered around 100. Interestingly, for those who watch 30-day weather cycles, it was 113 here on August 26th.
Characterized as a ‘brief’ heat wave, my pickup thermometer read 112 degrees in Visalia yesterday at about 2:00 p.m., fluctuating between 109 and 111 on the way home to peak at 112 at 4:00 p.m. on Dry Creek Road. Thermometers at home confirmed the pickup. Thunderheads forming over the Southern Sierra have sparked fires near Tehachapi, but by Saturday we’re to expect highs in the mid-80s - significant weather changes underway.
110 in Fresno ties the record for August 25th.
I’ve come to know our expectant mothers, coming two-year old, first-calf heifers bred to Wagyu bulls last winter, over the past two weeks of checking them twice daily. Pastured by the house for the last month, they also parade just above the office window, slowing to single file in the narrows of outcropped granite, offering a telling perspective as they pass between the canyons north and south of the house.
There are all kinds, like people. The impatient, the nervous, the gentle; the dominant and submissive, the good mothers and others that make up the bunch of forty. Already a small number, that didn’t cycle and breed in the 70 days the Wagyu bulls were here from November through January, have begun to segregate themselves, while new mothers form nurseries with their new babies. An interesting system, they take turns babysitting as the others graze or go to water, relieving one another throughout the day.
The girls ‘close-up’ seem to hang together, almost drawn by their common discomfort until early contractions send them off from the bunch to a solitary, out of the way place to have their calf and bond with it. Some good mothers may stay away for two or three days with their new baby, leaving it hidden when they graze and go to water. But often they’ll leave it for several hours while they graze and socialize with the rest, which can be worrisome.
The full moon and 112 degree heat yesterday brought three calves in the middle of the day while I was in town. One uncomfortable girl early yesterday morning (#168), moved up the hill to have her calf. As the only one missing when I checked them in the evening, I was relieved to find her licking a black mass in the dry feed. As I approached her, it became clearer that the elongated calf was too flat and not moving, a big calf by Wagyu standards. A tough labor also, judging by the ground around them, she was addled and a little fevered in the heat, looking to hook anybody or anything that might be responsible for what her instincts said was wrong, as the rush of colostrums filled her tight bag. Last I saw her at dusk, she was lying beside it.
One may wonder whether not checking and watching these heifers would have resulted any differently, as my diligence did not save the calf – but that’s not the point of the story.
Dry Creek @ CDF Crossing
July 14, 2010
We Bangs vaccinated the heifers yesterday, shipping the steer calves early this a.m. Too hot to sleep, I included another photograph of Dry Creek just to feel cooler.
Back from the vet for about a week, the Mule is on the job with limited duty. Eddie and Steve at the Exeter Mercantile performed miraculous surgery. The frame is tweaked every which way as the spring hangers in the bottom photo partially attest. I am still dumbfounded how Eddie managed to square the box, roll bars and seat. Finally figured how to get the air out of the cooling system, so all is running well again. Waiting on a plug-in wiring harness for the taillights. Leaving the dented left side panel on the box as a reminder.
Mule: Belly-up
Unfortunately, the Kawasaki Mule got away from me yesterday morning when I stopped to pick up a sack of mineral supplement that I’d lost a couple of weeks before along the road up the mountain. The weight of five bales of hay (600 lbs.) and the incline were more than the emergency brake could handle, apparently, slipping slightly before I got out. As the only parking/locking device, I reset it and sat there to make sure it would hold. Bent over to pick up the sack, I saw the Mule moving out of the corner of my eye. I was part way back in the saddle as it accelerated (free-wheeled) downhill backwards. Though I thought I could get all the way in before it went over the edge, I wasn’t confident that I could get to the brake peddle while it was still on the road. End over end, crashing trees and brush, scattering hay bales, fencing tools and cameras, it came to rest a couple hundred feet below.
I’m OK, though upset with the shape of the Mule. The fine line between humor and tragedy depends on how it all ends. Horse or mule, there are no guarantees.
We start the week at 46 degrees this a.m. as the sun breaks the ridge beneath the clouds, less than a month from the summer solstice. Unseasonably cool, we know it will warm up someday. The Dry Creek neighbors met here Saturday for some grass-fed hamburgers as we approach the beginning of fire season - ample fuel after last winter's rains - and to update our contact list. Present were representatives from CDF and the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District, coordinating water supplies from the Lake Kaweah Enlargement Mitigation Site on Dry Creek for fighting fire. Good to see everyone under relaxed circumstances, providing those within this twelve mile stretch of road an opportunity to get to know one another a little better.
Fog forming along the creek, we've collected another nine-tenths this morning to bring our season total close to twenty inches of rain this season. Mighty nice!
Gusty last evening, it rained steady until midnight. Showers & T-storms possible today.
What a year!! Grass belly-high, prices sky-high. My Dad said you only get a year like this once in a lifetime. So after a great grass season when cattle prices nearly doubled in 1978, after the disastrous 1976-’77 drought, he got out of the cattle business noting that he’d had two. His first was in 1951.
Another 3/4 inch last night, the hills are gaining texture as the green feed gets ahead of the cows and calves scattered across the tops of ridges all week long with plenty of moisture on the grass to sustain them. Even without sunshine, isolated splotches of early fiddlenecks, snowdrops and poppies get ready for their wild explosion of color - ground saturated now, almost every canyon leaking rivulets into the creek. What a year!
Another half-inch overnight, we're in the middle of a wet pattern. The stockwater ponds are filling up, but little runnoff for the most part as the rains have come easy and had a day or two to soak inbetween. More slated for this a.m. and again on Friday/Saturday, a storm forecast as bigger, windier and colder with snow down to about 4,000 feet.
Awfully nice to see this much rain!
Half-inch overnight, we’ve enjoyed a nice slow inch of rain during the past three days with very little runoff. Depending on the weatherman, it should clear today with varying forecasts throughout the week as we try to find a window to finish branding calves, three little bunches yet to go. Meanwhile, playing accountant for Uncle Sam.
Bigger than advertised, currently .86" in the gauge @ daylight, weathermen extending duration from noon until this evening. We can use it all!
Dry Creek - a.m.
Bob and I worked above the fog yesterday, getting ready to brand his calves tomorrow.
Storm total: .68"
42 degrees under partly cloudy skies, .05" in the gauge at 6:30 a.m., the bulk of this cold storm is supposed to arrive mid-day, leaving snow down to a thousand feet. Looks like Gail & Amy at the Spider Ranch have some rain in Arizona and Peter & Susan have something between rain and snow at the Keddy in northeastern Nevada. More rain forecast across the West from Wednesday/Thursday through Sunday - let the winter games begin.
An apparent surprise to local weathermen, nearly two tenths rain fell on thirsty ground last night, enough to revitalize our south slope fillaree, I think, certainly enough to buy more time for the rest of our grass until the real storms arrive. Current forecast: clearing skies - today should be beautiful.
from all of us on Dry Creek!!
Chilly, low clouds cling along the foothills the past two mornings after the rain event that never materialized, less than two-tenths in the past six weeks after our first storm of the season, mid-October. Our higher country above 1,000 feet is holding remarkably well in the old feed, more residue than usual held over as a result of lighter stocking last season in response to the high hay prices the season before. And so it goes.
October’s two inches soaked well into the granite, and with above normal temperatures the grass took off in the protection of the old feed, temperatures apparently warm enough to give the new feed strength, judging by the condition of the cows with calves and the amount that they are currently milking. We want to get started branding, but prefer to wait until after a good rain and a promise of feed to insure that the calves heal-up quickly.
It’s been a unique and unusual beginning to our grass season, trending dry again after three below average years of pumping stockwater all summer. Though in many respects, agriculture on the Valley floor is harder hit than we’ve been, continuously punching deeper wells into a declining aquifer. One can’t help but wonder whether the future of the San Joaquin Valley, once (and perhaps it still is) the richest agricultural region in the world, will be dedicated to housing people or raising food, both hardy consumers of water.
I think it is apparent that the federal flood control projects on nearly every river feeding the Valley, implemented half-century ago, may have also diminished the amount and rate of recharge to the aquifer. Certainly the demand for water by municipalities is greater, and by environmental interests as surface water has been diverted to the Sacramento Delta. Towns like Mendota languish with the unemployed as thousands of acres (of relatively marginal ground) on the West side of the Valley lie fallow.
Many theorize that our water table, certainly mid-Valley, is influenced by Tulare Lake, once the largest body of fresh water in the United States. I recommend “King of California” by Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman for an interesting and detailed perspective of the times and circumstances that came together to influence changes to our Central Valley resources and landscapes.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, we cut firewood and wait for a rain – all seems normal.
Greasy Creek
October 20, 2009
On the southern edge of the October 13th rain event that brought 2 inches and broke the .88” record set in 1968, we have green. Temperatures were in the mid-80s for the next four days, humid and muggy as the earth and dry feed steamed under broken clouds, resulting in a quick and thick germination of native grass. All grins at the sale barn yesterday, I’m told, consensus being that no one has ever seen the grass start so dramatically.
Cotyledons were evident by the 14th and by the end of the week the first-calf heifers had lost interest in alfalfa, opting up the hill with their calves instead. Mostly washy with little strength at this stage, they were ready for some hay by Monday, though not enough to clean-up half-rations. All quite remarkable for those that depend on weather and grass - we’ll see where it goes.
Flat - Yearling heifers
October 20, 2009
Belle Point - "BB" ('Brahma B--ch') & calf
October 20, 2009
Lower Field - JCD afoot
October 20, 2009
Lower Field - Hereford calf
October 20, 2009
Once again we're here to choose one man,
Picked to hold our banner high.
He's a tried and tested cattleman,
Watching close as the years roll by.
He's seen the good and bad years,
As he's ridden along the way.
He's shed laughter and some sad tears,
When his friends were called away.
But through it all he's kept his goals,
While culling his cow herd deep.
With replacement heifers that he controls,
That were tagged as the ones to keep.
With cows like his, havin' early calves,
Who as weaners may top the sales.
With steers weighin' eight and their heifer mates,
They'll sure as hell mash down the scales.
His Granddad came to this ranching game,
about four generations back.
Then came his Dad who rode this range,
And his son never lost the knack.
Now the fourth generation is coming in view,
And he's startin' to pick up the reins.
This is what we’re about, this is what cowmen do,
We're the ones left protecting the range.
Well it's time to divulge who this welcomed choice is,
This man wasn't selected by chance.
Lately we roamed together ore' this great place of his,
My most memorable part of his ranch.
May he keep up the good fight and up the hill climb,
And his future with cattle climb higher.
The recipient cattleman of two thousand nine
Is none other than John Dofflemyer.
- Earl A. Mckee, October 16, 2009
Earl McKee & Plenty Valentine
February 28, 2008
http://www.bar-o-ranch.com/history.html
Quite an honor and quite a surprise to be introduced with a poem by Earl at the Tulare County Cattlemens' Fall Banquet last Friday night.
[see the September 30, 2009 poem "Greasy Creek" in 'Recent Posts']
A remnant of typhoon Melor left 1.82” of rain since yesterday morning, settling the dust and enough to begin our grass season. Low clouds hanging in the canyon, chance of showers left today. Nice clean air, good time to take a deep breath.
The sweet smell of a fall shower, usually immeasurable, the sound of it on the barn roof this morning feeding horses under light gray clouds against a brisk breeze reaffirms life – but perhaps more importantly, that we’re alive.
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.
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.
Weeks of heat over 100 degrees in the Central Valley extract their toll in various ways after a while, sapping energy and derailing good intentions not essential to family and cattle. [Hence, no posts here for the past week.] After a very pleasant end of May and most of June, it’s turned predictability hot, nights now near eighty degrees as the clay hillsides retain our all-day blaze. In the canyons along the foothills we have fairly steady breezes, but in Visalia, it’s still and stifling, noticeably warmer with asphalt, concrete and buildings radiating warmth well after dark.
Last week we were pleased with how our steer calves weighed when we shipped Thursday, averaging 750 pounds gross – a first for us, but testifying mostly to an exceptional feed year. We have a load of cows headed to the bred-cow sale tomorrow, and another load of steers to ship Tuesday. In between, we’re feeding yearlings and bulls, pumping stockwater and trying to stay cool.
The cow/calf business in our vicinity has changed dramatically over the past decade. Whether Electronic Identification (EID) tags, vaccination programs, Internet and video sales, gone are the carefree days of getting to the work when we want. The difference is money. Having cattle for sale that meet the requirements of buyers you don’t know, uniform truckload lots to any Western state might mean $50-100/head as opposed to hauling them to the local sales barn when you get around to it.
All new ground for us as we try to gear-up to satisfy a broader market, selling natural beef when we can. Forty years ago we held our calves over for a second grass season, selling them at 18-20 months and aiming for 8-weight steers. Today on the same ground, our calves are sold with a 45-day wean at 10 months of age. Most of the difference is genetics and hay.
Though pleased with the results, it’s a lot more physical work than it used to be. Add-in the heat and one always wonders if this is the direction a man over sixty ought to be going. But still beats the hell out of punching a clock!
June 17, 2009
With nearly an inch of rain two weeks ago, green has germinated in the sand and silt beneath the sycamores along Dry Creek. The grass won’t last long as the temperature hit 100 degrees yesterday. The unusual continues after the strange weather of May and June, demonstrating that anything can happen in California, and that ‘only fools and newcomers dare predict the weather’ here.
Though the everyday pace of the past six weeks seems to be our mantra, we’ve finished weaning with only our heifers left to process. Thirty days ahead of last year, we’ve listed our steers on the Internet in a softer market, hoping to save our irrigated pasture for our heifers to keep as replacements and/or sell this fall. Not looking forward to the high temperatures to come, at least the days will be getting shorter.
June 6, 2009
A marathon month with wonderful weather, lap after lap from pasture to mountain pasture, gathering, weaning, feeding, hauling and processing calves to sell in thirty days, we near the end of our annual harvest off the grass as we sort and precondition calves on the irrigated pasture. With the last bunch left to haul out of Greasy Monday, they’re weighing-up nicely – thirty to forty pounds heavier than last year, it’s been a helluva a feed year despite our meager rainfall totals.
And it’s gone smoothly, unlike last year’s toll on people and vehicles: Robbin’s broken collarbone, Clarence’s rolled pickup and gooseneck, and the right side doors of my pickup peeled against an oak tree. But even bone weary and tired come evening, we enjoy sharing our sense of accomplishment and our passion for the cattle, critiquing our season and looking to experiment and tweak the process slightly next year.
The market, however, is much less certain as beef (cull) cows took a 20% hit last week when the economically squeezed Dairy Industry began offloading 200,000 milk cows. Also, new out-of-state health and shipping regulations, as a result of tuberculosis found in three Fresno dairy herds last year, vary from state to state, making internet and video auction sales less effective and appealing to producers. Most states won’t take any California heifers at all, but some will take steers destined for certified feedlots if they have an electronic identification (EID) tag, ostensibly lending traceability in case of any kind of an outbreak.
The drug companies also have their hooks in the cow-calf business, with half-a-dozen vaccination programs to try to make fit individual operations, all of which ultimately require additional processing and stress on the calves as well as increased costs that producers hope to recoup. There is yet much to weigh on the marketing end of our business, much left to sort out.
But we’re thankful nevertheless, concentrating on increasing our efficiency, focusing on what’s best for the cattle and the ranch over the long run, willing to bet our future on our cows and what we’ve learned from experience. As much of the rest is beyond our control, we continue to do what (we think) we do best, and after forty-some years, no two of which have been the same, I can’t imagine a more interesting place to work.
Top - Paregien Ranch
May 30, 2009
Day after being separated from their calves, the cows find shade near the corrals.
West Side - Paregien Ranch
June 4, 2009
We hauled 2nd & 3rd calf-cows up the hill and weaned calves and cull cows down yesterday. Up and down the mountain, we hauled over a hundred head with three rigs over a total of 52 miles each on our 4-wheel drive roads. With light loads in tractor mode, my 2005 Ford diesel only averaged 4.5 mpg, while the 2007 Dodge averaged 11.2 mpg.
June 4, 2009
Robbin caught this shot of the Valley, Colvin Mountain, Elderwood and Woodlake from Paregien's West Side as we headed to the corrals to haul the cull cows to Dry Creek.
June 4, 2009
Paregien Corrals
Nerve wracking, tough driving, we load the last of the cows for our last trip down the mountain. With another week of weaning left, Robbin and I are headed to Greasy this morning to put out mineral and salt, and with a little hay, to make friends with the last two bunches to gather... it'll be like a day off!
6:45 a.m. update: It started raining at 4:00 a.m., and now with about .80 in the gauge, we can't go anywhere!! But we're tickled and thankful that we got our hauling done yesterday and no calves up the hill to feed in the corrals.
10:00 a.m. update: An hour or so ago, this morning's rainfall total was .95 of an inch. Broken clouds now, it's warming-up as the chance of afternoon thunder, lightening and more rain increases. The dry ground has absorbed it all, our dry feed already waving in a warm wind. You can feel it - anything is about to happen.
Great Western Divide
May 30, 2009
With a little snow still in the Sierras, the Dry Creek and Kaweah River drainages seem just a stone's throw away from the Paregien Ranch. A low pressure system that has been spinning off the California coast for nine days is expected to come on shore with some thunderstorms Thursday and Friday. Though the cooler weather has been welcome for us and our freshly weaned calves, it's strange weather for June.
Greasy Creek
May 26, 2009
Into our third week of weaning calves, temperatures have been relatively cool with only a couple of days over a hundred degrees. The calves look good, our first bunch averaging 10-20 lbs. heavier than last year. Last night’s thunderstorm should help settle the dust for a few hours this morning as we separate another group from their mothers, cull and de-worm the cows. With a little luck, we ought to begin weaning our last bunch next week.
Dawn: Spider Ranch
Arpil 22, 2009
Out the door early this morning to feed a pen of calves that we started weaning Friday. For the past few years, we’ve employed ‘fenceline weaning’, keeping the mothers close to reduce the stress of the process. With water at each corral, we can also keep the dust controlled and hold pinkeye and respiratory problems to a minimum. It all helps, especially when it gets to be over 100 degrees. After a week in the pen, the cows will forget the company of their calves, and by the third day, the calves are already bawling at the truck for breakfast.
We haven’t weighed any calves yet, but it looks like we’ve had a fairly decent feed year judging by how the bunches we’ve gathered look. We’ve plenty of old feed left, having reduced our stocking capacity in every pasture because of the high price of last year’s alfalfa. Now, of course, our concern is fire, especially around Lake Kaweah where the snowmelt is rising faster than the irrigation release, now pretty close to the dry feed as we head into Memorial Day weekend and a lake full of recreators.
Somehow, Robbin has managed to get the garden in shape, having done some planting before we left for Oklahoma, and just now finishing-up with Armenian cucumbers, potatoes and beans. But the weeds in the orchard and yard have had a second germination with our late rains, growing well while we were gone.
With two bunches to wean tomorrow, it’s the time year when you better get out early, as now the cattle are headed to shade by 7:30. As my good friend Joe Bruce remarked last summer, “an hour early in the morning is worth four in the afternoon.” We’ll wait for his Latin translation.
Spider Ranch
April 22, 2009
We logged 3,500 miles from Dry Creek to OK City and back home in 12 days, staying off I-40 as much as possible. Highlights were the long breakfast with Betty Ramsey in Amarillo, Laurie Wagner Buyer & W. C. Jameson, Waddie, Lisa, Don, Kathy & MMM at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, the Wrangler and Chip Martin of Starhaven, Robbin’s cousin & family in Silver City, White Mountain & the Salt River Canyon, Kitty Collins in Tempe, Gail, Amy & the Spider Ranch outside Prescott.
WOW! Great weather, today. Rain scheduled for Saturday. Good to be home!
March 23, 2009
A the Vernal Equinox, the Sequoia Riverlands Trust offered 3 days of painting locally, one of which drew 30-40 painters up and down Dry Creek, slowing locals on the road, most in disbelief. Quite nice for a change.
I tried to describe this excited mindset shared by those engrained in place, those people connected for decades to a piece of ground within a watershed, in my poem “Cowboy Capitualtion”. Perhaps a love for the uncontrollable, return of the prodigal lover and all the wild and sensual implications that overwhelm us in a miserable downpour and flood, or having the confidence in self and community to meet whatever challenge such disasters bring, but I dare say the air in this canyon at daylight is electric with that kind of excitement – not because of any impending or predicted weather event, but simply because our weather has changed.
It is simple. We make our living from the renewable resource of grass – and plenty rain means plenty feed. If it’s pretty with wildflowers, hills dressed in golden poppies above white skiffs of forget-me-nots, an awe inspiring quilt spilt with blue lupine, magentas, purples and pinks usurping the green, so much the better. It’s damn-near Spring!
It’s been delightful being home, gradually recuperating and catching-up from a week in Elko. The weather there, and here as well, has been spring-like – as the grass gets ahead of the cattle.
We left the 25th exhilarated, though not exhausted despite late hours kept at the Stray Dog with Mike Beck or Corb Lund at the Pioneer – never saw so many flat hats in one place dancing – or Anne Rapp and Ray Benson's spectacular musical with Asleep at the Wheel, a tribute to Bob Wills, "A Ride with Bob", or at the Stockman’s upstairs with David, Joe, Keri Lynn, Nathan (Cowboy Celtic) and MMM’s fiddle player David Davidson: what a treat!
With more diverse programming than ever, I offer our appreciation and gratitude to the WFC staff and sponsors for making it all happen! In these uncertain times when rural values and ethics will continue to serve us well, we ought to hedge our future bets by helping to preserve them with a membership, or increasing our level of membership to the Western Folklife Center. Looking back twenty-some years at the resurgence of cowboy poetry and music, as well as the other spectrums of artistic expression at Elko, it is truly quite magical and remarkable what has been accomplished – testifying, I think, to a need and an audience. Ours is a dynamic culture yet, so please join and donate!!
A trace of moisture yesterday morning as the predicted rain split north and south around us, but a second disturbance left .31” yesterday afternoon and evening. Unsettled weather slated through the weekend and into early next week.
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.
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!
Christmas Day brought wind, rain (.83”) and snow down to 3,000 feet nearby, a nice winter storm with a little runoff – however Dry Creek has yet to make it this far down the canyon. Typically, the creek arrives in the first week of December even without the benefit of major storms, when the sycamores and other trees quit taking water – an indication, perhaps, of the cumulative effect of our recent dry years. This year, however, the timing and rainfall amounts have been sufficient to keep the grass coming, 32 degrees this morning.
Robbin and I are enjoying the kids and grandkids, ready for another round today. Merry Christmas all!!
For the past week or so since the last rain, a high pressure ridge off the coast keeps our notorious Tule Fog trapped in the Valley - miserably cold and damp with zero visibility along Highway 99. On the edge of the cottony gray ocean yesterday morning, it was 33 degrees. Hard to believe that less then a month ago we had a week in the high-80s. The grass at elevations above 1,000 feet has been enjoying warm sunshine, but slower growing here along Dry Creek.
Nearly a half-inch of slow rain at daylight and showers predicted throughout the day, we and our grass are relieved. A cutoff low off the California Channel Islands has delivered fairly warm southern moisture with only slight runoff. Nice! This is the time of year we live for here!
Lush April dreams upon November green at dawn,
another Sabbath flush with fiery face cards drawn
from a sawtoothed deck of peaks and ridges
glinting prosperously, sheets of gold burning
slowly into canyons thatched with dark oaks –
fractured seams between the uplifted lit with fire
igniting awe as the pieces come together –
as all the gods arrive at this crossroads
to rest and collaborate – to take the day off.
Our perfect start to the grass with an inch and a half of slow rain over five days at the first of the month was followed by a week of high temperatures in the high-80s, breaking records set in 1936. Not only did the grass jump, but began to fade on the west and south slopes. The flats and ridges have held well, keeping cows and calves scattered, no longer waiting at the gate for hay.
Watching the stacks of expensive alfalfa shrink has been almost as tough as bucking it onto the truck and flaking it onto the ground for cows for the past three months. Despite our reduced numbers, the empty space in the barn reflects our pocketbook, and with the current economic meltdown, it’s anyone’s guess what we’ll get for our calves next summer. With plenty to keep us occupied, we try to tend to business.
A welcome injection of marine air brought Valley fog and lower temperatures this past week, fire in the woodstove, and cautious forecasts for showers over Thanksgiving, beginning Tuesday towards the end of the week. We’re believers, of course, taking a moment to catch our breaths, cutting a little wood and making last minute preparations for an unpredictable California winter. Happy Thanksgiving!!
6:30 a.m. PST
Sixty-six hundredths overnight with sprinkles yesterday, clean air with the sweet scent of dust subdued, of mud, is plenty to start our grass. We begin again optimistically, watching the weather, dreaming of the perfect season.
7:00 a.m. PDT
Some twenty years later while in line for my first Poetry Gathering packet, I introduced myself to him in the Elko Convention Center. He’s a spry 77 years young, hopping in and out of my four-wheel drive, opening gates, as we checked some calving cows in the upper reaches of the ranch. One hopes to have his energy at his age!
Also be on the lookout for his new CD, a yet to be titled collection of Blues that demonstrates another range for Jack’s voice and style. He was off in the dark at six this morning in his rental car headed for Austin and his next performance at the University of Texas on the 18th where he will open for Guy Clark at the Texas Union Ballroom.
Kaweah River as it enters the Valley
Robbin’s collarbone seems to be healing well. Shorthanded without her, and Chuck on another fire in Napa, Clarence and I have enlisted my son’s help. We’re tickled with his youthful humor.
The weather’s warmed into the 100s, shorthanded we continue to wean calves. Fires around the state this past week have pulled our right-hand man away from Dry Creek. Robbin’s collarbone is healing, which leaves the gathering, feeding and processing to Clarence and I, 10 years his junior. We’re plodding methodically towards an end that’s not yet in sight, but making progress.
Red-headed Decons
With nearly an inch in the gauge at daylight, I can’t ever recall this much rain at the end of May. As low pressure circulates from Nevada’s Great Basin, rain has been sliding into the Central Valley and south along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range. Snow was forecast above 6,500 feet, but cloaked in clouds, we can only see the near hillsides below 1,000 feet this morning.
Though the temperature change is delightful, the impact of this much moisture will likely leach the nutrients from the dry feed that we’ve so judicious saved to get our cows through the coming fall. It may even start the grass again, however short lived in our typically 100-degree days this time of year.
In 1948, according to stories from my father, he had to ship his steers at the first of April after a dry spring following the drought year prior. But he shipped them in the rain, and it continued raining through May, germinating the grass again, green feed through June. This year’s weather has been strange and unusual, but not unprecedented for California where anything can happen. We’ll wait and see what tomorrow brings.
In this business, there’s nothing like an injury, and potential tragedy, to make one consider quietly retiring from this lifestyle in one piece. Unlike so many other professions where the workplace is predictably safe, there’s always that wild card when handling livestock.
Loading cows in less than ideal facilities, Robbin got crushed against the gooseneck and run over by a cow that had become suddenly snuffy. Ten times Robbin’s weight and on the move, we feel fortunate that the cow only broke her collarbone.
After two weeks of unseasonably warm weather followed by high winds, temperatures dropped into the low 70s last Thursday, but there was an electrical freshness in the air Friday morning as we gathered the cows to be hauled. Sorted afoot in the corrals, none of the cows had shown themselves as being the least bit agitated, but one of them jumped out of the gooseneck to the end of the short lane and back again to put two of us on the rickety fence. It all happened in a second or two. At the door of the gooseneck, Robbin couldn’t get away. Just to get to the asphalt on the way to the hospital, as in most rural parts of the West, can take a long time over rough dirt roads.
Midday today, it’s 57 degrees. It has been raining since four this morning, accumulating about .25” – our first rain since March 30th. If the rain continues tomorrow as forecast or evolves into afternoon thundershowers, it would do the dry feed we’ve saved more harm than good.
With less than two-tenths of an inch of rain in the past 50 days, we’re facing another short grass season. Temperature highs during the past two weeks have vacillated between the low-50s to the mid-90s with 36 degrees forecast for tomorrow morning – no rain on the horizon. The hills have turned three weeks early, but judging by how the cows and calves look, what feed we have is fairly strong.
One local impact of the Hallmark/Westland debacle has been the USDA’s recent enforcement of dairy milk quotas that has brought more (younger) slaughter dairy cows to town. Cow prices fell to $28 cwt. at one local auction yard last week. With alfalfa hay topping $300/ton and corn prices high, California beef cow operators will face a second summer of reducing numbers. Some nice, young bred cows sold for $600 - $750 in Visalia last week – a far cry from the $1,750 they brought two years ago.
Bill Maher slammed “meat” again last night, citing the misuse of grain for feeding livestock while the rest of the planet is rationing rice and other grain products for human consumption. His assumption that livestock are raised exclusively on grain misses how beef is produced by harvesting the renewable (though variable) resource of grass and converting it to protein; hopefully producing a calf to then ship to the feedlot. Typically, a 10-18-month old calf is finished on grain for 90 -110 days in the feedlot in order to grade USDA Choice or Prime, the cow remianing on grass. But is the American consumer ready for grass-fed beef? Amid political, economic and weather extremes, we cowmen must adapt.
Robbin and I have been busy planting vegetables, hoping to keep our trips to town this summer to a minimum. Though slow and methodical, we could be quite happy as gardeners for rich people if and when the cattle business goes to hell.
The Easter pictures below look to be close to the apex of our spring now, a week after the fact, as the south slopes and sandy flats turn. The first row of foothills facing the Valley floor are brown, but a surprise shower Sunday morning brought .14” here on Dry Creek and over an inch in Three Rivers area – another chance of rain on Wednesday. Though far from our perfect scenario for spring, losing the green feed on the south slopes 30 days early is not all that unusual as we approach the end of our rainy season.
March 14, 2008
We're expecting showers tomorrow - help for both flowers and grass.
Five days and well-over two inches of slow rain, hillsides leaking, every draw gurgling this morning. That I can actually see the creek from here indicates heavier amounts last night upstream. Short of the ‘Big One’ forecasted, we measured a little less than seven-tenths yesterday and last night. With another sixty days left in our ‘rainy season’, we’ve already accumulated more precipitation than last year. Sunny days and warming temperatures should really push the grass along with some early wildflowers. Ought to be some very pretty days this next week – time to get some work done.
Clouds hang in the foothills at first light, riding the ridges in a slow counter-clockwise movement. I hear the creek in the dark. With nearly an inch in the gauge, it began raining midday yesterday and gently through the night. It seems like years since the Central Valley foothills have been targeted by storms, this week’s series overlooked by the Old Farmers Almanac that has been fairly accurate thus far this season. As near as I can tell from NOAA, the ‘Big One’s’ due this afternoon.
She pounds the tin roof
to eagerly explain
her absence
& wakes me
from erotic dreams
to dance naked by the window
dripping in the sunless light.
She then sprints wildly to the creek
that begins to stretch
as I stare
past the last ridgeline
that melts into the gray.
I ignore her wetness
except for curious sideglances
I steal
angrily.
She may excite me
to forgiveness
to some barbaric lovemaking
but I cannot forget
the drought.
from “Hung Out to Dry” (1992)
Rain started early yesterday a.m. to finish up with 3/4s of an inch last night. More slated for this evening and a ‘big one’ promised for the weekend. The grass has really freshened-up, cattle scattered, cows and calves filling up – life looks good!
The weather verged on miserable, snow daily with 10-20 degree wind chills brought evenings down into the minus numbers, conditions that seemed to impact attendance. Donner Pass was closed on and off throughout the Gathering, and driving in from the north was fraught with blowing snow white-outs as was I-80 from Salt Lake City on Wednesday. You had to really want to be there.
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As always, my personal ‘high-notes’ weren’t on the program – wonderful slices of time that Elko makes possible:
Sarah, the little girl with curly blond hair I caught from the corner of my eye going through my chapbooks, randomly reading from each while I autographed others at the table nearby. She might have been 12. Fifteen or twenty minutes later she was standing before me with “Poems from Dry Creek”. With such a special aura as we talked, I was not surprised to learn that she wrote poetry. Daughter of a master boat maker in Sausalito, it felt good to shake her father's hand, one rougher than most horseshoers. A magnificent moment, really, and it turns out that she is a friend of a friend of mine.
Down at the Stray Dog, Mike Beck brought electric ‘back-up’, having had to struggle over beer-drinking conversation in past years with only his acoustic guitar. Somehow he managed to get drums, bass and 12-string Rickenbacher in the corner with him to blast the inattentive out into the alley. Great selection of songs. Lost my hearing in 1969, but got it back Friday night.
At the Star Restaurant, Lost Weekend played western swing from the coat closet for whatever fell into their hat. With a lively and unique sound, Robbin bought several CDs. Joined by Kenny Maines, we caught them later upstairs at the Stockman’s Saturday night – a wonderful crystalline sound, both vocals and instrumentals.
Replacing Michael Martin Murphy at the last minute as a relative unknown, Andy Wilkinson and his group did the show at the Stockman’s. We caught two of his three shows. Most songs were Wilkinson originals, solid, well-written pieces with researched backgrounds, Texas history saved in song.
Though I never saw Ernie Sites this year, I know he was playing across from the Red Lion. Also, there had to be 3 or 4 gear and art shows.
It seems so healthy to have such a diversity of music ‘happening’ unofficially on the periphery of the Gathering, essentially competing with the ticketed night shows. Perhaps true validation occurs when a genre attracts these outside influences and the whole becomes enhanced by them, as was the case this year. For me, it demonstrates a sense of security for both artists and audiences that may have been undermined by stricter or more judgmental definitions in years past.
Unfortunately, I spent Sunday bundled-up with a God-awful fever that stayed with me all the way home. I don't remember ever being so sick - walking pnemonia, no doubt, with so little lung capacity I couldn't get a cigarette lit. With no appetite, coffee and tobacco tasting awful, I've pretty much done without.
Nearly 2.5 inches of rain while we were gone. Nothing like the green, green grass of home.
Brisk at daylight, snow down to 1,500 feet with nearly seven-tenths in the rain gauge, the cut-off low spinning off the coast of California for the past three days finally moved into the Sierras after soaking the San Joaquin Valley, raining strictly south to north. With most of the watershed white, Dry Creek maintains its minimal flow. More weather predicted as another low pressure system takes this one’s place on Friday, anticipated to spin off the coast, but perhaps attracting an onshore flow of southern moisture in the process. Sounds good for the grass here - cold flurries for Elko.
As the hype from the Weather Channel continues for California, we are grateful for 1.72 inches measured this morning, Dry Creek subsiding from its nighttime high flows. Though a muddy and frothy brown, it’s great to see it running again. We experienced minimal runoff here downstream, so it had to have rained hard in the upper reaches of the watershed. With snow levels high, perhaps the larger part of the 5 inches promised with two more days remaining of the forecast storm. Cattle scattered on the south slopes, sun trying to break through the clouds, a bountiful morning all around.
January 6, 2008: Though the storm hasn’t behaved as forecast, we accumulated another three-tenths overnight with very little run-off, most all soaked in.
If we truly knew
as much as we thought
we do,
we might
give-up thinking
altogether.
After branding a little bunch of calves Wednesday and getting the rest of the bulls out to the cows yesterday, it began raining slowly at noon through the night – a beautiful gray morning with about an inch in the gauge. With very little runoff, most has soaked in, Dry Creek yet to progress from its position upcanyon. More rain promised, but for now it’s smiles all around.
Morning after Thanksgiving along the foothills, the sun has broken through a high overcast, remnant of last week’s Tule Fog in the Valley when the air was much less dry, illuminating the first orange and yellow leaves still attached to the string of sycamores along the creek. Approaching three miles upstream, Dry Creek has begun to run as the trees have quit taking water. When you forget how badly we need a good soaker, it’s truly beautiful today.
We’re feeding alfalfa daily in small amounts in selected places, and surprisingly the grass started with last month’s spotty thundershowers is still trying to grow on the north slopes. The cattle are getting out, though our first-calf heifers across the canyon seem to be listening closer to the sound of our diesel pickups starting mornings as they unload from the draws with an unrelenting chorus until hay arrives. Some are thin, but the calves are still growing well.
Thus far, I remember many worse years. And like most every year, we face a pivotal point in our grass season where our year’s investment and labor may well be determined early. Setting the stage, of course, for miracle weather patterns or ‘never seen before’ events that constitute our drab numerical averages. Each year the hay bales get heavier, memory blurs – but there’s still a little excitement left in these old bones, waiting and anticipating what’s yet to come.
Received a slow 0.28” on Dry Creek late Sunday – as close to that as described by reader Tom Nichols in his poem, “A slow rain that soaks in\ with no runoff at all –” (see comment for October 13, 2007). Enough, we trust, to germinate the south slopes.
Yellowstone National Park
Now back on the ranch, Robbin and I left the state for a 2-week road tour of Idaho, Montana and Alberta. Highlights were Banff and the Canadian Rockies, the Mt. Sentinel Ranch south of Longview, Alberta, the Stevenson Basin Ranch in Hobson, MT, Yellowstone and the Salmon River of Idaho. Good to get outside one’s tunnel vision to find pleasant and delightful people in many other parts of the West.
While we were gone, low pressure formed off the coast provided an intense thundershower in the Kaweah River watershed with as much as 2.5 inches in Lemon Cove. However, we only recorded amounts ranging from .22 to .76 of an inch precipitation on the ranch. Mid-70s today.
Awoke this morning to two-tenths of an inch in the gauge. Though more than the five-hundredths I went to bed with, still not enough to start the grass. With low clouds cloaking the foothills most of the day, I harbored a hope for an afternoon thundershower.
No such luck!
Next chance next Wednesday – 20% according to the professional prognosticators.
#603 - August 20, 2007
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.
Having already picked and packed-off most of the plums and all of the apples and apricots from the fruit trees, I was awakened early this morning by the raccoons trying to pry the lid off the cat food. If I weren’t short of energy in this heat, I’d be on the warpath. Temperatures peaked at 114 last week, air heavy and short of oxygen, each step slow and deliberate.
Having just made the rounds of our foothill pastures to check the cows and stockwater, a couple of our springs and ponds have all but dried up. Normally we have enough water to get the cows through the late summer and fall months, but last winter’s short rainfall is beginning to manifest itself early, many young Blue Oaks turning yellow and shedding leaves – going dormant, I trust, rather than dying.
Robbin lost her devoted friend Trik in the interim between blog entries, her young dog succumbing to some sort of encephalomyelitis, a swelling within his head. Cause unknown, the prolonged wait for the results of the required rabies test did not lessen our anxiety.
We’ve not been on vacation – just another San Joaquin Valley summer baking our brains.
Weaning and feeding 3 corrals of bawling calves into Memorial Day weekend – and judging by the RVs out early on the road yesterday, America’s ready to party despite the price of fuel. We’ll stick close to the canyon and watch for fire and idiots – retreating to our boroughs like ground squirrels.
Up the road tonight for community food and drink, to swap gossip with neighbors and then coast home – a prideful event enhanced as we look down upon all the foreign vehicles on the road like hawks from upslope oaks.
Not surprising that the Natives claim they learned how to live from the wildlife, easy these days to see through wilder eyes. Not special sight perhaps, but a way to sort sense where often there seems none. But the flaw with emulating nature is embedded in human history – and like those who have preceded us, we trust our vision will serve us until we get out of here.
It’s relative, of course, each succeeding generation of land based people believing they are the last bastion to hold such sight stirred with wild tales and heroics, such pleasant myths – but most days better than the alternatives.
Have a pleasant weekend, but steal a moment to remember the Vets.
Photo by Densie Withnell
Photo by David Wilke
Dry Creek locals show Cowboy Celtic a lick or two.
With a surprising .38 of an inch in the gauge this morning, it’s still sprinkling. Low and heavy clouds shroud the ridges and shrink the canyon down to look and feel more like February with a fire in the woodstove. Some south slopes in the ‘dobe have been brown for weeks, north slopes holding, west heading-out and turning. But higher in the granite where most of our cows and calves live, the feed still grows as fading skiffs of popcorn flowers have all but shed their petals.
With less than 50% of average precipitation, we have been approaching an early end to our grass season ever since the two weeks of mid-80 degree days in March, but it has been a season of little miracles, well-timed sprinkles and rains, a long battle of hot and cold extremes that has made our feed strong – a season well-suited for native cattle, judging by the cows and calves where Robbin and I put salt out Friday.
Lower Field, Greasy Creek
March 26, 2007
Our emphasis herein on weather conditions may strike some as an unusual preoccupation that hints of an unorthodox spirituality, as is intended. I dare say as was intended for all humanity, once upon a time. I believe our current and general disassociation from Nature, despite the hip rhetoric, contributes to the world’s maladies and adds to a growing egocentrism that a mere half-a-day outside away from it all just might relieve. Squeeze a picnic into spring.
Cloud Bank at Sunset
March 26,2007
Scott Erickson and Callie Vincent
March 18, 2007
It will be a relief to get the branding behind us and to enjoy the miracle of spring with our friends and neighbors.
February 28, 2007
Light and intermittent rains have kept the grass coming, though colder with frost and ice Friday morning. We’ve managed to brand some small bunches between storms since the last post, still only half-way done – the balance of the calves will be bigger than we prefer to mark them. As the “Rain Gauge” indicates in the sidebar, we’re behind on rainfall as well this year.
Home and decompressing from the Gathering in Elko, we have been waiting for a promised inch of rain for the past three days with less than a few hundredths to show as the series of storms in the Pacific begin to come onshore. So positive seemed weathermen that the branding scheduled for today was canceled two days ago at the Ainley Ranch in Elderwood – at daylight, though, it’s plenty dry enough to brand calves. More importantly, the third to a half-inch received the day we left for Nevada had returned our short gray slopes to green by the time we got home. With less than five inches for the season and about 25% of normal snowfall in the Sierras, everyone in Central California needs the rain whether they know it or not. And judging by what we saw driving through, whatever spills into the Great Basin won’t go to waste!
I continue to marvel at the friendships developed over the years (19) at Elko and that so many of these relationships center on poetry and music (of all things). Incongruous as it may seem for the generic image of ranch people, Elko has become the hub for creative expression for land-based people of the West, which with current technological advances, has effectively expanded to some very artful video presentations. When one considers that we treated the magic anomaly of the Gathering like a fragile artifact in the early years, it is apparent now that it has a vibrant life of its own. Credit is due the WFC directors and staff for their vision and implementation, to the artists for fresh expression and to the audiences traveling substantial distances to be an integral part of it.
But you can’t see it all. At the top of my list for what I missed was Andy Wilkinson’s “A Way in the West: Women on the American Frontier” performed by Trudy Fair at the Great Basin College. As we circumnavigated the back streets of Elko with Earl at the wheel of the shuttle, the twenty-minute, extemporaneous review of the play from a middle-aged female left me longing for a ticket. Congratulations, Andy – I just barely shook your hand.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, work waits as real life settles-in with the gray clouds in this canyon as it tries to rain.
Down to 22 degrees at daylight this morning here on Dry Creek, compared to yesterday’s temperature of 25. Though it’s supposed to warm slightly tonight, I would guess that the bulk of the citrus crop that wasn’t damaged Friday, froze last night. Ken McKee, (pictured in the Greasy Creek branding crew below) indicated to me that his remaining crop is lost, temperatures down to 20 degrees in the Elderwood area Friday night – presumably in the teens last night. Undoubtedly, there are a few warm pockets that survived, but those would be an extremely small percentage of the crop still on the trees. The fruit can tolerate up to 4 hours at 26 degrees and a lesser duration at lower temperatures. In the mid-teens, the trees are at risk.
Two miles up the road, we branded some of Craig Ainley’s calves yesterday. Though I had wrapped most of our exposed pipes, I had to leave about 9:30 to address a rainbird sprinkler that had frozen and thawed into a geyser. A fairly quick fix with the plumbing parts at hand, but today being Sunday, I’ll have to wait to see what I need – hopefully it won’t necessitate a trip to Home Depot or Lowe’s in Visalia. Ugh!
Along with our inability to drive in the snow, which we didn’t receive with this cold front, Californians aren’t prepared for frozen plumbing, most new homes on slabs with plumbing above sheet rock ceilings. Likewise, most trenching is fairly shallow. Comparing notes at Elko in 1998, this practiced recipe for problems brought lots of grins from friends from other parts of the West.
We leave for Elko in a couple of weeks, but not before we gather another bunch of calves to brand Wednesday. With a little luck before we leave, we’ll get some rain that will give us time to get our stuff together. Short of any plumbing disasters today, I plan to work on my new chapbook, April Bullfrogs. For the most part, it is an edited selection of poems from this weblog that ought to be available at the Gathering, or through Dry Crik Press when we get home.
Robbin took quite a few pictures at Craig’s branding yesterday that christened Jody Fuller’s new pipe pens. I’ll add a couple of these later in the red-lettered “Continued” section.
Greasy Creek
Back: Craig Ainley, Ben Britten, Tony Rabb, Ted Ainley - Front: Robbin & John Dofflemyer, Jody Fuller, Frank Ainley II, Lesley & Chuck Fry, Clarence Holdbrooks, Virginia & Ken McKee
We managed to get a little bunch of calves marked in Greasy yesterday ahead of the much-heralded cold storm that arrived this morning. 40 degrees at noon today, we expect several nights well-below freezing into the mid-teens – cold enough to freeze the remaining oranges still on the trees in the Valley.
So far, there hasn’t been any moisture associated with the cold front, but there’s speculation that it may snow down to the Valley floor. Most Californians don’t know how to drive in the snow. In 1998 when Robbin & I were leaving for Elko, there were about as many cars nosed off the road as there were on it.
Sycamore in Live Oaks
Section 17
Not near the brilliance of Quakies elsewhere in the fall, our early freeze and lack of stormy weather has kept leaves on the sycamores.
High on the Hillside
Section 17
Finding enough green to bite on a west-facing slope, the heifers and their first calves are getting up and out.
Nevada Steers
Belle Point
Likewise, the Nevada steers are unanimously working the hillsides, finding more green in the dry feed than can be seen in this picture. Even through their winter clothes, one can tell they’ve managed to keep full on the dry.
Snow down Sulfur Ridge to about 2,500 feet towards Dry Creek where we measured .07 rain. A distinct tint of green is showing through the old feed, cattle high on the hillsides.
Sunset North, Dry Creek
December 17, 2006
Robbin and I are making special Christmas preparations for my eldest daughter and three year-old grandson flying in from Kauai later this week. We spent yesterday trimming a store-bought tree and stringing lights around the outside of the house. In the blackness of this canyon, our simple place is lit-up like a Nevada casino.
Working around yesterday’s slow drizzle, I managed to salvage six “Made in China” strings from years past, methodically interchanging the primitive and delicate bulbs from a well-weathered seventh string, crushing a fair percentage of them between my fingers in the process. Generally immune to Christmas consumerism, I was quite pleased, however, with my diligent effort – one that Robbin noted might have saved ten or fifteen bucks with my five hours invested.
She’s right, of course, but I lay it on the culture – which is what this weblog is supposed to be about. At only two or three bucks an hour, the value of my satisfaction makes all the difference. Like Robbin’s small jars of pomegranate jelly, an incalculable effort with others in mind, we try to embrace the Spirit of Christmas, or so I rationalize. We’ve been running at a pretty fair clip since April, truly busier than we’d like to be. With the rain, we can slow down and relax a little. Happy Holidays to all!
Currently misting with a little over an inch in the guage. Air clean and moist, quite a nice Sunday morning at daybreak.
From Sulfur Looking South
Mid-70s today at the higher elevations, much cooler in the Valley = inversion layer. Chance of rain Friday, Saturday & Sunday.
Last weekend’s storm never materialized despite its unanimous prediction from local weathermen, NOAA and The Weather Channel. This dry pattern at the beginning of our generally scant rainy season seems to parallel last year, thus far. Temperatures have dropped to freezing at night, mid-to-high 50s during the day. No rain in sight.
The Nevada steers are learning their new home around Lake Kaweah. Not afraid to climb or sleep on a steep hillside, they’re scattering out into ample dry feed. Quick to claim their own flake of hay, our calves are growing and pulling some of the younger cows down. As these cows stay in the same field or mountain pasture year ‘round, their old feed is getting short and they require more hay to stay in shape to raise a calf and breed back.
We put the bulls out to the cows Monday and Tuesday. With 75% of the hay we bought last summer already fed, it’s essential we keep it coming now until the grass comes. Any hopes I may have harbored of carrying some alfalfa over into next year have been forgotten. If we do get rain at this stage, the grass will be slow to grow, though generally strong.
An unnamed metaphor at the moment, the barn shrinks daily as our ranch work primarily consists of feeding. Somewhat up against it, we try to ignore the tightness and fatigue we all feel, feign a good face, grin and carry on. If we don’t get a rain in the next couple of weeks, that may change.
All part of the business of grazing and raising livestock, our dependence on rain is but one of the friction points we’ll face this grass season. Amazingly resilient, our grasses have evolved to endure unpredictable weather patterns. Likewise building faith and/or character over time, this unique dependence on rain has much to do with who we are.
Mexican Sage
November 11, 2006
High clouds and fog, local weathermen have finally agreed to a good chance of rain on Saturday through Monday. If correct, it’ll be our first real storm of the season. Even with more empty space than hay stacked in our barns, we have much to be thankful for. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Our 70% chance of rain on Saturday slid north as more moisture for the Northwest. However, arriving with two more truckloads of Nevada steers Monday night, an unpredicted swirl of clouds left amounts ranging from .14 to a quarter of an inch along Dry Creek. Still busy feeding our cows and calves, the surprise showers may have been enough to start the grass in places – dust settled for the moment.
Live cattle prices have slid nearly 20% as the price of a short corn crop has increased to supply the growing demand from ethanol plants. Naturally, commodity speculators have exacerbated both extremes, but we trust that the price of both commodities will even out in the near term – one example of the variables of the market and politics that are beyond our control. For those that normally sell their calves going into winter, it’s had to be an awfully tough hit.
Two truckloads of Nevada steers arrived last night, and though forecasts vary widely, NOAA has us slated for 70% chance of showers today of about a tenth of an inch in the Valley. We hope, of course, to get more in the foothills to start the grass as the clouds stack up. For the past three days, the wide discrepancy among dueling local weathermen keeps us optimistic. At the very least, we ought to get the dust settled. Temperatures have cooled into the low 40s at night and high 60s during the day. Manzanita and oak are cut and stacked, but too dry yet to chance a fire in the woodstove.
Though the predicted moisture only amounted to drops, the roof got finished. When shortly thereafter my Dry Creek-raised, 70++ year-old accountant admonished me for working rooftop at fifty, I had to explain: that I was actually closer to sixty and that only a few can afford the workman’s comp to hire someone else to do a roofing job.
Robbin and I have had to split up: she’s maintaining the house, activity that also currently includes staining and sealing everything wood while I feed cattle mornings, hopefully to get back in time to put in a half-day with my own bucket and brush. At it for a week or so, we should be halfway done by Sunday.
October 4, 2006
It appeared that a bear had grabbed one of the first-calf heifer calves in the Lower Field earlier in the week. Back still swollen, it seems better today. Meanwhile a mile up-canyon, an old female lion with cubs has killed several of the neighbor’s calves – just next door, we’re missing one.
Nevertheless, the weather change has been delightful. Gradual warming predicted with 90 degrees slated for week after next – a long ways off this time of year, but we think we’re making progress.
The first day of October brought intermittent showers, enough to settle the dust on our main feeding roads, though not enough to start the grass. We’ve been feeding since August, concentrating on our first calf heifers, 75% of which have calved in the first six weeks; of the older cows, about 50% have calved in the first thirty days. We’re quite pleased, however hesitant to take too much credit for our good fortune.
Monday, feeding in a cloud on Top and in Sulfur limited visibility to about 30 yards.
Nursery in Sulfur
Ocotber 2, 2006
The welcome change in the weather has us scrambling to stain and seal the house and deck as well as finishing the installation of the roof on our new office as the weather prognosticators generally agree on varying degrees of moisture later today.
Dry Creek: .12 inches
Greasy Creek: .14 inches
Rabbit Flat
September 6, 2006
About 5 days old when this photo was taken, Bob's tail had already healed after a coyote got off with the longer part.
Checking the heifers seems to have become a bit more frantic for me now, as we’re generally short one or two that were very close to calving on our prior trip up the hill. In two sections of fairly steep and brushy ground, it takes several hours to get around in a pickup, but we’re probably as effective as we’d be on horseback all day.
Our heifers are two year-olds when we breed them to low birth-weight bulls to hopefully eliminate the necessity of having to pull any. But so much like people, some mothers are better than others – the newness can become confusing, some heifers regularly losing track of where they left their calves. As the calves hit the ground, each field of heifers becomes a community as they begin to form nurseries, leaving one to babysit while the others graze. Just how they determine who is next in line to relieve the babysitter remains an unanswered question, but it could be an example for humans as one way to get along.
Our calves come with September’s long shadows, the beginning of our year. The remainder of last year’s calves will sell in town today. The circle of seasons seems to tighten with little time to catch our breath before we start again. With the majority of the hot weather behind us, we're looking forward to shorter days and some ample rain.
First Calf/First Calf Heifer 2006
Buck in Velvet, Lower Field - Greasy Creek
August 12, 2006
July 10, 2006
One of the benefits of age is an increased perspective if our memory doesn’t fail us. Increments of time seem to shrink, weeks passing like days as the seasons turn full circle on an accelerating clock as we put our calves together again to sell on stampedecattle.com. I’d be interested in my father’s commentary at this juncture in the business of harvesting grass and raising calves, marketing a year’s effort and luck with the weather on an Internet auction site, an annual paycheck that may ride on a few digital photographs.
Before he died in 1997, we had just begun selling our calves after weaning instead of holding them over for another grass season to sell at 800 pounds. In those days prior, we would price our cattle for buyers to view as long yearlings on the ranch. As soliciting buyers with time and an eye for judging weights became more difficult, we opted for the special “off the grass” sale at the local auction market in Visalia, prices too often dependent on the number of buyers that attended. The advent of the Internet and Video Auction sales has allowed us to offer our calves to feedlots and buyers throughout the West.
The steer calves above will be sold next Wednesday to weigh 700 pounds when we ship them in August. You can follow their development from babies to the present in the archives of this blog site.
We have, since the middle of May, been weaning calves, finishing-up with the last bunch in the third week of June. Because we run our cows in fields of 1-2 square foothill miles, we brand and wean a field or two at a time, hauling the calves down to the corrals adjacent to our irrigated pasture where we precondition them before selling them on the stampedecattle.com Internet auction site in the next few weeks. Part of the preconditioning process includes a regime of vaccinations and booster shots that we trust will help bring premium prices from buyers. We do not implant our calves with growth hormones nor have we had to resort to any antibiotics thus far, so with a little luck we will offer an all natural, antibiotic free, choice beef product.
The vaccination program requires that we hold the calves on pasture for a few weeks longer than normal to insure that we not ship any reactors to the modified live virus shots. This year, we have religiously weighed the calves before and after weaning and they will be weighed again after we sort the steers from heifers when both receive their last round of shots and deworming next week. Economically, it’s essential to know the impact of this new program on our weight gains.
As we approach our annual payday in 100+ degree heat, I tend to be a little irritable and tense. We spent this morning fixing fence after feral hog hunters with dogs ran 160 head of calves through three fences just before daylight. Got the calves back together OK, but probably a good thing we didn’t catch the poachers.
At times like this, punching a time clock almost sounds appealing.
Seasonal Rainfall:
Dry Creek: 21.96"
Greasy Creek: 24.41"
Paregien Ranch: 23.00" plus ?
We start gathering to ship the pasture cattle tomorrow, welding projects yet unfinished as the grass turns, we will be busy for the next few weeks trying to get it all done.
An impressive light show over the Sierras early Tuesday morning provided scattered thundershowers. In a two-mile stretch along Dry Creek, precipitation ranged from .08” to a quarter inch – we received .20” to bring our total for the season to 21.96 inches.
Feed in the shallow soil on the steep south slopes is beginning to turn, most all else is holding well with wild oats and fiddleneck along the road above the top wire. The weather is warming and forecasts call for 90 degrees by tomorrow. We are busy trying to finish several welding projects before the grass turns and before we begin gathering to ship in two weeks. Our Nevada pasture cattle that arrived in November have slicked-off and appear to have gained about 300 lbs., but truthfully, we’re just now able to get around as there are boggy spots everywhere.
With nothing scheduled and a little luck, Robbin and I might be able to get out and get some pictures of "late spring" off the road, see some cattle and check-out the damage to our roads. We’ve already earmarked at least a month’s worth of work for the dozer to get them back in shape. It’s been a remarkable season. Since the last half of February, I doubt we’ve had over four days in a row without rain. During that same period, the Sierras have accumulated a lot of snow that hasn’t had a chance to freeze hard, adding to flooding potential in the near term as weather warms.
Apparently, we're not done yet - .19" more here on Dry Creek, Sunday. With showers predicted on and off throughout the week, we may make 22" for the season.
Dry Creek: 21.76"
It's been over a month since we've been to the Paregien Ranch. Roads are barely passable, high flats a mire, stockwater ponds full and every canyon running. Emptied 9.09" from the gauge. Additionally, as we approach the end of our rainy season, we accumulated another .39" here on Dry Creek last weekend. Chance of "nuisance rains" predicted over the weekend.
Feed is holding well and still growing, cattle look super. Days warming into the 80s.
Dry Creek: 21.57"
Greasy Creek: 22.68" plus
Paregien Ranch: 23.00"
Another .80" yesterday and last night brings our total on Dry Creek to 21.18" for the season - more forecast.
Trying to be spring, days alternating between cloudy showers and 80 degrees.
Dry Creek: 20.38"
Greasy Creek: 22.68"
Good to see a some BLUE sky today. .35" more last night brings us upto to 20.18". Showers predicted over the weekend with an inch for Tuesday. Long range forecast is for rain on and off until the end of the month.
Dry Creek
April 5, 2006
Awoke to rain and 1.38" in the gauge. Season = 19.83"
March 20, 2006
With more rain, we are indeed sequestered to the house. An additional 1.78” in the gauge at daylight, brings our season total to 18.45”. Thundershowers promised for this afternoon, rain tonight and showers tomorrow, I suspect we’re pushing 20” at the higher elevations and Lord knows when we’ll be able to get to the corrals either side of the canyon. Too muddy to even work in the garden! There is a little loose talk of two more weeks of this kind of weather – but we’ve seen some amazing sunrises.
Never one to complain about the rain, another .56” stands in this morning’s rain gauge, sun trying to break through the low, light clouds on the ridge. Another storm predicted for Sunday and Monday.
We are indeed limited to the asphalt, hillsides leaking streams, ground too boggy to ride – not a time to let cabin fever lead you off to work for hours knee-deep in clay on the end of a shovel or dragging cable. However, any minute I expect the weekend caravan of 4-wheel drives to roar up the road to play in the mud and snow. A couple of truck lengths apart, 15-20 at a time, they will race up the hill like young colts and limp back singly, come evening, with one or two on trailers.
With several projects running concurrently here at the house, we’re busy working ‘round the rain.
The last storm left 1.52” to take us beyond normal spring conditions for this time of year,
bringing our season total to 16.11” thus far, with more rain forecast over the weekend. Despite being under a fairly constant cover of clouds, the grass seems strong and growing well, waiting to really jump when the weather finally warms up. We’ve been busy with plenty of projects close to home, extremely grateful for the rainfall and that we got our calves branded right after Elko.
Since, it’s been too wet to get to them, and at least a week out before we could today. That scenario would have us finishing mid-April, 30 days before our feed turns and not enough time for them to recover from branding, at least a 50 lbs. loss on our steer calves that have to be pushing 450-500 lbs. at this time. With cattle prices slipping, we’re glad that we don’t have that job and its consequences to contend with. Let it rain – it’ll be warm soon enough!
Subtropical moisture for the past 12 hours stands at about an inch in the gauge after receiving .20” last Saturday. It’s wet and the creek is rising with more on the way.
March 24th total for Dry Creek: 14.59”
Two more cold storms in the past few days add another 0.86" on Dry Creek to bring our season total to 14.39". 70 degree weather predicted today as we begin to dry out, still too wet to get off the asphalt with a vehicle. Cooler weather and another chance of rain predicted for Saturday and again on Tuesday. Fiddleneck, popcorn flowers, lupine and poppies waiting in the wings and beginning to bloom along the roadways. Glorious morning for the race!
Season Totals
Dry Creek: 13.53
Greasy Creek: 14.83
Paregien: 13.91
Got a break in the weather to see the cattle and check the other rain gauges.
Dry Creek: 1.00 Total: 12.27
Greasy Creek: ? Total: 10.93 plus, plus
Paregien: ? Total: 9.91 plus, plus
Evening After Rain: Sulphur Peak
February 28, 2006
Snowing @ 2,000 feet on the 3,400 foot Sulphur Peak northeast of us with about an inch of rain accumulated in the rain gauge as I post. Forecasted thunderstorms later this afternoon. We received 1.26 inches from the Monday night storm by Tuesday morning on February 28th. Though the forecast of 3-5” had the city giving away sandbags until late into the night, Visalia only recorded .30.
As the roads didn’t dry out enough to get to the other rain gauges, our season totals will be updated when they do. Weathermen, however, are predicting rain on and off throughout next week.
Dry Creek: 1.26 Total: 11.27
Greasy Creek: ? Total: 10.93 plus
Paregien: ? Total: 9.91 plus
Glad the calves are branded!
Up Canyon, Dry Creek
February 19, 2006
More than forecast or expected, we received over six-tenths of an inch of rain for the weekend, with snow down to 2,000 feet either side of the canyon here at the house. However, three miles up the road it snowed down to 700 feet, a fairly rare occurrence on Dry Creek. With our calves all branded, we can direct our attention towards improvements here at the house and on the ranch.
Dry Creek: .66 Total: 10.01
Greasy Creek: .26 Total: 10.93
Paregien:
A few of our black calves stretched by the branding fire were dotted with snowdrops as we finished the day and before it began to rain in earnest. With the south and west slopes wanting to turn, the two-tenths we received Friday night was as important as getting our calves marked part of our never-ending dance with the weather that often works out well.
Blue Oak Pair - Paregien Ranch
February 14, 2006
In the process of cutting some dry oak and manzanita for the cooking and branding fires, Robbin and I spent a relaxing Valentines Day looking at the calves before we gathered to brand and ran into this pair of Blue Oaks. Such fertile ground for myths and tales!
Warm in the mid-seventies. No rain since January 19th.
Since our last post, weve been to Elko and back, and branded the rest of our calves in Greasy, yesterday. No less than four digital cameras at work, we ought to have some photos to post. Great day, good people, big calves.
Rob Stone & Brent Huntington - Greasy Creek
Photo by Lesley Fry
February 9, 2006
On the way to Elko, we took I-50 over the Sierras to Carson City to look at a dozen registered Hereford yearling heifers in Jacks Valley. Though most of our cows are black, weve been buying some Hereford bulls from Bill Rossiter and Loren Mrnak for the cross. Perhaps sentimental, I grew-up with Hereford cattle [see Neil Meilis poem Herefords in the Lost Issue] anyway, theyre now in the field next to the house, branded, full and doing well.
Elko is a swirl in my head, mixing with the more pressing realities of ranchwork. One of the highlights of the 22nd Gathering was the Fisher Poets who will have their 9th Gathering in Astoria, patterned after Elko, at the end of this month. Representatives Jon Broderick, Dave and Pat Densmore, Geno Leech and John van Amerongen offered salty stories, poetry and song for three days to the cowboy crowd.
The connection seems obvious to me as another hands-on culture at the mercy of the weather, the marketplace and the government, a dangerous profession full of humor and insight. While at Elko, I perused Grass by Buck Ramsey, a wonderful reprint of and I Rode Out Upon the Morning that includes the original prose version, "The Wagon Incident," and some comment from Bucks contemporaries. Interestingly, the book concludes with a poem by J.B. Allen utilizing 15-20 nautical terms or metaphors of the sea.
The Vaquero Exhibit at the Pioneer Hotel included Trappings of the Gaucho, some intricate rawhide and amazing silver pieces. Robbin fell in love with the Brazilian musicians, likening Renatto Borghettis stage presence to Mick Jaggers. There is, of course, no way to see all thats offered at Elko, but arriving early we were able to visit more this year, make many new acquaintances and thoroughly enjoy and exhaust ourselves.
Were back in the saddle quicker than we would have liked, a weeks worth of work stacked on our desks, and after branding yesterday, just as tired as we were Saturday night in Elko. Clarence and Chuck had the cows gathered when we got home. They gave us today off, but I thought I better get something posted early in case they change their minds.
We branded a little bunch of our own calves yesterday, after gathering the pairs in a 1,000-acre field at the 2,000-foot elevation thick with Blue Oak woodland and interspersed with manzanita, Live Oak, buck brush and chemise with the pickup. This may seem like sacrilege to the purists out there, but this is country where they had to shoot 4-5 year-old steers they couldn't capture in the 1940s - and country where I spent as much time looking for fairly-good help on horseback as I did for cattle.
Roads, brushing, and water development has made the this part of the ranch more accessible, and the investment of time and supplement in our cows pays additional dividends where cattle have always had a substantial advantage.
We head n heel our calves to brand, and as always, the calves seemed bigger from the ground where Chuck & I worked. Clarence branded, and Robbin and Virginia McKee vaccinated. Ropers were Ken McKee, Tony Rabb, Brent Huntington and Glenn Dooley. Good day all round.
Too early and too much like spring, weather warmed to 70 degrees as we ate a great, late lunch prepared by Chucks wife Lesley when we came off the hill. Chance of rain tomorrow has been canceled, less chance over the weekend.
Roads at the higher elevations are beginning to dry out and passable if were careful.
We gathered some cows and calves to brand tomorrow, and in the process checked the gauge in Greasy to update our season totals [October through today].
Season Totals
Dry Creek: 9.35
Greasy Creek: 10.67
Paregien: 9.41
We ought to get the amount for the last two rains at the Paregien corrals in the next day or so. So far, its been a good rainfall year, but our grass season lasts until May, needing some regular rains through mid-April. Though its good to see the grass getting ahead of the cattle, weve got a ways to go, yet.
Good day branding calves at the Rabb Ranch, sun in and out of the high fog. Good neighbors and friends - Tony's Red Angus calves sure looked good!
Light rain from dark-to-dark yesterday, making the dirt work here at the house impossible, though were nearly done.
Temperatures have cooled down to near freezing which will strengthen the grass, as we wait for warmer days for it grow. Cattle are scattered all over the hills. Couldnt ask for much more!
Dry Creek: .19
Greasy Creek: .31
Paregien: ?
Beautiful sunshine this morning. The weathermen have unanimously canceled the series of storms they predicted last week, so we ought to get some calves branded Tuesday or Wednesday as the roads dry out.
Ive been reading some more poetry from Drum Hadleys Voice of the Borderlands, a hardcover collection of over 350 pages [click Dry Crik Picks for more info] that in its Preamble may be reminiscent of his three earlier chapbooks [see Scott Prestons review of Between Earth and Sky in the Lost Issue of Dry Crik Review], however the bulk of the book is like listening to all the old cowboys you might have been lucky enough to have grown-up with far and away one of the grandest experiments in vernacular poetry to date. Hadleys sense of rhythm and space is so congruent with cowboy discourse, it becomes great reading chuck-full of wild metaphors and solid truth.
Ive reprinted a particular poem [page 173] thats been sticking in my head for a few days to share and to give you the flavor:
LAW ON THE BORDERLINE
One Honest Client
Look, people dont come to a lawyer for justice, says Lou Baroni.
They come because they are getting hassled or screwed,
Or they want to hassle or screw someone else.
In the twenty-three years I have practiced law,
There has been only one honest client who has come to me.
She was a little old Mexican woman.
Abogado, lawyer, she said, I have come to you
Because I have a problem. Some years ago
I borrowed eight hundred dollars from a man.
Now he wants me to pay it back.
He says he will sue me if I dont pay him.
Will you help me fight him?
Well, I said, court is very expensive.
It sounds as though the simplest and most honest thing
Would be for you to simply pay the man
The eight hundred dollars you owe him.
Abogado, lawyer, she said, I certainly didnt have to come
All the way to your office to hear advice like that.
Rain arrived Saturday and cleared mid-day Sunday.
Dry Creek: .69
Greasy Creek: .90
Paregien: ?
Lower Field, Greasy Creek
January 13, 2006
Robbin and I got up to Sulphur to cut some dry oak and manzanita. Calves are growing cows and feed on the improve, and the bulls still home. Drug the main road up and back before it rained.
The roads are our lifeline in these foothill ranchscapes. Our objective is to get the water off the road as quickly as possible to keep it from washing, cutting and eroding. We cant get our goosenecks everywhere, but we can drive in thirty minutes to what used to take us half-a-day to ride. Instead of packing 200 lbs. of salt on a packhorse or a mule, we can scatter 2,000 lbs. and see a lot more cattle in the same amount of time.
Little wonder we dont make as many horses as we used to.
Helped my neighbors up the road brand calves, yesterday not too sore this morning. Days are warm, but morning fog thick in the Valley. Weathermen are talking like well get some rain tomorrow evening and Saturday, daring to quantify an inch with their forecast, and also predicting storms every two or three days for the next couple of weeks. So much for getting our calves marked before Elkoif theyre right.
Yesterday was one of those days. Two pickups broke down and the dump truck weve been using here at the house to move dirt quit at the Texaco mini-mart down the road towards Lemon Cove. Three men essentially afoot chasing parts, spending money while damn-little got accomplished.
Clarences pickup spent Sunday night up in Greasy where he and his wife had gone to cut some firewood, relax and barbeque with relatives. Chuck roll-started his pickup Monday morning to get to work. The backhoe/dump truck operator called about 10:00 looking for Chuck to help solve his problems, but Chuck was on the skid-steer pushing Clarences pickup out of Greasy and over the creek-crossing that had washed-out in the rains. In order to get a tow-truck up to Clarences rig, Chuck had to spend several hours clearing the boulders and loose rock that had fallen into the bluff road. A new starter for Chuck and fuse for Clarence, both up an running this morning, Longfellow echoes all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Weathers been nice, mid-sixties during the day, fog in the Valley. The cattle we can see are on the upswing and scattered, bulls still playing musical fields.
I, on the other hand, about half-afraid to go anywhere while Robbin chased parts for Chuck, spent most of the day answering the phone and cussing this moveable type software trying to get the lost issue formatted.
Space. Indentions. Mid-line spacing. Gary Snyders poem, that I really wanted to use because it ties so well with Udalls speech and offers a broader view of our language and culture, was beyond the capability of the software, or perhaps my ability to use it. One poem by Errol Miller, I couldnt use at all fairly frustrating day altogether.
I woke-up about 11:00 last night with a solution to linking Dry Crik Review to the blog site without covering-up the recent entries with the issue. I couldnt sleep unless I tried it and got a couple of restless hours under the blankets before Chuck and Clarence showed up for work this morning. Still editing typos, but I think it will work.
I share the above with you only to affirm that its not always sweetness and light around here. But when I visit with friends from harsher climates this time of year, I know weve got it pretty good.
Just now beginning to dry out. Clearing the channel and removing all watergap fencing for miles, Dry Creek peaked on January 2nd @ 2,200 cfs at about 10:00 p.m. Indicative of how dry weve been, despite last seasons above normal rainfall, runoff was minimum as the rain came slow. Penetration where we moved dirt yesterday to accommodate a real office was only 6.
Like a spring day here with a 68 degree high we let the woodstove go out, yesterday evening the frogs began their chorusing as the foothills seem to close-in around us like bedcovers pulled-up around our ears. Unusual weather, to say the least, for this time of year, but my only clue to normal, after a lifetime, is the average of a lot of data that seldom influences how we deal with current conditions.
The neighbors with calves close to the asphalt are starting to claim dates to brand, typically claiming weekends first in order to enlist more help, as a lot of them have real jobs in town. Our calves are well-off the road and we need to get a couple of bunches done before Robbin & I leave for Elko smaller bunches requiring less help mid-week.
Just finishing the typesetting of the Lost Issue of Dry Crik Review begun last week during the nasty weather with the hope well be able to include a link through this blog site. Though the issue has been in a dog-eared file folder for over ten years, the material rings solid to me, especially the insightful reviews by Scott Preston that are also a decade old. Once we overcome a couple of technological obstacles, this issue may finally see light.
Dry Creek
January 2, 2006
Pretty good gullywasher with 4.15" of slow, steady rain measured for the past thirty-six hours, bringing our New Year total here on Dry Creek to 5.39", a little more than a third of our seasonal average rainfall. A major mindset reversal as we are no longer worried about stockwater, canyons running and stock ponds full or filling. No storms predicted for the next week, but dense fog in the Valley. Typically, we're above the fog here and some sunshine now will really help the grass. Unless faced with some unusually cold weather, the rain ought to get us over the hump and into warming weather by the end of January when we could use a little moisture.
36-hour Totals:
Dry Creek: 5.39"
Greasy Creek: 5.90"
Paregien: 5.36"
It will be a couple of days before the roads dry out to check the accumulated totals either side of Dry Creek, but we've got plenty of rain for awhile, as good a Christmas present as we could want.
Rang-in the New Year with 1.24" rain at daylight.
Greasy Creek: ?
Paregien: ?
Good rain last night and early this a.m., more forecast on and off throughout the week with cooler temperatures.
Dry Creek: 1.0"
Greasy Creek: 1.0"
Paregien: 1.0"
Rainfall amounts in the hills either side of Dry Creek are generally greater than here at our 600 foot elevation. This year we placed gauges at the Greasy Creek corrals, 4 miles east of Dry Creek @ the 1600' elevation and at the Paregien corrals, 2 miles west of Dry Creek @ almost 1800' to quantify what we think we know. Of course the roads are too slick at the moment to get the data, but will be entered when we can get there.
Inclusion of any of this information may not be of particular interest to many, however, in this semi-arid region of California, any moisture and and its measurement becomes a fairly big deal. At the very least, logging it here keeps it accessible to us.
Still in the 70's. Light shower last night.
Dry Creek: .02
Greasy Creek: .02
Paregien: .02
Winter Solstice. Warm early, cloudy afternoon. Looks like a good chance of showers tonight.
Spread our replacement heifers and bulls into two fields today, hoping that the grass will carry them now without hay. Trying to get all the loose ends of our cattle work done so that we might get to thinking about Christmas, families, etc.
A part of what makes this site exciting and risky is posting fresh poems that I intend to edit or delete completely as we go forward. Some may make the sort to Chapbook In-Progress, an onsite shuffle that may or may not ever be conclusive. But all this is incidental to what I perceive [at the moment] as the purpose of our participation here.
Just now, one local weatherman is relieved that a high-pressure ridge is diverting the nasty weather to the north where it should be, apparently unaware that current water resources cannot sustain current population growth in the Central Valley. Bill OReilly has continually discounted the value of rural culture in his No Spin Zone and quite recently queried why anyone would want to know how a cowboy thinks in passing reference to the new movie, Brokeback Mountain.
The disconnect in the established media selling ad-space plays to the majority, of course. However, even the eldest of C.J. Hadleys Red Meat Survivors are accustomed to being a minority, and those of us younger have become muscled-up swimming against the main stream current. Filling that chasm is tough, perhaps hopeless in the end but what the hell, were still here!
Warming to 70 degrees. We can hear the grass grow.
Warm morning, more rain last night. The grass has jumped today! Lots of grins.
Dry Creek: .76 total
Greasy Creek: .89 total
Rain: .42 of an inch by dark, low clouds still stacked-up and looking like more on the way.
Its been foggy in the Valley for about a week, clear here nights and part-days until the fog rises mid-day. The grass, after an inch-plus rain before the first, is pretty slow growing in our cool, sub-60 degree highs, but its coming and weve started to cut down feeding hay.
After being-out with the cows for two weeks, the bulls have begun playing musical fields, leaving a wake of tangled barbed wire and down fences behind them, testosterone thick in the air. One of the new bulls we bought to turn out with our replacement heifers is already crippled, a fairly expensive GMA bull from George Avila in Merced. Georges bulls have held-up well in the past for us, and I tried them initially because he guarantees, believe it or not, to replace any that get hurt or cant breed. Hes hauling me a replacement Sunday now who else do you know would do that?
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