DRY CRIK Journal

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.

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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.

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Red-headed Decons

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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March 14, 2008

We're expecting showers tomorrow - help for both flowers and grass.

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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.

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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)

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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!

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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.

Check-out the cybercasts and other offerings by clicking the WFC homepage.

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.

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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.

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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.

CREEK AFTER RAIN

If we truly knew
as much as we thought
we do,

we might
give-up thinking
altogether.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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#603 - August 20, 2007

Appropriately, our year begins when the first calves come, most generally with our first-calf heifers exposed to the bulls two weeks before the rest of the cow herd. This year we’re calving our replacement heifers across the road from the house, presumably away from the bear problems on Greasy Creek that we experienced last year. Even after forty years, though, it’s an exciting time for me as the first calves hit the ground, the balance of expectant mothers in various stages of bewilderment and hormone flow, instincts honed as they dilate and udders ripen, some more ready than others for a calf of their own.

Continue reading "First Calves 2007" »

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Photo by Densie Withnell

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Photo by David Wilke
Dry Creek locals show Cowboy Celtic a lick or two.

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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.

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Lower Field, Greasy Creek
March 26, 2007

When one considers the reality of our feed conditions ten days ago after a hot and rainless month of March, a grass season already shortened with only 50% of average rainfall, the resilient phenomenon of California’s natural resources in this semi-arid region that have adapted, endured and often flourished is remarkable. On the cusp of desert, our weather is unpredictable and often volatile, but to observe this miracle of Nature now underway after such abnormally dry conditions truly enlarges the range of one’s spirit. Not out of the veritable woods yet, the .40 of an inch now in the gauge with thundershowers looming as the Valley heats-up helps get us part-way to a near-normal season.

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.

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Cloud Bank at Sunset
March 26,2007

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Scott Erickson and Callie Vincent
March 18, 2007

With less than fifty, fairly large calves to brand Saturday along the road, we’ve been inviting the neighborhood and anyone who’s been there during the year to give us a hand – our celebration of spring and the two inch rain that is transforming our hillsides. For those that need to quantify the impact of Monday’s “nuisance rain,” figure: $50 to $75/head on calves and stockers, or $15 to $20/acre on the ground. For most of us, it’s about breakeven after expenses – but better than last week when we were contemplating how deep to cut into the cowherd with good alfalfa bringing $200/ton.

It will be a relief to get the branding behind us and to enjoy the miracle of spring with our friends and neighbors.

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February 28, 2007

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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.

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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.

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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.

Continue reading "Cold!" »

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Currently misting with a little over an inch in the guage. Air clean and moist, quite a nice Sunday morning at daybreak.

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From Sulfur Looking South

Mid-70s today at the higher elevations, much cooler in the Valley = inversion layer. Chance of rain Friday, Saturday & Sunday.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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!

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

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

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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

First Calf/First Calf Heifer 2006

Buck in Velvet, Lower Field - Greasy Creek
August 12, 2006

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

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

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.

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 5:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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"

Posted by John Dofflemyer at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)