Monthly Archives: December 2015

Hello, El Niño

Posted on December 10, 2015 by | 8 comments

 

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Old People Slow

Posted on December 10, 2015 by | 1 comment

 

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With the help of mostly the same neighbors every year, our branding at the Paregien Ranch is special. The year it snowed, or the year we couldn’t see across the branding pen in the fog, or Kenny and Virginia McKee eating a hamburger afterwards under their ponchos as the rain came down so hard we weren’t sure we would get off the mountain.

Adding to the branding’s uniqueness, two Blue Oaks grow in the middle of the branding pen—good shade, but potentially dangerous obstacles that require control of your horse and the calf on a short rope. Of all the oaks that have died during our prolonged drought, these two thrive. Every year we discuss removing one or both, but plans to improve these corrals will incorporate one of them within a new panel fence.

Also, our brandings are fairly tame, and small, with less calves than usual this year with our reduced number of cows. And we go slowly, one calf down at a time with most of us up in years enough to draw Social Security. “Old people slow,” I apologized to Doug Thomason after his first day helping us five or six years ago.

“I like slow,” he replied matter-of-factly.

And we’re all happy with that.

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Paregien Branding 2015

Posted on December 9, 2015 by | 5 comments

 

 

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IN A STORM

Posted on December 8, 2015 by | 1 comment

 

Four dry cows: two old,
one young and one
whose calf came too early

run together
apart from nurseries
and nosey calves—

four girls content
to be not seen or found
on vacation

in a far corner
of a thousand acres
with water and grass—

hear the diesel purr
and goosenecks rumble
with horses pass

and pretend to be
invisibly still within
an army of oak trees.

They have no calves
to brand, no reason
to be included

and refuse to go easily—
split and make the girls
cowboy-up, leap

brush and rock
and cuss like sailors
in a storm.

                         for Robbin and Terri

 

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Posted in Poems 2015

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TO THE DOGS

Posted on December 7, 2015 by | 1 comment

 

Clouds low,
black night,
dogs keep the wild
backed off:

coyotes, bobcat
raccoons, feral hogs—
an occasional bear
or mountain lion.

They are busy.
We sleep easy
editing intensity
and intonations

to fit our dreams:
an ebb and flow
approach to home
we trust.

 

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State of the Sierras (2)

Posted on December 7, 2015 by | 8 comments

 

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Correcting yesterday’s post, Sawtooth Peak: far right, Castle Rocks: middle, Case Mountain: almost bare.

It’s a shame that we can no longer click to enlarge the photos. When I get time, I’ll investigate as to whether this a WordPress or Coraline theme issue.

 

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Posted in Photographs

State of the Sierras

Posted on December 6, 2015 by | 4 comments

 

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Looking over Dry Creek and Kaweah River watersheds to the Kaweah and Sawtooth Peaks on my way down from the Paregien Ranch with a Kubota load of oak after gathering cows and calves to brand on Tuesday. Beautiful Sunday, but accumulated snow is light. Talk of the long-awaited El Niño influence is sounding surer from local weathermen as they predict rain for Thursday-Friday and Sunday-Monday.

We have lots of choices to begin our branding season, but opted for the climb up the hill to the Paregien Ranch in case we get a series of rains that might make our road impassable. Here we go!

 

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SYMPATHETIC GODS

Posted on December 5, 2015 by | Leave a comment

 

                 He shakes his fist and makes a gesture
                       of wringing a chicken’s neck,
                       scowls and rides higher.
                               – Robinson Jeffers (“The Coast Road”)

Each chisel tooth sharpens
the jagged edge at the bottom
of mountains lapped

by sea, wind and time.
Such extravagance to see
between road repairs,

slides and fire
the Pacific pound
at their foundations.

I have been the horseman,
made my fist into a club
to slow the obvious,

the greed, the vain—
rode higher, closer to
more sympathetic gods.

 

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Posted in Poems 2015

SATISFACTION

Posted on December 4, 2015 by | Leave a comment

 

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Alive, up-canyon ridges grip like fingers
into the creek bed, pulling from either side,
tearing flesh in a flowing furrow slowing

near the river, spreading fines in the flats
mixed and gathered from granite peaks
where natives search for signs of rain—

for hope, for the ultimate escape
to sit and talk with all gone on before,
to watch the earth unfold—to perhaps

even walk with gods. No allure
of alabaster shine or golden thrones
beyond the clouds compels the wild

heart or the keen eye, satisfied
with working for a woodstove
or making shade to shed a rain.

 

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BULLS

Posted on December 3, 2015 by | 4 comments

 

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                                        They kinda put themselves out.
                                             – Art Tarbell

All the barbed wire,
tight fences, gates
and management plans

sag under the weight
of errant bulls.
It’s in the air

come December:
canyon bellows
dusk and dawn.

Latest genetic
work assignments
on paper only.

                    ~

Any notion we may have had about putting our bulls out two weeks later is coming undone, under pressure of habit. A building crescendo of primal bellows in the canyon for the past three weeks has grown from chuckles to fixing fence and relocating errant bulls. Rather than fight nature and fix fence we’ve acquiesced to putting some bulls out now with the cows.

Two weeks ago one of our young bulls found the neighbor’s virgin heifers waiting for a Wagyu bull arriving mid-December. Rather then fix fence twice, we put him with some cows across the road. Monday, one of our older bulls crawled through two fences to find some cows and calves. We removed him and the temptation for the other bulls to another pasture. He then found our virgin heifers waiting for a Wagyu bull, mid-December.

Far from heifers, we put four older bulls out yesterday, four more today. What’s a couple of weeks, anyway?

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

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