The cattle are really enjoying this new greenery that has come as a result of the late May rains. Unable to identify from the Calflora website, but looks a lot like the Two-flowered Pea that is limited to Humboldt County, rare and endangered, so I suspect it’s not. Three leaves like clover and a clover-like flower that I don’t remember seeing before.
I am pleased and proud to have some of my poetry as a part of this moving and powerful documentary from the American Angus Association.
Farmers and ranchers across the country are dealing with increasing urbanization of rural America. With that urbanization brings challenges and opportunities. Hear from five Angus farm and ranch families, including: Lovin family, Lexington, Georgia; Marsh family, Huntley, Illinois, Stabler family, Brookeville, Maryland; and the Cropp family, Damascus, Maryland, about how urban sprawl has impacted them and American Farmland Trust CEO John Piotti about the issue as a whole. The American Angus Association® is proud to present the first film to expose the impact of urban sprawl on American Agriculture – “Losing Ground”—an I Am Angus production.
-Rachel Robinson
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal, Video
Tagged American Angus Association, photography, poetry, urban sprawl
Old friends pass on clouds,
slide up the canyon,
bring rain and thunder.
We cry and ache beneath
our cage of ribs, remember
each dear one by name.
for JAT
Noteworthy are the nine days of measurable rainfall in May, over 2 inches
here on Dry Creek. Typically, we don’t get any rain in May, but when we do it’s usually limited to the first week. Our series of storms this year have been the predecessors of the nasty weather that has plagued the mid-West and the rest of the nation.
Our rainfall total for the season is just under 21 inches to date. Our average for the past fourteen years here is 16.22″. Interestingly, we’ve received over 20 inches in five of the last fourteen years including this 2018-19 season.
What’s it all mean? Places on the hillsides and in the flats are turning green. Quite a trick for annual grasses, one I’ve never seen before.
I measure short distances with my eye
and the pulsing neon price in my bones.
Back to basics, I would rather melt in place
and be reconstituted among the grasses
than leave my soul among the self-righteous
corralled within their alabaster fortresses.
I quit the bunch and shed the nasty weight
of their guilt and hate for one another.
I want to watch among the remnants
when the angels make their gather, and
on the embers of their fire, hear songs rising
to join the stars—now that would be heavenly.
No need to worry
about fancy horsemanship—
the girls know the way.
Posted in Haiku 2019, Photographs, Poems 2019
Tagged Allie Fry, cows, haiku, photography, poetry
Taking the cows home
a week after weaning
snakes easily over the saddle
and down to the water
of collected dreams.
I remember yellow
Euclid trucks dumping
layers of native pasture
armored with rock
across the river in ’59,
flooding shoreline picnics
and ground squirrels targets
where the Wukchumne camped—
where Loren Fredricks
never learned to swim
afraid of the three-foot carp,
sun-dried, he had to ride upon
in a horse-drawn cart
up Dry Creek to Eshom
before he became a cowboy.
Snow stacked high
on the Kaweahs, we held
the water back when Visalia
was a town, spread the city out
with no water in the ground.
Blond cowgirl
on a palomino
in the wild oats
above black cows
and Lake Kaweah—
taking them home
a week after weaning
snakes easily over the saddle
and down to the water
of our collected dreams.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019
Tagged Eshom, Great Western Divide, Kaweah River, Lake Kaweah, Loren Fredricks, photography, poetry, Visalia, water
Dark clouds at dawn
beyond the ridgeline,
light rain upon the roof—
one white bullet hole
of light up canyon
looking down
searching for truth
while I drink coffee
craving a cigarette,
wanting to inhale
the damp morning
into my flesh
mixed with smoke
to spin my head
one more time.
Too old to be cool,
I chew
Nicorette instead.
The ridges are crowded with generations
of relatives and old friends
who came with this ground—
a native ascension
a pardon from heaven
for those whose roots won’t let loose
of the baked clay and granite
the weather has chiseled
into crumbling headstones. Easier
to hear their voices, feel them near
as I grow older, closer to them.
(click to enlarge)
Privilege and luck
to know and work with fine men
while getting older.
A part of them sticks
to the sides of gaping holes
they have left us with
to load semi-trucks
with ripened grass on the hoof—
cowmen to count on.
Returning home yesterday after a moving celebration of the life of Earl McKee, Robbin went through some her photos trying to determine the age of our old dog, only to run across her photo of Tom Grimmius and Art Tarbell on Dry Creek, two more from the old school that are no longer with us to help get the job done. Reminding me of H.C. “Bud” Jackson’s “The Good ‘Uns” about Cleo Denny and other local and progressive cattlemen, published in 1980.
Posted in Haiku 2019, Photographs, Poems 2019, Ranch Journal
Tagged Art Tarbell, haiku, photography, poetry, Tom Grimmius
(click)
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