Monthly Archives: June 2021

Image

Crack of Dawn

7 Comments

Posted on June 23, 2021 by John in Photographs

Tagged Dry Creek, photography

110 DEGREES @ NOON

Posted on June 19, 2021 by John | 8 comments

Midday siesta, I dream of water running

down the Tule, ouzels dipping, or

beer cooling in an eddy on the Kern—

of you and I, our faces streaked with rain

as if we were crying—love in our eyes.

All the mud-stuck trucks, leap-frogging,

winches whining as the clouds cracked,

bursting with more of the same.

What else can we look forward to

this afternoon, inches from the Solstice,

what else can we do but dream? The air

is thin and burns the lungs. Leaves curl

in the garden while cows commiserate

in the shade of sycamores and oaks,

all their stories stored within rings,

chatter from the good old days.

And what of native wisdom banked

in their massive trunks, or smooth gossip rocks

in the living Live Oak shade? All the secrets

we have lost to progress, all the important

unimportant things that have not saved time,

but accelerated it and our poor hearts

just trying to keep up. 110 degrees at noon,

what else can we do but dream?

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal

Tagged dream, heat, progress, rivers, siesta, tree rings, water, wisdom

Heat

Posted on June 18, 2021 by John | 8 comments

Light show late last night, mostly cloud to cloud I’m told because I was sleeping, except for one thunderbolt that touched down on the Paregien Ranch. Eerie dawn with dark clouds and a big wind to fan the flames, cowtrails corralled half the fire in short feed. CalFire crews, helicopter and DC 9 kept the loss to 15 acres. Crazy weather: 116° at 4:00 p.m.

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Antelope Fire, Paregien Ranch, summer heat

Weaning Pen, Day 3

Posted on June 12, 2021 by John | Leave a comment

With daylight comes the fretful calls of calves, two miles down canyon from our early morning coffee. By day four they will have stopped bawling for their mothers, another two miles and 2,000 feet in elevation up the canyon. Averaging 650 lbs., these nine month-old calves are not babies, yet miss the only security they’ve ever known. It is not easy. We’ve tried fenceline weaning, only to conclude that it prolonged the bawling and the anxiety on both sides of the fence.

We’ve been blessed with cooler weather this week as we gathered the Paregien Ranch to haul the calves off the hill, six gooseneck loads down a steep, 4-wheel drive track to Dry Creek—two hours round trip. Limited to loose part-loads, we have to panel half of the calves forward over the pickup’s back axel to maintain traction, each trip leaving the dirt road a little looser. The following day, we culled the cows deeply, limited to five or six cows per trip as we prepare for continued drought conditions.

All things considered, we’re pleased with the condition of the calves and cows. With one more pasture yet to wean, we will wait until the coming hot spell passes with a forecast high of 113°. We’ve experienced a more volatile pattern (than what once was normal), between highs and lows this June https://drycrikjournal.com/weather/journal-2020-21/ and hope for another cooling trend a week from now.

Meanwhile, we fill the barns with hay today.

Grazing

Posted on June 1, 2021 by John | 2 comments

Robbin and I are proud of our girls across the road, carrying their third calf, heading up the hill at 7:30 p.m. and not hanging at the bottom waiting for hay. They made it to the top of the ridge to spend the night before grazing down to water shortly after dawn.