Scat at the feedsacks,
it’s become a moonlit game
slipping shadows from shop
to horse barn, yips close
drawing dogs away.
A partial blur beyond
the Blue Oaks disappearing
up rocky draws, as I check
first-calf heifers—he taunts
crosshairs day and night,
breaks into my dreams.
But I am learning
to rise with the spotlight
flashing before he leaves
for a couple hours sleep.
Looking out beneath black clouds at dawn
from a daze, it smells like rain too early
to do much good, yet I am cheery—
old friends returned, dark remnants
of a Mexican hurricane, precursors
perhaps to storms waiting in the wings
rehearsing lines, emphasizing pauses
and diction between thunder and lightening—
old flesh revived beneath a blanket.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, red sky, Sulphur Peak, weather, weekly-photo-challenge
The daughters and sons of bitches
know where I live, yip at my window—
feel my anger build long distance:
that red flush from the loins
warming the whole of me, the air
I breathe in a hundred degree canyon:
too far gone, gray necrotic hock
of a newborn shot, red dot
between its eyes. And I must go there
to get the job done. But I hate this part
of me, this part of our nature
where wars begin that never end.
Since she was a calf in 2012, I’ve had high hopes for the all-red cow (2092), now babysitting our first Vintage Angus calves on the irrigated pasture. A spitting image of her mother, she is demonstrating the same strong, maternal traits as her mother.
Separated from her first calf, a Wagyu X in 2010, by a series of events I can only imagine that had to include a high-speed ATV chase when she strayed onto the neighbors to be run through two barbed wire fences, 440 was finally reunited with her calf after we picked her up at another neighbor’s corrals at the behest of the brand inspector ten days later.
Drying up, she had obviously had a calf, but local details were skimpy. All we could do was bring her home and put her back into the same hillside pasture she had come from, hoping the two might get back together, though we hadn’t seen her calf. We were fairly certain that if she found it alive, the best she could offer was companionship. Three days later, I saw the two together, and unbelievably, she had come back into her milk. 440 is a legend on this ranch, epitomizing the strong hormones and maternal instincts we choose to develop instead of just beefy carcasses. After all, we’re in the business of raising cows that can raise a baby.
I’ve already checked, her week-old, red calf in the grass is a bull. But we’re hoping for at least 20 replacement heifers from last year’s Vintage bulls and this bunch of second-calf heifers.
Posted in Photographs
Tagged 2092, 440, bovine babysitters, cows, Dry Creek, photographs, Replacement Heifers, Vintage Angus Ranch, Wagyu X
Posted in Poems 2014
Tagged Butchart Gardens, haiku, photographs, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge
Deep in the Blue Oaks,
the caress of a mother’s tongue
begins new life.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, cows, haiku, photographs, poetry
The Sycamore Alluvial Woodland (Platanus racemosa) on Dry Creek is one of 17 stands over 10 acres remaining in the world and the largest in the Sierra Nevada ecoregion despite the downstream impacts due to gravel mining. Other impacts from reservoirs, recreation and stream channelization have substantially reduced the population of this plant community statewide. Despite a century of grazing and the current drought, new growth from the remains of an old sycamore stump in this photo demonstrates the amazing resilience of this species. Photo: August 31, 2014
Posted in Ranch Journal
Tagged cows, Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, SAW, Sycamore Alluvial Woodland, water, weather
I had to tell her
about the gardeners
out of work, looking
for roses to prune,
green lawns to mow—
the fallow fields of dust
without crops to pick,
pack and haul to town
by truck, about how lean
the San Joaquin’s become.
Moonlighting, someone’s
hooking-up to hydrants
in Lemoore—a new market
for semi short-hauls
anywhere you want to go.
In the deep powder, shotgun
barrels at each trough
waiting for dove, all
signs of the hunt erased
by the wild at dawn.
I had to tell her
we’re OK, better off
than most—just to have
her think of more
than herself for a change.
Close to the house, we’ve been checking the first-calf heifers daily as they get closer to calving. Typically, we don’t have much trouble because the Wagyu X come small, but there is always some drama, especially with the very first calves.
Some followers might recall last year’s first Wagyu X calf that arrived two weeks early that we eventually lost because its mother spent more time with the other heifers rather than with its calf, her social needs greater than her maternal traits. We keep the heifers in two separate pastures where each herd develops its own social dynamics. The transition from ‘one of the girls’ to motherhood varies from heifer to heifer, and occasionally, when no one else has a calf, the comfort of the herd becomes a priority.
In particular this past week, we have been watching four heifers that are extremely close. Early yesterday morning, number one arrived to 3024. She had placed the calf in a barbed wire corner, and we found them with her on one side of the fence and the calf on the other, an open gate between nearby. The heifer had obviously been sucked and the calf was healthy as we watched the heifer navigate the gate to her calf. All seemed well.
Our presence brought a dozen heifers, thinking hay, off the hill. They all drank at the trough and filed through the gate towards the feed grounds to join the others, our new mother trailing behind them, leaving her calf alone. Concerned, we followed at a distance around the hill only to see she had turned around and was coming back. Good, so we got out of the way of nature.
An hour later while checking the first-calf heifers on the other side of the road, I noticed she had returned to join the bunch. Mid-afternoon, Robbin saw her returning towards her calf. An hour or so before dark, I thought I ought to check on the new pair. I could see the calf at a distance in the same barbed wire corner, but no mother around. Assuming she had abandoned her calf for the comfort of the bunch again, I looked for her there and checked the other heifers at the same time. She was not among them. So I returned to the area of the calf, making a big circle, only to spot the mother grazing in the Blue Oaks about 100 yards above the calf.
By the time I had gotten back to the house, the main bunch was leisurely following in the direction by which I had left, towards the calf and the eventual crowd around it—not exactly what I wanted. Though the instinctual transition from ‘one of the girls’ to motherhood can be awe-inspiring, oftentimes our presence as midwives detracts from the process and can interfere with the necessary bonding time between mother and baby, a fine line to walk.
Today is a normal feed day, an opportunity to stay out of the way and assess them all again.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged cows, Dry Creek, photographs, Snake River Farms, Wagyu X
Though not officially fall, the angle of the sun as it slips southward intensifies our fiery colors, especially early in the morning. Perpendicular to the rising sun, I wanted to capture the surreal yellow of our old feed beneath the Blue Oaks, yet the color of the same grass from other angles wasn’t nearly as intense to the eye. I’m sure there is a word for this phenomenon as we approach the autumnal equinox.
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