Missing from the bunch of sixty,
somewhere off to herself to calve
for the first time, dilated weeks
before the light contractions,
tightening without notice
growing to seize her flesh.
She left sometime yesterday
to become a mother, bring him out
of the trees and rocks, moving
slowly, stopping to let him suck,
then meander across the cobbles
of the creek bed pausing
while he caught up to the shadows
of oaks and sycamores. Now
a perfect, black white-faced cow.
Posted in Poems 2012
1240’s calf
The coyotes got off with another Wagyu tail in the pasture around the house. 1006’s calf was born and lost his tail while we were in Tahoe. 1240’s calf is healing. I’ll have my eyes peeled this morning.
I was fishing in my dream on a river,
wading thigh-high in tennis shoes and levis,
fly rod bowed, German Brown dancing on his tail.
I could not feel my toes pinched between boulders
and cobbles, nor the current, nor my knees braced
bone to bone as I cast again to catch a rainbow.
Fat hungry trout on a gray river, round rocks held
in the cutbank, canopy of dogwoods, cedar and pine—
pure delight behind an old man’s eyes searching
the next riffle and eddy, reading water beneath,
moving upstream with the grace of a heron, patiently
in my sleep—a final cut edited for prime time.
Posted in Poems 2012
A deep blue you can see
ten-feet through
from high in the Sierras,
little towns trickling down
canyons, grassy ranches
slipping into the churn
of the Valley burning
outwards, bursts of yellow
equipment on freeways
singing with truckloads
on the Delta—four lane
busyness as usual.
Perhaps erosion only
slows amid the panic
of the guilty—as the
chubby turn hungry
when all the icing on
their birthday cake is gone.
Posted in Poems 2012
Robbin and I headed to Lake Tahoe for a Western Folklife Board Meeting at the Thunderbird Lodge, taking State Route 88 over Carson Pass where a historical landmark exists at the spot where Kit Carson inscribed his name in a tree in 1844. Our meeting was held in the Thunderbird Lodge built by George Whittell in 1936, currently owned by the Thunderbird Lodge Preservation Society administered by WFC Board Member Bill Watson. We even got to ride on the fifty-five foot Thunderbird yacht built to Whittell’s specifications and driven by two 1,100 hp. engines.
After the Board Meeting, Robbin and I drove north through Lassen National Forest to Loren Mrnak’s ranch, and then came home south through Santa Cruz to see our granddaughter Elsie. We met the ‘old man tree’ each time we stepped out of our room at The Inn at Pasatiempo. Good to be home.
Posted in Photographs
Tagged Lake Tahoe, Mrnak Herefords West, The Inn at Pasatiempo, Thunderbird Lodge
1240 – September 11, 2011
1240 – September 11, 2012
I was a little concerned Monday morning when I made my rounds of the first-calf heifers, 1240 leaving her brand-new Wagyu X calf right where she’d had it to be with the rest of the heifers. Tuesday morning I found her in the same place with four other concerned cows, the calf having just escaped a coyote less than an hour before, but without the end of his tail.
Our selection process for replacement heifers requires fertility that is established by the Wagyu bulls when the heifers are yearlings. If they are bred and can have the calf, we note the good and mediocre mothers as they raise their calves. As this calf is just now getting its breakfast in the photo, 1240 apparently had left it in the same place, scent of afterbirth upon the grass, to graze and socialize. As the cows were still surrounding the pair when I arrived, the coyote hadn’t been gone long. 1240 gets poor marks for judgment. Whether she redeems herself as a mother depends on whether she’s learned to be more attentive to her calf. Just like humans, the ability to have a calf doesn’t necessarily mean that she’ll be a good mother.
It is the same
long line reaching into a cutbank carved by current
exposing rock tangled with roots that feed a tree,
as if feeling were a place or like a fire that keeps
a home warm—words cast to float upon the surface—
imitations of love and life tied meticulously to draw
the wild from the deep and dark corners of a river.
Our communion
with clouds that rest upon the mountain peaks.
Callous hands busy with routine free the mind to fly
on the wings of gliding hawks that know our habits,
hunt the periphery of our presence and follow upstream
with curiosity to read our purpose, know our work—
as we survey our moment through their eyes.
Posted in Poems 2012
‘Tis the season. We were blessed with a granddaughter yesterday afternoon, 8 lbs. 2 oz.
Posted in Photographs
I had just fed these first-calf heifers and went to start the pump up the road for stockwater in another field, letting it run while I went down the road to move my water on the irrigated pasture when I noticed 1016 laid-out under a tree beginning labor. When I returned 45 minutes later, she had a little balloon of placenta showing beneath her tail as I went back up the road to turn the pump off. On the way back, I checked her and she was minutes from calving, grabbed my camera and joined her. These are 10 of 128 photos, all over-exposed, in about 30 minutes.
Normally the heifers go off by themselves to calve, but she was in a crowd. Normally they calve lying on the ground. She struggled quite awhile with the head out and the calf’s shoulders bound in her pelvis. Once by the shoulders, she thought she was done and stood up. When the calf hit the ground, its feet broke through the placenta but its head was still covered. I waited a couple of minutes to see what she would do. It had quit breathing by the time I pulled the placenta off the calf’s head. She, of course, ran off to the bunch, thinking I had done something to her. I pumped the calf’s chest once and it began to breathe again.
After I got out of the way, she came back to the calf, licking the daylights out of it while it tried to stand. It took awhile, but she finally let it suck. It’s got to be confusing for a first-calf heifer, despite their incredible instincts.
Posted in Photographs
drycrikjournal 