Category Archives: Photographs

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NATIVE HARMONIES: ranch poems

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=native+harmonies+dofflemyer

(Under construction)

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Posted on January 20, 2026 by in Photographs

Iron Roper

Posted on January 18, 2026 by | 1 comment

We branded another bunch on the calf table yesterday, labeled by longtime neighbor Earl McKee as the “Iron Roper”.


The transition from heading and heeling our calves has been smooth, giving us the advantage of branding on short notice as opposed to inviting ropers days in advance during a busy branding season. Though not as much fun, we can get the job done quicker and with less people. We also think it’s easier on the calves not being drug across the corral waiting to be heeled, and keeping the bull calves off the ground while being castrated is also more sanitary.

In any event, it’s also easier on us and our close neighbors, but each to his own, we’ve been there.

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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EARLY ON

Posted on January 4, 2026 by | 1 comment

Once they get their legs to travel
and explore apart from mother,
left at the babysitter’s with fresh

calf licked clean asleep, they center
at the water trough waiting for the udder
off grazing to return. Every morning’s

‘buck and run’, opposing blind sprints
before they learn how to stop
only to circle back to where they began.

Always the stealer, head marked with manure,
waiting for the young cow’s calf to suck
before approaching from the rear—

a dance of patience and insistence
in a great green ballroom that becomes them—
it takes a herd to raise a calf.

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2026, poetry, Ranch Journal

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ALONG FOR THE RIDE

Posted on January 2, 2026 by | Leave a comment

Damn-near naked now
after good rains
without a frost
by New Years,
fleeting autumn colors
gone drab brown
before undressing.

Each twig stripped
of new growth leaves,
water pumped
into veins to see
if these fine lines
survive—and we
along for the ride.

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2026, poetry, Ranch Journal

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Merry Christmas

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Posted on December 25, 2025 by in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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Christmas Sunshine

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Posted on December 22, 2025 by in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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FOR LEONARD

Posted on December 16, 2025 by | 1 comment 
	We ride away from each other, waving our hands,
	While our horses neigh softly, softly . . .
		Li Po (“Taking Leave of a Friend”)

No Luddite sure, yet technology’s unwanted intrusion 
reminds of the woodpecker’s rapid-fire assault 
on the eave, on the metal roof, on the  smudge pot lids

closed cold in the orchard when I was a boy.  I wonder
about their rattled minds, what natural shock absorbers
slide like hydraulic cylinders between bill and brain

to cushion their rat-tat-tat attacks on the world.
Our push button culture saves jillions of steps 
that leave invisible trails nonetheless, for invaders 

we don’t want to see, don’t care about— yet 
tech has allowed me to know you and Chinese poetry
from half-way ‘round this distressed planet.

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry

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“Tule Stratus”

Posted on December 15, 2025 by | 2 comments

I am amused with the new vocabulary of weathermen like “hydroclimate whiplash” during the atmospheric rivers a couple of years ago. I just read a new one, we’re on day 21 of our “tule stratus” as we head to Paregien’s to gather for Wednesday’s branding where hopefully we’ll be above the fog.

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ISLANDS OF GREEN

Posted on December 13, 2025 by | Leave a comment

Cold and damp, we wake to add split oak
to coals banked in the woodstove
and wait for dawn’s dim light to see

how thick the fog that has consumed us
for weeks—and the cows and calves
we must gather before we brand,

before the rains leave dirt tracks
too slick to travel up the mountain—
bull calves to sell instead of steers for less.

An ocean of fog with islands of green,
a world below where commerce
and consumption carry-on conveniently,

where pundits and politicians spar
for the last word, and the weathermen
guess what Nature has left to teach us.

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Fog: Day 18

Posted on December 12, 2025 by | Leave a comment

How nice it was to see the sun above the fog topping out at 1,800 feet, temperature in the high 70s. Down on Dry Creek this a.m. it was 35 degrees.

We went up to the Paregien Ranch to make some repairs to the corrals and cut some dead trees out of our dirt roads and off the fences. The oaks that died during the 2012-2016 drought are really tipping over now. A joy to work in the sunshine before we brand calves next week.

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