Category Archives: Photographs

IN SEPTEMBER

Posted on September 8, 2016 by | 7 comments

 

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Progress parallels the creek,
follows a crumbling dirt track paved
up canyon past the end of power poles

and the double yellow line,
the busy bulk of it beyond
the hazy ridgeline—

beyond thinking past water
when the creek is dry
in September.

Caravans of Christians
craving altitude, the new shine
of fifth-wheels pulling for the pines—

the guttural rumble, leather herds
of Harleys and the bright spandex
of cyclists pass us by

as if we were a landscape
to endure along the way
to something better.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

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New Year

Posted on September 7, 2016 by | 3 comments

 

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Try as we might to push our calving date back two weeks to avoid the first of September heat, the bulls would hear nothing of it, repeatedly visiting our neighbor’s virgin heifers intended for Wagyu bulls. Also, we were under the influence of Big El Niño prognostications, wet weather for the first half of December that could hamper hauling the bulls up the hill to our older cows. With the stars and daylight hours aligned with our bulls’ internal clocks, we opted to let them go to work rather than having to bring them home and fixing fence everyday.

Nine months later, our own internal calendars click to new beginnings as the calves come, a new season and new year as we begin to leave summer behind and wait for the first rains to start the green feed, that unpredictable time of year when we harvest grass with cows to raise another crop of calves. Welcoming the shorter days, we’re saddled-up and ready, looking forward to another wild ride.

 

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Another Ibis

Posted on September 4, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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While checking the replacement heifers on the irrigated pasture yesterday morning, I almost ran over this Ibis in the Kubota, looking at cattle instead of where I was going. In July 2015, I photographed a Glossy Ibis on the shore of our irrigation pond.

Fairly tame birds, we must be on their migration route.

 

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First Calf

Posted on September 1, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Age and source verification:
August 31, 2016. Bull calf.
Cow tag: 1104. Sire: Mrnak 119.

 

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Water Leaks

Posted on August 31, 2016 by | 5 comments

 

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It’s difficult to find a ranch without a water leak somewhere, usually around a trough. In the instance above, our 5,000-gallon tank has settled since we last repaired and changed the PVC fittings a number of years ago while the tank was empty. Anticipating settling when full, 40,000 pounds, we installed a compression fitting or dayton on our water line to allow the PVC pipe ends to slide closer together. Additionally, our conduit for the wire between the solar control panel and the float in the tank was in the same trench as our water fill and discharge line. The settling cracked the conduit and subsequently carried water from the leaky tank plumbing to the base of our solar panels creating another nasty bog.

This summer, our little rafter of turkeys have included the two leaks in their daily travels, drinking and finding bugs and grubs that wouldn’t otherwise be available. Because of the leaks, I’ve had to augment the solar pump with a generator and submersible pump to fill the tank once a day.

I’ve long rationalized that little leaks are not a waste of water, creating some green grass and making puddles for birds, rabbits and other small wildlife that often end up drowned and floating in our water troughs. Fishing the carcasses out can be an unpleasant chore.

Unable to responsibly procrastinate any longer, we set out early Tuesday morning knowing we had some muddy shovel work ahead. After several hours, we uncovered and loosened the dayton, fixed the conduit, repairing what was no little leak. If we’ve done our job well, the turkeys will have to drink elsewhere without the appetizers.

 

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Clean Water

Posted on August 30, 2016 by | 4 comments

 

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A dry year, ‘1947’ is etched in the concrete next to my father’s name—one of two round water troughs, hand-mixed and poured into forms that were borrowed from Jim Pogue’s Rocky Hill cattle operation. Dry Creek quit running on June 3rd this year and won’t begin again until the rains come. With about fifty troughs on this ranch, most spring fed, every living thing, wild or domestic, knows where at least one of them is located.

 

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First Light

Posted on August 28, 2016 by | 6 comments

 

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Our rainfall fared better than the Coast Range and Southern California last season (October through April), breaking a four-year drought for the Southern Sierra Nevada foothills with some good spring rains that have left us a legacy of ample dry feed as we approach the fall. The sun was just breaking the ridge (to the right of the photo) this morning, the base of Davis Mountain and Dry Creek still in shadow.

Followers of this blog know that August is our indicator month, a thirty-day cycle yet to be confirmed in September, as a layman’s forecast of our weather in October and November, the beginning of our rainy season. As the Emperor Grape season often went well into October, my father depended on this approach for getting his grapes picked before the rains.

From the Solstice to August 25th, we’ve had only three days here with highs below 100°— warmer than average, though I suspect our morning lows have been cooler than average. Discounting monsoonal flows that were nearly nonexistent this summer, we are now experiencing our first indication of a weather change. A cursory look at our weather journal, yet to be confirmed in September, indicates a fairly stable pattern with little rain. The Old Farmer’s Almanac and other early prognostications call for a drier than normal fall and winter that may translate into a trend towards more dry times.

Climate Change has become a political argument stretched to unreasonable extremes, but from our vantage point, hot and dry are the current reality, regardless of causes, that we must live with and adapt to in this business. The much-ballyhooed El Niño failed to relieve much of California, defying all weather models. Assuming the extreme weather conditions all over the planet, that have impacted more than just agricultural interests, have also defied most patterns, I’m guessing a whole new set of computer models are being developed.

We are engaged in a weather-dependent way of life we call a business, and console ourselves by conferring a feminine gender to our weather, repeating our mantra, often in awe, by saying “she can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants.” With the bulk of summer behind us, we have enjoyed pleasant evenings and mornings for most of August.

 

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AUGUST MEN

Posted on August 26, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Hot days fade early,
black breathes cool upon thin skin
as old men leave town’s comforts

to drive the canyon, narrow
road and sharp curves gone
straight in ’68, leaving legends

on slopes of scree
where the Model T coup
teetered on two wheels

in high school, you asking
where you could have died
half-century back.

This ground has not forgotten,
each rock removed exposes
another memory

of our dead history
into a landslide
of stories hidden

and turned loose on our tongues—
old men exploring
where they’ve come from.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016

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Moon Suit

Posted on August 22, 2016 by | 5 comments

 
I received this advertisement from Progressive Rancher, one of the many free publications put out by drug and animal health corporations:

 

 

I was thinking about ordering 400 cow suits when I noticed the holes in the helmet for horns, a flaw to be sure for moon-grazing where oxygen can leak out, and then not all of our cows have horns and none grow the same. We could dehorn the cows and plug the holes with corks.

Closer inspection also reveals no air pack, no oxygen, just hoses recirculating cud breath and methane, perhaps a walking bomb for the military. But the real flaw, and I remember as a boy the woman who suggested to my father that we put pants on our cattle to cover their private parts, is that there are no zippers for defecation, urination, procreation or for nursing calves.

All of this is mute on the moon, of course, where there’s nothing to graze anyway, even if the helmet was configured to allow it. From the Amazon of another time, I’ll order mine from Mother Goose:

Hey, diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

 

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COMMUNION IN THE CATTAILS

Posted on August 21, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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Language without words
across the hillsides floating
anyone can read.

 

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Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs

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