It hasn’t come “on little cat’s feet” (Carl Sandburg), instead a blanket hanging for 10 days straight, a “radiation fog” as it’s now named, 44 degrees high yesterday, 38 degrees this a.m.
Of course, nothing compared to the snow storms elsewhere, but our grass needs sunshine. Other places in the San Joaquin Valley have experienced zero visibility, and often here the low lying fog spills over the ridge clear down to the creek. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll get some sun.
Lots of commentary on the cattle business lately with a focus on the price of beef. But relative to inflation, $20 will buy a cheeseburger, fries and a soda or a USDA Choice New York steak at Costco. What a deal!
Our 4-year drought (2012-2016) doesn’t seem that long ago when we had to cull some older bred cows for slaughter in order to feed the rest of our herd expensive hay. A good part of the reason why producing cow numbers are at a 75 year low. Though the media has its red meat theories, nobody mentions that the US population has more than doubled since 1951. This is simple to understand: supply and demand.
KEEPING SECRETS
How do they know, these old fat cows that read a baggy sadness in my walk among them checking irons as they pull
alfalfa stems apart to tongue green leaf in the corral? The gates are set, waiting for the truck to town. There is nothing
right about the moment, that they know— little consolation in my voice, they eye me suspiciously searching for details
in my muted gestures. If I told them all I know of town, of auction rings and rails, they would all revolt
for the brushy hills, lay fences down to take their chances without water through the summer—that I know.
-JCD (“Best of the Dry Years, 2012-2016”)
The three variables for the cattle business are weather, price and politics, any one which can reduce our once-a-year paycheck to a loss, but two or more can be an economic disaster—none of which have we, nor the government, any control over.
In the photo above, Robbin and I fed a few replacement heifers before the forecast Atmospheric River. The grass geminated last month has become short and spotty and we have to keep them in shape to cycle and breed when we turn the bulls out in two weeks—just part of the business.
I wake with the dream after telling Earl how many cattle of his I saw, ten to twenty cows at a distance in and out of the brush, chemise and manzanita peeling flies off their backs while grazing new green under their protection—
part of a flat mountain pasture claiming space between the rocky slopes of Live Oak with a good spring hidden from mortal eyes— a perfect place for heaven, for the cows and calves I spied that we agreed to gather this morning.
They didn’t seem shy, didn’t lift their heads to see me on the ridge trying to get a count while searching for an overgrown way out as they moved slowly, one step at a time, each leg waiting its turn towards taller grass.
But which horse that has died am I too old to ride, though Earl is young and ready without a plan for the adventure? Panicked, what am I to do? I roll awake relieved from dark saddling, overjoyed to have connected with my neighbor and foster father.
Our friend and neighbor Chuck Fry had just placed his new trail cam up on the Paregien Ranch the day before this shot, (October 8th, so ignore the time and date that he hasn’t brought up to speed). We were surprised and shocked to see three lions, who judging from the location and their direction, had just passed through our cows and calves around the water tough in the daylight. It makes us nervous, nevertheless–a wonder we have any calves at all.
Short of a half-inch of rain, on the cusp of our first northern storm, we’ve been calving for 30 days now and feeding these first and second-calf heifers until the green grass comes. The cows leave their calves in nurseries, though some are old enough to eat hay.
But like children of any age bunched-up and left alone, they look like they’re headed for trouble. Robbin caught their hillarious high jinks while mama’s not looking in the following video.
It’s that time of year when the cows begin calving, and these two girls were in the bottom of a Ridenhour Canyon when Allie, her sister Katie and the two 1 year-old boys, Asher and Hayes, passed by on the way to check water in Paregien’s. Robbin and I have been checking the first and second calf heifers after they’re fed… and yes, we’re feeding hay too, having just increased the amount to keep up their strength before they calve. We have a few on the ground already, coyotes thick as fleas on a ground squirrel. It’s always exciting, and sometimes disappointing when you lose one.
Naturally, we love this time of year, especially now that the temperature is running in the 90s. It’s our beginning of the year.
drycrikjournal 