Category Archives: Photographs

We took the cows from the Top in Greasy back home this morning after weaning and hauling their calves down the mountain on Monday, or rather they took us, chugging up the hill non-stop behind the Kubota. Having homes, the cows are ready to get back to normal after getting over the loss of their calves. I’m sure the prospects of being independent on a two-month vacation is also appealing.

Saddling at 5:30 a.m. to beat the warmer weather (forecast 94° today), Clarence, Robbin and Zach were coming off the hill by 8:00. Not bad!

June 23, 3012

After six days in the pen, these weaned calves from our Paregien Ranch know how to eat out of a feeder. After a long haul and first night weaned from their mothers, this bunch averaged 724 lbs.–probably our biggest calves overall.

We started gathering to wean on May 22nd and plan on hauling the last big bunch out of Greasy tomorrow. Over a month of gathering and weaning with a week of preg-checking our 2nd-calf heifers and putting them out into the hills before that, we’ve really never been sure what day it is. But we’ll still be getting up a 3:00 a.m. for another two weeks, just out of habit.

With neither sympathy nor time for complaints, Clarence, Zach, Robbin and I are now ready for a little break. But there’s still plenty to do like processing the bigger steer calves with EID tags and vaccinations for the Internet auction and shipping a couple of weeks after that, plus finding the lighter calves a new zip code. With a little light at the end of my tunnel vision, Clarence, at 73 years young, has been an inspiration for us all. My hero when I was 7, he still is 57 years later. Amazing!

This morning he and I left at daylight to get four calves and a cow we missed in Friday’s gather, out of the brush and rock down into the gathering field in Greasy. Then off the mountain to the corrals to sort the calves above: steers, potential replacement heifers and lighter calves to make it back to unsaddle by 10:00 a.m., leaving time to address our most pressing chores. A beautiful day, the weather cool.

June 23, 2012 – 5:15 a.m.

Sequoia & Kings Canyon Current Fires

We at last struck a trail that has recently been cut for the purpose of bringing in cattle. We came to camp here by a little meadow…It is at an altitude of 7,800 feet. Here is a succession of grassy meadows – one called Big Meadow is several miles in extent – and some men have cut a trail in and have driven up a few hundred cattle that were starving on the plains.
                    – William H. Brewer, 18 June 1864

As early as the 1860s, my mother’s great-grandfather John Cutler drove his cattle from Visalia through Whitaker Forest over Redwood Mountain on his way to Big Meadows for summer grazing. My grandfather John F. Cutler continued the practice as late as the 1950s. I’ve been told that in the early days the vaqueros would set fire to the brush after the last cattle were gathered before the winter snows.

Beginning on the 31st of May, we’re gathering our last big bunch of calves in Greasy to wean today. As part of their preconditioning, we try to keep a few bites of alfalfa in front of the weaned calves as they acclimate to the irrigated pasture, for a little roughage and to check them daily. These steers will make up a load to be offered for sale on the Internet weighing 750-800 lbs. to be delivered in July.

Meanwhile, another bunch of steers and heifers is on its third day without mama, more curious about this ‘brave new world’ outside the pen than hungry. We’ll probably sort and turn them out on Sunday. Sprinklers run for a couple of hours daily to control the dust while I feed and irrigate.

Forecast cooler into the weekend.

The sun bears down
to peel another layer,
despite the sunblock,

gray whiskers and
my dusty Atwood—
despite the two

hundred fifty-seven
dollar plastic jug
of hydrocortisone

to get the red out
of fresh new skin
stretched across

my cheekbones
without the canyons
time has cut.

I was invincible once,
dared the elements,
cussed God, my father

and humanity—
not always under
my heavy breathing.

O’ sweet youth,
what did you prove—
or improve—really?

June 4, 2012

One last peek of the sun setting under cloudy skies. A dry and windy, errant storm system passed over us yesterday bringing high temperatures down into the low-70s today. So damn cool this morning we wished for jackets, but actually got two days’ work done as we continue to gather and wean our calves.