No point waiting for a rain to start the green
until October, and even then it’s blasphemy
to pray or say the word out loud to anyone—
especially with El Niño mapped and gathering
off shore, lapping Jeffer’s granite with warm waves
of poetry—just load and feed the hay like always.
No point worrying about the news a thousand miles away
or all the hobgoblins waiting in ambush down the road
littered with deceptions and diversions, lust and greed
to greet you—just load and feed the hay like always.
Posted in POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, El Nino, feed hay, news, photography, poetry, politics, rain, weather
The acrid smell of battle
in the disturbed ground:
Turkey Mullein vs. Vinegarweed
claiming more territory
to choke out grasses—
that knee-high cling and tell
where you’ve been
and your approach to life.
After a good wet spring,
I smell my father here,
twenty-five years
after his departure
and remember
his lace-up Chippawas
busting clods behind a plow.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged chippawa boots, father, photography, poetry, rain, Turkey Mullein, vinegarweed, weather
I’m watching black heifers
on dry blond grass
mill around water, salt and mineral —
slow motion contentment,
they have begun
to move like cows,
bodies thickening,
they plod deliberately
towards the open gate
to the near hills where
tall feed waves
for their attention.
I imagine turning the virgin
bulls out in ninety days,
the teenage antics,
the final settling of the seed
and the cash-flow we’ll surely need
twenty-one months from now.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged autumnal equinox, first-calf heifers, photography, poetry
We could blame last spring’s atmospheric rivers, double our average rainfall for the season that kept us from branding our calves on the Paregien Ranch. Our heifer calves were exposed to our slick bull calves until we weaned in May, possibly bred that would miss our calving target date of October. A February calf instead would jeopardize the heifer and eliminate her from our replacement bunch.
When we vaccinated the heifers for clostridial, respiratory and Brucellosis diseases in June, we also injected them with Lutalyse to abort any short-term fetuses. Lutalyse is commonly used to synchronize heat cycles, especially when groups of cattle are to be artificially inseminated.
We’ve had an abundance of strong feed this summer, helping to keep our heifers in shape and cycling when we turn our low-birth weight bulls out in the middle of December. And as expected, they have been cycling, bulling, practicing all at once—a bovine orgy, a virtual humpfest.
Unfortunately, one heifer was crippled in the raucous activity, unable to put any weight on her right hind leg. We hauled water and hay to her for three days before walking her into the pen by the house. Shortly thereafter, she (Thelma) attracted a friend (Louise) who spent days and nights for week with her on the other side of the fence while the rest of the heifers were off grazing.
After two weeks, Thelma is much better now, and taking full strides. Louise was back again last evening to check on her friend. The bond is obvious. They may be twins, as we had several sets, but more than likely they were just raised together. Whether or not Thelma recovers well enough to make the replacement bunch remains to be seen. But either way, blame it on climate change and too much rain.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged breeding, bulling, cripple, heat cycles, humpfest, photographs, rain, Replacement Heifers, weather
… (I) don’t think hurricanes
like to follow predicted paths.
–Brian Grant
The prognosticators have claimed
the climate spotlight—used science
to explain why we read poetry
when our dehydrated atmosphere
rains rivers and spawns hurricanes
while the earth is spinning faster than it should—
its fractious friction warming waters
to forge the passion of whales and otters
to object and retaliate.
Watching the weather map of Baja California,
new science is driving out a percentage
of the old that we believed was true.
Posted in POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged climate change, Dry Creek, hurricane hilary, otters, poetry, rain, science, water, weather, whales
It sounds like MASH as helicopters fly over the house, back and forth to Lake Kaweah, to address 8 fires set this a.m. between 6:30 and 6:45. All but a couple of fires in rough terrain are contained. Three weeks ago we had 4 sets. Every year we blade about 3 miles of firebreak between us and the road with our skid steers. Additionally fixed wing aircraft and a DC 10 jet, 2 dozers, and about 50 engines and water tenders are on the job as I write.
The spring rains brought good feed and fuel for fire that has attracted our society’s deranged, whether gang initiations or other odd and complex maladies. Needless to say, we’ll keep our eyes peeled.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged arson, CalFire, CDF, Fire, fire bugs, fire insurance, photography
Black backs
through summer light
across the road beside the creek
grazing green
upon a highwater sand bank
deposited by atmospheric rivers.
Black backs
of virgin children, our future
breathes in 105 heat.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, future, photography, poetry, rain, Replacement Heifers, weather
I don’t recall Dry Creek ever flowing into August, as springs continue to feed this morning’s 9 cfs (cubic feet/second). March’s atmospheric river estimated 8,000 cfs, that scoured the channel and undermined the gauging station, left few places to cross the resultant boulder fields and cutbanks. Only now, as our cattle work winds down, do we have time to address some of the impacts of last spring’s rains.
Both for vehicles and cattle, I had to move our crossing downstream. Moving the big rocks was rough work for the skid steer, but I had all the materials I needed in the high water drifts of sand and gravel to smooth the crossing this morning—less than a three hour job. On the way to the corrals, hoof action of our replacement heifers will smooth it a little more.
We’re looking forward to September when the cows begin to calve, another month of a hundred degree weather that often extends into October, but the hot summer days are getting shorter.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, CREEK CROSSING, heat, photography, rain, skid steer, summer, temperatures, weather
We train our young replacement heifers to be gentle and to follow the Kubota or feed truck when we feed so when they go up the hill in the next year or two, we can gather them and their calves easily. Having been through the same process, their mothers and grandmothers have imprinted this same calmness on their calves.
Due to the atmospheric rivers, we were unable to see our cattle for 3 months, but the calves gentled down quickly in the weaning pen on alfalfa hay. Now weaned about 30 days, they’ve been turned out along the creek on native feed and a little extra green due to the spring rains. We’ve been supplementing them once-a -week. While I was photographing the floods’ ensuing boulder fields and patches of cockleburs, they heard the Kubota and followed me, on the march, towards the feed ground, hoping it was the right day.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged attitude, Dry Creek, photography, rain, Replacement Heifers, weaning, weather
One by one off trucks,
hooked or boomed into the barn
banked for the unknown.
Sweaty, sleeveless shirt, Dusty
Bohannon, until he died, unloaded
thousands of bob-tailed trucks
before the booms pitched bales inside,
before the squeezes stacked dumps up
for unknown winter times
like grounded vermin store
in tunneled chambers, or cackling birds
in fenceposts pecked with holes.
Posted in Haiku 2023, Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Acorns, Drought, photography, poetry, rain, weather, winter
drycrikjournal 