Thin starts lay limp as green fades to gray amid the brittle stalks of short-cropped dry the cows have missed as I open the gate ahead of several storms to search for Live Oak— stove wood heat with little ash prostrate since the 4-year drought branded in my mind— decomposing now before my eyes. Limbs ache with years bent to this ground chasing seasons of grass, but red skies at dawn reawakens the flesh.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
The high clouds had given way to sunshine by the time we finished branding a little bunch of calves in Greasy yesterday. Well off the road, it’s a luxury to be among good friends and neighbors who are exceptional help, folks who know how to make the work fun.
Though dusty, there’s a little more green showing at this elevation (2,200’) where we have received 1.72” of rain thus far this season, much like the beginning of the 2013-14 drought year where we had less than 1.5” of rain in Greasy through the month of January. Our 10-day forecast is dry.
Leaving the feed grounds for the ridge tops with their first calves, native cows know where the green comes first after a little rain softens the clay for cloven hooves and the climb up. These are not dumb welfare cows that we have raised and fed for months— but smart survivors to make us proud.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, green, intelligence, little rain, native cows
Some come quickly now, a phrase to trigger more coiled upon the ground while others hibernate for days, for weeks and months, as if they might be dead without the touch of rain— that hard and brittle mindset to survive like deep-rooted filaree with all its colors, with all its seed waiting for a kiss. I know no other way to pen prosody.
Posted in Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged congruency, creative process, earth, evolution, filaree, inspiration, nature, wild, writing poetry
There is comfort here among dear friends, despite the drought, despite the news, despite a virus that grips the world somewhere below these old corrals where we brand calves—our common religion around Christmastime that we wrap ourselves within— a joyous insulation from despair where we can lend a hand.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding calves, community, old friends, Paregien Ranch
Limbs dressed in flames, they await the cloudburst that will disrobe them to stand naked and undulate along the creek until it runs— until late spring. Our chorus line of winter nymphs, centuries rooted in the same place, I stare into their fire and pray for rain. 0.29"
After a lifetime in the cattle business, 52 full-time years by my reckoning, I’ve maintained that there are three variables that determine our economic equilibrium: the market, the weather and politics. When only one of these variables is unfavorable, we can usually get by for another season. But when all three are unfavorable, we’re in dire straights.
To make matters worse, 2020 has introduced another variable I never considered: an international pandemic that has bludgeoned the global economy, and here at home closed restaurants for all grades of beef. We are not the only business impacted, further impacting us all.
At the moment, any realistic hopes of corralling Covid-19 to some sort of normalcy are six to nine months away. But those hopes may encourage better beef markets at the end of spring 2021. How the political impacts, stimulus packages and reduction of tariffs, etc., will ultimately shake out is anyone’s guess.
Now two months into our rainy season with less than a half-inch of rain to date and no green grass, we are keenly focused on the weather while feeding lots of hay. The Wagyu bulls have arrived and we must have our cows in shape to breed.
Here on Dry Creek on Saturday, we only measured 0.16”, but our hopes hang on the latest forecast of 0.3” today and tonight and another 0.45” Wednesday and Thursday. Always optimistic, the combination may be enough to get our grass seed germinated. But like always, much can change in the next four days.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, marketplace, pandemic, politics, rain, weather
The skid-steer bucket chatters against the clay and decomposing granite baked like concrete, inching deeper into my mind to the great bay horse dressed pink and white with long-stemmed Centuary, scattered wild petals I covered with dirt—each shovelful a memory for over an hour. Another hole and granite headstone, we are surrounded by the old and faithful we have survived— another hole, hearts perforated with each dear soul lost that now arrives to attend this moment to make us whole. Quick and painless after fourteen years of alert devotion, I steal fine ground squirrel tailings smoothed for the ‘good dog Jack’— a winter blanket to sow for flowers.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal
Tagged death, good dog Jack, graves, survivors
In these hills, a man finds space that feels familiar and friendly, and it must ask in ways where we hang empty words like ribbon just to find our way back - but we stay a moment and let our horses blow. They feel it - perhaps they feel it first and do the asking of the place, or perhaps it is the shards of light diffused at dawn upon the many-legged oaks standing knee-deep in grasses on the near ridge that shield us from man’s square creations, his cubic thinking. Perhaps the sensual grace of limb or slope, or granite worn to look inside our minds, but there are places that ask nothing else of us but to breathe and taste the air, inhale with our eyes and drink with our flesh for just a moment. Once dared, it becomes ever-easier to be enveloped with the wild, an addictive peace that embraces awe as eagerly as a child might love - where a man can ride beyond his time and station, beyond the tracks of those before him: spaces that beg a moment’s notice where both grand and simple revelations are left and learned and lived in place.
Allie and Terri coming out of Sulphur after driving the bulls with Robbin to Ragle Springs. The sycamores are turning, brief yellows and oranges before settling on a rusty brown, the leaves will cling until the first good storm—but nothing in sight, feeding more hay.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Allie Fox, Ragle Springs, Sulphur, sycamores, Terri Blanke
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