Category Archives: Ranch Journal

Time Out

Posted on March 20, 2019 by | 2 comments

 

 

A wonderful couple days with our dear Canadian friends, Denise Withnell and David Wilke of Cowboy Celtic as wildflowers bloom like paint spilled, growing puddles of color everywhere you look.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

California Golden Poppies

Posted on March 19, 2019 by | 4 comments

 

 

Thank you, Maureen Sudlow, for making me aware that some people have not seen our Golden Poppies up close. This photo is from March 26, 2010.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Hills on Fire

Posted on March 18, 2019 by | 5 comments

 

 

It was difficult navigating Dry Creek Road over the weekend for all the photographers parked in this narrow thoroughfare. I have a feeling that the conflagration is just beginning.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms

Posted on March 15, 2019 by | 12 comments

 


 

How America’s food giants swallowed the family farms

 

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Craig Ainley Branding

Posted on March 7, 2019 by | 2 comments

 

Terri Drewry photo

 

There’s a lot to be said about not knowing when you were born. But I just checked Toby’s papers to find that this Montana Doc son was born in 1994—me 1948.

I tried every way possible to wriggle out of helping Craig Ainley brand his 4-5 weight Wagyu X calves at Mankins Flat, an hour’s 4-wheel drive from the asphalt to patched board corrals. I reasoned that the calves might be too big, too much work for old men in muddy pens. But we owed him for his help branding our own calves, and with all our other neighbors busy helping one another brand on the few days between rains, and he short-handed, I had no choice, no lame excuse for horse or me.

Craig wanted our whole crew, Robbin, Terri, Allie, Bob and me. Terri Drewry and I roped with Garth and Audrey Maze, Corrine Ainely Manes and Donnie Castle, finishing up an hour before the forecast 2” storm while wind gusts lifted snow off the Great Western Divide, the Kaweah Peaks and Sawtooth, seemingly a stone’s throw across the North Fork—a fun and beautiful, overcast day!

Shoulders sore, the old men recuperated while it rained.

 

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Old Packers

Posted on February 27, 2019 by | Leave a comment

 

 

In his Model A, Bill DeCarteret stopped by our branding yesterday along Dry Creek Road. His visit with Tim Loverin, owner/operator of the Cedar Grove Pack Station, and me was much too short. We’ll do it again soon.

 

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SIGNS OF PLENTY

Posted on February 18, 2019 by | 1 comment

 

 

Low snow up canyon, cold
rain at dawn, vernal pools
in the pasture stand full
waiting for Wood Ducks,
waiting for spring.

Sycamores stripped naked,
their white limbs wave
from across the creek
upon these ponds of water
in the evening sun.

Headlights slash the darkness,
a caravan of jeeps
and 4-wheel drives
whine down canyon—
weary songs back home.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2019, Ranch Journal

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Snow on Dry Creek

Posted on February 10, 2019 by | 3 comments

 

 

Light dusting this afternoon down to 2,500′ on Dry Creek. Exceeding the forecast, just shy of an inch of rain overnight and this morning. It’s wet out there.

 

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Elko (NCPG) 2019

Posted on February 5, 2019 by | 3 comments

 

 

Bob and I left Elko Monday at 5:00 in the dark and drove straight through, stopping only for fuel, to Dry Creek ahead of last night’s storm that threatened to close Tehachapi Pass. Montgomery Pass was 4 x 4, touch and go, but we made it home by 4:30 p.m. 2.74″ total rain while we were gone.

Sunday a.m. at the Pioneer was a special treat listening to Mike Beck and Denise Withnell make Robbin’s guitar sing above the goodbyes of poets and performers leaving for home. We brought the guitar to Elko so Denise would not have to wrestle her own on the airplane. She and Dave Wilke were backing-up several Sid Marty performances. (Oh what a fine singer, songwriter and poet he is!) The Canadians were a well-represented bunch that included Ian Tyson and a spectacular new voice to Elko, Colter Wall.

WOW what a week, what a blur! Good to be home.

 

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Posted in Ranch Journal, Video

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Early Spring Cleaning

Posted on January 27, 2019 by | 4 comments

 

 

Between rains when we couldn’t go anywhere on the ranch, we began extricating boxes of books from the house that have been published by Dry Crik Press since 1989, including every issue of Dry Crik Review. Boxes were stashed throughout the house, office and attic that we sorted into plastic containers, now half-a-pallet in the shop—the first time that Dry Crik’s offerings have been in one spot.

Certainly not a job I relished, Robbin decided to replace the carpet in the living and dining rooms while Bob and I are in Elko. Once we started clearing the floor space, we found box after box of books that had to be dealt with. All of the Dry Crik Review issues, and Dry Crik Press publications prior to 2008, were printed in Craig Lindeman’s garage in Visalia. Craig collected leftover paper from the other print shops, and sympathetic to the cause, didn’t charge much for his work.

The books and memories were overwhelming.

 

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