Category Archives: Ranch Journal

ODD PERSPECTIVE

Photo: Allie Fox

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.

1st Calf 2025

As we’ve done every year, we’re recording our first calf of the season here to substantiate of our Age and Source verification for the USDA. Tag # 3362 is now a second calf heifer.

I’ve let the blog slip by with little or no posts lately while I’ve been working on a new collection of poetry, “Native Harmonies; ranch poems”. It’s been a stop and go project for the past year that I’ve pared down to about 90 poems now. Sean Sexton offered one of his paintings that he exhibited at 2025 National Poetry Gathering in Elko for the cover. Here’s my mock up:

It’s been a mild summer as the days are now getting shorter and cooler. Big Wind last week had me moving vehicles out from under trees, gale force winds Saturday while Phoenix was also getting blown away. Influenced by monsoon activity, August is our month for thunderstorms, lightning and wildfires. Looking forward to fall, and a chance for rain.

FULL STURGEON MOON

Too bright to sleep
or wrestle with dreams
with a full Sturgeon hole
rising from the ridgeline
into the night sky

like a gigantic galactic leak
upon us, for all the UFOs
and UAPs to pass through,
for all the excuses we need
to behave like lunatics.

Sea Chest Oyster Bar

Whether poetry or prose, it’s been difficult to post to the blog under the current political atmosphere of chaos and confusion that has become addicting for those of us who are still hoping to ferret out the truth. Though adding to the whole mess with more political poems is difficult to resist, with few facts, they are seldom enlightening. Like so many other people, we’ve not only sought ways to wean ourselves from the “latest”, but celebrate the positive with the many uplifting alternatives that surround us, reminders of the joy and grace that plays out before our eyes if we keep them open.

We shipped our last load of calves in the middle of May, and since selected our replacement heifers that will get their Brucellosis vaccinations on Wednesday. We will start supplementing them and our 1st and 2nd calf heifers soon thereafter as we prepare them to calve in September. Our carrot has been the 50th Anniversary of the Sea Chest Oyster Bar in Cambria (70 degrees). A month long celebration, we were in attendance for a couple of enjoyable nights.

Back home to 100+ degrees:

The distant hawk’s bare branch at dawn
awaits fuzzy-headed movement
to fall like an arrow fledged with patience.

The sun crawls across the flats
without a sound, wild oats bent
like blond hair combed into the light.

Shadows stretch beneath hillside oaks
into the puddled creek where an egret
goes fishing before breakfast.

California Thistle

Lesley Fry found this thistle (Cirsium occidentale var. californicum) on our Paregien Ranch to add to our wildflower collection.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

Summer heat intense enough
to forget the rainy days beyond
the blinding sheets of delirium

framed in flames. The trickle
of the creek shrinks each day
as young cows bring calves down

to shade and well-water
before we gather to wean—
first-calvers looking for relief,

yearning for those days of virginity,
of curious discovery free
from bovine responsibilities.

Never in this world the same,
yet no better mother than a cow—
Happy Mother’s Day!

SUMMER COLOR


Look to the rockpiles,

Monkeyflowers on display

to remind of spring.

BLACKBIRDS

A blackbird perched on a rusted railing with a rustic background.

Like fighter jets after hawks,
they nose dive the dog,
attack from redwood boughs
to protect a fledgling
too soon on the ground.

A community, a murder, a grind,
a merle or murmuration
of blackbirds has moved-in,
displaced the finches’
crimson dance upon the rail

with cocky walks and orgies
of foreplay and flittering sex
anywhere they please—but ready
to herd a rattlesnake
out of the garden and barnyard.

APRIL FIRST

The birds are pairing up
as crimson-chested finches
dance and sing upon the railing,

beak-to-beak foreplay,
wing feathers quivering
before making a home

as house-hunting quail
split from their covey
to explore the garden.

A flock of strutting blackbirds
gets acquainted
while combing the ground,

and the killdeer practice
hollowing nests
in the gravel drive

analyzing traffic
before settling down
to hatch four eggs.

FIREBREAKS

Blading the season’s last green grass
for firebreaks, I need to concentrate
far away from the world’s turmoil,

peel the weeds out of the soil
or sever their roots, over and over
the same ground until smooth—

an impatient perfectionist,
carving a twelve foot road
the cattle will travel and dimple

like a golf ball, but will stop fire
if not too windy to ignite
wild oats and tall dry feed

easier than I can throttle back
the flow of pompous rhetoric
that has ignited global animosity.