Category Archives: Ranch Journal

Cooling Down

Posted on August 16, 2016 by | 3 comments

 

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Though warm temperatures persist, the days are noticeably shorter as the sun slides south down the ridge before it rises a little later each morning. We’re a couple of weeks to 30 days away from calving, depending on when we put the bulls out, trying last winter to keep our newborns out of September 1st heat by turning the bulls out two weeks later.

But to tweak our program slightly requires more than agreement between Robbin and I. The bulls have their own calendar, and we only wire fences to enforce our management decisions. Around Thanksgiving of last year, the bulls were ready to go to work. We were retrieving bulls and fixing fences daily, so we had to put a few out around the first of December to keep them away from the neighbor’s heifers that were to be bred to Wagyu bulls.

At 8:00 a.m., this Mark Beck bull cools down before retreating to oak tree shade.

 

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DOYLES SPRINGS, 1951

Posted on August 9, 2016 by | 5 comments

 

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Outside, the Maytag
wringer-washer chugged with diapers
to be hung on a rope line

from cedar to pine.
Inside, you could see out
through bat and board cracks

after the war and Relocation Camps
your family had come from,
you but a child holding my hand

afraid to let go
when the buzzing began
coiled on a rock.

You ran as fast as you could drag me
down a trail you don’t quite remember
sixty-five years later.

* * *

Robbin and I had the pleasure of coffee Sunday morning with Evelynne Watanabe Matsumoto and family. Evelynne babysat my sister and I, and initiated contact from Southern California a couple of years ago. Her letters have been delightful rememberances of her time in Exeter before heading off to UCLA to become a teacher, marry and raise a family. She told me that the $250 she saved from babysitting paid two years tuition in those days.

 

Matthew Ormseth Photo

Matthew Ormseth Photo

 

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Sunday Breakfast

Posted on August 7, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Temperatures have eased off in the past few days, mornings in the low 60s, allowing our cattle a little more time to graze. The replacement heifers were undeterred by the Kubota or my presence this morning while the pump was filling their stockwater tank, intent on breakfast before heading to shade.

Though the highs have been just over 100 here, a good part of the day feels like fall, though we know summer is a long ways from being over, but a welcome relief from the highs of 113 at the end of July. Forecasts for the next ten days appear to be relatively mild, more of the same.

 

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TURKEYS GONE WILD

Posted on August 4, 2016 by | 3 comments

 

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It could be anytime past
that you brought back
and left to us

incubating hundreds
of turkey eggs,
illegally eliminating

as many predators
to keep a few alive
to become ‘street smart—’

at home in the wild.
You made the rules
you lived by

surviving yet beyond
your fences, ever
since you’ve been gone.

                                             for Gary Davis

 

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Deadfall

Posted on August 1, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Even the oaks that are still alive are pruning themselves. This Valley Oak lost its top Saturday night into the Holdbrooks’ driveway, either side of their electric gate, missing the solar panel and keypad pedestal. As a direct result of the four-year drought, trees and limbs of trees are falling on fences and into access roads everywhere. We’ll be packing chainsaws as we go.

 

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G & T

Posted on July 30, 2016 by | 4 comments

 

No fanfare here, no trumpet’s blare
before day breaks the ridgeline,

no attaboys, no outside noise
to diffuse the summertime,

no accolades but breeze and shade
within short circles lined

with water here and dry feed there,
and a trail of dust behind.

                    Like cattle
                    we plod
                    the heat,

                    mesmerized
                    by the rhythm
                    of our feet

                    leaning
                    towards evening’s
                    G & T.

 

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THIS WORLD

Posted on July 28, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

October 29, 2015

October 29, 2015

 

There is much to envy
cows content with fate,
grass at their feet, shade,

water, friends close—
no one preaches more
nor promises relief.

They’ve left irrigated
green for dry ground,
tall, brittle stems

fold beneath bellies
growing with calves
for the first time.

Under sycamores,
112° churns,
burns on a breeze

out of the south,
too hot to find
the open gates

to their new home
as mothers nursing
new life, new love,

devotion on the fight.
There is a place they go
if need be: head low,

blood in their eye,
red swirls in brown
pulsing towards crimson.

They will learn
to bellow and bawl,
shake and salivate

and come to the call
of others, like family,
within 45 days, well

before the vote
and victory dances
beyond this world.

 

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GRACKLE BATH

Posted on July 26, 2016 by | Leave a comment

 

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Everyone out early in the heat
before the earth is too hot to touch,
a Grackle shakes the last drops

of a morning bath to preen
and quickly drip-dry upon a rock.
Time essential, we squeeze the work

beneath the angle of a risen sun
that by ten bakes all living things.
Everyone out early when we meet.

 

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Pelicans at Sunset

Posted on July 22, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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With processing the replacement heifers behind us, irrigation water off and the ranch in the capable hands of Terri Drewry Blanke and Allie Fry, Robbin and I slipped off to the 70° weather of Cambria for a couple of days. Mid-week on Moonstone Beach was relatively quiet, sparsely occupied for the most part by old people and their dogs with only a couple of gangs of unobtrusive city urchins learning a little about the beach and the unpredictable habits of waves.

It seems the only chance I get to read much beyond a long poem is when we get away from home. Though I’d seen the movie “Cold Mountain” years back, I began the written version while were there, enthralled with Charles Frazier’s prosaic style, chuck-a-block full of similes and metaphor à la the vernacular of the Civil War period. I ought to finish the book this weekend and catch the movie one more time on HBO.

We also managed to over-satisfy our ambitious quest for of seafood that ought to last us for quite a while. We’re glad to be back home, rested and ready to get back into our ranch routines.

 

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Summer Heron

Posted on July 18, 2016 by | 4 comments

 

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