Category Archives: Ranch Journal

KAWEAH BRODIAEA 2016

Posted on April 18, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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Hiding in shadows
and deep in the dry grasses,
no longer extinct.

 

 

Kaweah Brodiaea 2012

 

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Posted in Haiku 2016, Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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CACHE TREE

Posted on April 14, 2016 by | 6 comments

 

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We were talking conservation easement
restrictions, all the rules for a cash
injection to hold the ranch together

into the future, terms and acronyms
for multisyllabic concepts applied
to ground grazed for a century

and a half, nice young girl and I,
when the deal broke over cordwood,
dead-standing Blue Oaks for our woodstove—

peckerwood in perpetuity. My good
intentions shot full of holes,
I am relieved with each one I see.

 

6 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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AT THE WINDMILL SPRING

Posted on April 7, 2016 by | 6 comments

 

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Out of earth and rock
imagination surfaces,
wants to talk in myths
science will dismiss.

We cannot deny
all senses of the eye,
how it dresses and addresses
what rises before us.

Good water, bedrock mortars—
fish flickering by firelight,
generations of good sense
secured in granite.

                        ~

Weather Update

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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From Alta Peak to Sawtooth

Posted on April 6, 2016 by | 3 comments

 

April 2, 2016

April 2, 2016

 

Despite hopes that El Niño conditions would erase the impact of four years drought in California, the Sierra snowpack fell short of normal for April 1st. Even though this winter’s storm track targeted the northern Sierra Nevada, the region still measured only 97% of normal, while the southern Sierra measured only 72% of normal water content.

If rainfall amounts on the ranch are indicative of the southern Sierra Nevada foothills, we are currently above average for the season with the month of April yet to contribute, 18-20 inches thus far as opposed to our 14-15 inch average. However, the San Joaquin Valley floor didn’t fare as well, the town of Hanford still an inch below normal. Typically this year’s northern storm track stacked against the Sierras, bleeding south with rain, but missed much of the Valley floor.

Here on the ranch, it’s been a great grass year where most springs and stockwater resources have recovered. The south and west slopes have already turned as spring temperatures have been running well-above average. Still green in the flats and on the north slopes, we’ll be weaning some fat calves in 30 days.

 

more California weather info

 

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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PRETTY FACES

Posted on April 5, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Over the ridge, friendly families
claim the hillside, pale homesteads
amid a sweep of shadowed green

beg for me to look, first to welcome
me back home, back off the road
two thousand feet below.

Here, now can last a long time—no need
to remember names when everyone
looks the same, ready for a party.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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THE WATER AND THE WEEDS

Posted on April 4, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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Life dries up and the dark earth cracks,
crumbles back into its open mouth,
stifling a dusty gasp. Already, I have

forgotten focus, how exactly each detail
hung on the moment, on my half-delirious
plodding one-day-at-a-time for years—

photographs no one wants to share.
But when life rains from the sky,
germinates and steams with spring,

I become an April fool inhaling
as much as I can, storing the miracle
in my veins until I become it,

ultimately. No alabaster walls for me,
no perfect city. Let me laze among
my gods: the water and the weeds.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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PURPLE FAIRY LANTERN

Posted on April 3, 2016 by | 8 comments

 

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Within the silent clash of blades,
shy scarlet globes within green stems
hide with their heads bowed

if you know where they live.
In the thatch of another world,
snallygaster crane flies become

fairies within the grass forest
we part to share the light
of twenty-one springs together

in these hills with generations
of cattle, with all the wild gods
and goddesses as our witnesses.

 

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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MANYFLOWERED MONKEYFLOWER

Posted on April 1, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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Thriving in the cracks of granite,
small towns with no strangers
overlooked by bigger appetites

for glory, mountainsides of color.
Carefree young, I rest more often now
resisting time, give-in to gravity

to see my shrinking world up-close:
sagas of intricate adaptations
singing softly to the sun.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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SIERRA SHOOTING STAR

Posted on March 30, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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I let my hand run
upon paper with pencil,
let lines loose to find the grace

etched upon the walls of my mind,
imitate the random arcs
balanced against the tension

of gravity and time
lest I forget a world without
my awkward plodding.

In the foreground: slate gray grass
connects to tall stems bent
with petals across the page.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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Toms Come Courting

Posted on March 29, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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This year’s tall feed provides good cover for nesting hen turkeys, popping up out of the grass along the road as Joe and I approached them Easter Sunday. Whether the hens were leaving because we spooked them, or leading us away from their nests, was hard to tell as they chose the road ahead, unfettered by thick grass, to leave by.

It wasn’t long before we found two toms making their rounds of the area, fanning and strutting before a small crowd of cows at rest in the shade. American wild turkeys employ cooperative courtship during mating season to better attract the females, and according to a UC Berkeley study in 2005, select a close relative, a brother or half-brother, as a running mate to insure their genetics.

All this time I assumed the toms were competing for the favor of the hens. Furthermore, my Google research found instances where mating season has literally stopped traffic in Berkeley and where courting toms have actually attacked humans. Little did I suspect that the resurgence in the wild turkey’s population would be staged on city streets.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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