Category Archives: Ranch Journal

SPRING CROWS

Posted on October 11, 2015 by John | 2 comments

They shiver after
making love on a dead branch
facing the future.

Weekly Photo Challenge: ‘Happy Place’

2 Comments

Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged crows, weekly-photo-challenge

AMONG THE GODS

Posted on October 10, 2015 by John | 11 comments

The old ways fade
and disappear into the dust—
we leave few tracks

in the mountains,
in the canyons—
our hands are rough.

Red rivers run
through our hearts,
love and logic pulse

our slow ascension:
young horseback souls
grown old and weary,

we inhale the pitch
of pine, the cedar
smoke, silhouettes

facing one another
around the fire.
Red cinders rise

to join the stars
of forgotten time
among the gods.

for Amy

11 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged ascension, Fire, old ways

BETTER-NATURED

Posted on October 8, 2015 by John | 1 comment

When it rains, all the trees are leafless
women dead or dying, chests bared
to low gray skies, canyons running full

between limbs and hardened breasts, crying
helplessly with hope, with a taste for life.
And we join them, eyes cast upwards

to bare our thirsty flesh to gods returned
from far diversions, drink until the dust
runs off to settle with the mud.

We will sigh, rest easy for a moment—
count ourselves among the blessed
survivors, plod along with the better-natured.

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged Blue Oaks, Drought, rain

The Coast

Posted on October 5, 2015 by John | 7 comments

A last minute decision, we slipped off to Cambria for the three nights, leaving the ranch in good hands. We haven’t gotten away since the Elko Gathering last January, Robbin all but threatening to go without me. We never missed a meal, two which were at the The Sea Chest. Yesterday, we followed a little rainstorm home.

7 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Cambria, Sea Chest

Worms

Posted on October 3, 2015 by John | 4 comments

The coincidence is just too much to ignore. A few days ago on my daughter’s blog ‘for the archives’, she demonstrated how her husband raises worms and collects their castings by utilizing the scraps and trash as an example of a very ‘artful function’ that is inspiring.

Wednesday morning, Robbin went to our container garden to see if her broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce seeds had germinated yet. Our drip system has been set for longer days and 100+ degrees, and one container received too much water bringing hundreds of baby worms to the surface. Now if we just could figure a way to ship them to Kauai.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged worms

Dawn, October 1, 2015

Posted on October 2, 2015 by John | 1 comment

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged red sky

BEARS

Posted on October 1, 2015 by John | 5 comments

While calving, our cows are well aware of the recent influx of bears, displaced in part by the 150,000 acre Rough Fire in Kings Canyon, but primarily due to the drought and the lack of anything to eat at the higher elevations. Furthermore, there’s not much here to eat either, as only one in three or four hundred oak trees has any acorns and the percentage of oak trees that have died because of the lack of rainfall the past four years continues to increase and probably approaches 40% now. The remainder have lost most of their leaves, but there’s bear sign everywhere we go.

On Monday on my way to pump water at the Paregien Ranch, I found the mothers of these two calves high in Ridenhour Canyon, taking turns going to water while the other babysat. Though I didn’t see the calves on the way up, I knew the cows had been sucked. When I came down a few hours later, I found the cows and calves had moved to the top of a ridge. Both were well hidden and only a day or so old.

Most cows sort themselves before calving, as the ones close to calving begin running together apart from the bunch as they prepare their nurseries ahead of time. We’ve lost calves to bears in the past, but usually those of first-calf mothers. Older cows, or cows together, can bluff most bears, but with so little to eat in the middle of calving there are no guarantees. Bears will eat anything, and older bears unable to rummage for food begin to acquire a taste for veal.

Yesterday, on my way up to work on a trough, I found the same two cows together higher yet in the pasture, making their steep round trip to water to close to a mile. Once again, I didn’t see the two calves until I came off the mountain.

5 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Acorns, bears, Calves, cows, Drought, nursuries, oaks

ATTAGIRLS!

Posted on September 30, 2015 by John | 3 comments

It looks like Terri and Lee were having too much fun yesterday loading the hay truck before heading up into Greasy to check the cattle and stockwater. We’re feeding somewhere everyday as the calves come, giving the cows a little extra as they raise new calves, while also trying to keep the cows in shape so they’ll cycle and breed back in December. Hopefully we’ll get some rain and green grass before then.

Rather than let the cows get thin before starting to feed, we feel it’s easier to keep the flesh on and more economic to start feeding early. While making our circles to monitor our stockwater, we began taking hay in early August, gradually increasing the amount to where we’re feeding full time now until the grass comes.

With more dry feed and less cows in our upper country, we make the 4-wheel drive trek to Greasy and the Paregien Ranch once a week, while feeding our younger cows down low three times a week. Stockwater in our upper country is more tentative and needs to be checked regularly.

Robbin and I were waiting to load the Kubota to feed another bunch as the girls were tossing 130 pound bales around. We followed behind them later and managed to see all the cows, calves and replacement heifers on the east side of Dry Creek, very pleased with all we saw.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calves, cows, feeding, water

JULY 1, 2015

Posted on September 29, 2015 by John | Leave a comment

Summer harbinger:
a lightning strike beckoning
red shiny engines.

Rough Fire

151,493 acres
85% containment

The Gray Cow

Posted on September 28, 2015 by John | 1 comment

When we weaned her last year’s calf last May, we sorted the gray cow to an accessible pasture, so when time allowed we could bring her off the mountain to remove a horn that would soon be growing into her head. Four weeks ago after feeding the Greasy bunch, Terri and Lee let me know the horn was in her head. They chummed the small bunch she was with into the Gathering Field. Then about ten days ago, Robbin and I went up the hill and brought her down to the squeeze chute to remove her horn, thankful she had not calved yet.

We have several gray cows due to a combination of some recessive genes that have offered a little extra heterosis or hybrid vigor, both in size and maternal traits. Like the others, she’s gentle and stood cooperatively as I cut the end of her horn off with a pruning saw, smearing pine tar and applying ample commercial products to ward off flies.

I knew Saturday that she had had her calf, though I never saw it. She’d been sucked, showed telltale signs of afterbirth and hidden it somewhere in the tall grass of the irrigated pasture. On my way to shut my irrigation water off on Sunday, I saw her lying next to the fence, looking suspiciously like the calf was on the other side. The pastures are open to one another, but a day-old calf wouldn’t know that.

Before coming home, I thought I’d investigate, hoping for another gray heifer calf. Cord still wet, it was hiding in the grass and came to the Kubota, circling and bumping the machine, looking for breakfast. Having found fresh bear tracks along the creek, I wanted to see them reunited but not wanting to play too much cowboy, so I followed the pair at a distance on either side of the fence towards the gate.

When the calf left the fence to lay back down in the pasture, I left them alone to close an irrigation gate valve. As soon as I was out of the picture, the gray cow sailed through the gate to find her big bull calf.