Category Archives: Ranch Journal

JULY 1, 2015

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

Summer harbinger:
a lightning strike beckoning
red shiny engines.

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.

Like most newborns, finding milk is often a process of ‘trail and error’.

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged gray cow, maternal traits, newborn calves

Dawn on the Pasture

Posted on September 27, 2015 by John | 3 comments

When I arrived yesterday to change my irrigation water, a coyote was nonchalantly studying these cows and calves from just outside the fence. The cow beneath the Valley Oak was lying close to her calf, hours old. The cows, of course, knew he was there well before I did. Taking an indirect approach, coyotes will gradually work their way among the cattle acting preoccupied and harmless until they become familiar to a bunch, all the while looking for any weakness among the calves—hence the Trickster moniker.

We have completed our first month of calving and pleased with 50% of our calves on the ground, a bright spot in the middle of this drought, though our total cow numbers have been reduced by half these past four years. This is the third calf for this particular bunch of cows bred by Vintage Angus bulls.

As the light turns softer and shadows longer, early mornings can be rewarding with lots of wildlife this time of year, especially where there is water. About twenty Canadian Geese are stripping the ripe seed of the water grass elsewhere in the pasture and our little bunch of wild turkeys, that are becoming used to me and the Kubota, are rummaging for bugs where I’ve completed my irrigation.

I take my camera, never knowing what I’ll see.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calves, camera, Canadian Geese, cows, coyotes, dawn, irrigation, Trickster, water, wild turkeys

POSTCARD HOME

Posted on September 26, 2015 by John | 8 comments

Dear Dad, you never saw a drought like this,
four years running, so few cows left on the ranch—
nor I a war like yours: bait for Nazis in the Bulge.

The world has changed, the planet ever-changing:
ice caps melt, oceans rise, seasons out-of-sync
with what we know. New ground to graze

now that I am old. Nothing in the mountains
for bears to eat, they roll down ridges, track
dusty roads on the scent of fresh placentas,

lion pads everywhere you go. We cannot leave
this canyon, these calves, alone—all living
off this piece of ground that we are so bound.

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal

Tagged bears, Calves, change, cows, Drought, lions, making a living

American Coot

Posted on September 25, 2015 by John | 4 comments

Mud Hen

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged American Coot, Mud Hen

Autumnal Equinox 2015

Posted on September 23, 2015 by John | 4 comments

I don’t recall a more-welcome fall, this astronomical landmark when our daylight hours equal dark and night promises to last longer as we move towards the Winter Solstice. The sun slides south down the ridge, rising later, as sunset doesn’t hesitate, but literally falls into Antelope Valley just to the west of us.

We have endured the summer, we have endured four years of drought, as we enter that time of year when it might rain, bring green grass and fill the earth with moisture, bring water to our cattle. Wildlife walks with a different air, lingering longer in the morning. Coyotes and bobcats take their time as if they own this ground. Perhaps displaced by the Rough Fire, we’ve already seen more lions and bears than any year I can remember.

This is the time of year when our calves are born, the beginning of another cycle with the hope of rain, green grass, and fat calves, mornings and evenings by the fire. Just another day, but this is the one we have waited for.