Called too soon, persistence rooted
where peaceful dreams beneath their leaves
spilled downhill at dawn—a slow awakening
like death in reverse, never thinking
of other ways to pass the time. Weathered
skeletons of young Blue Oaks cling
to where their acorns fell to rest
before the wet and stormy springs
kept a chance of an idyllic life alive.
Truth is: no right or wrong of it—
no philosophy to make fit
what we’ll not need to understand.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023
Tagged Acorns, Blue Oaks, death, death in reverse, Drought, life, photography, poetry, rain, water, weather
Black backs
through summer light
across the road beside the creek
grazing green
upon a highwater sand bank
deposited by atmospheric rivers.
Black backs
of virgin children, our future
breathes in 105 heat.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, future, photography, poetry, rain, Replacement Heifers, weather
I don’t recall Dry Creek ever flowing into August, as springs continue to feed this morning’s 9 cfs (cubic feet/second). March’s atmospheric river estimated 8,000 cfs, that scoured the channel and undermined the gauging station, left few places to cross the resultant boulder fields and cutbanks. Only now, as our cattle work winds down, do we have time to address some of the impacts of last spring’s rains.
Both for vehicles and cattle, I had to move our crossing downstream. Moving the big rocks was rough work for the skid steer, but I had all the materials I needed in the high water drifts of sand and gravel to smooth the crossing this morning—less than a three hour job. On the way to the corrals, hoof action of our replacement heifers will smooth it a little more.
We’re looking forward to September when the cows begin to calve, another month of a hundred degree weather that often extends into October, but the hot summer days are getting shorter.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, CREEK CROSSING, heat, photography, rain, skid steer, summer, temperatures, weather
It’s a dirty trick
not to bring ‘hello hay’
by flake or bale,
to show empty-handed
with a cluttered mind
from another world.
If I had the time
I’d stay the day among them,
forget myself
and lie down and learn
to chew my cud
without thinking.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry
Tagged another world, cows, cuds, photography, poetry, sentient, time
We train our young replacement heifers to be gentle and to follow the Kubota or feed truck when we feed so when they go up the hill in the next year or two, we can gather them and their calves easily. Having been through the same process, their mothers and grandmothers have imprinted this same calmness on their calves.
Due to the atmospheric rivers, we were unable to see our cattle for 3 months, but the calves gentled down quickly in the weaning pen on alfalfa hay. Now weaned about 30 days, they’ve been turned out along the creek on native feed and a little extra green due to the spring rains. We’ve been supplementing them once-a -week. While I was photographing the floods’ ensuing boulder fields and patches of cockleburs, they heard the Kubota and followed me, on the march, towards the feed ground, hoping it was the right day.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged attitude, Dry Creek, photography, rain, Replacement Heifers, weaning, weather
One by one off trucks,
hooked or boomed into the barn
banked for the unknown.
Sweaty, sleeveless shirt, Dusty
Bohannon, until he died, unloaded
thousands of bob-tailed trucks
before the booms pitched bales inside,
before the squeezes stacked dumps up
for unknown winter times
like grounded vermin store
in tunneled chambers, or cackling birds
in fenceposts pecked with holes.
Posted in Haiku 2023, Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Acorns, Drought, photography, poetry, rain, weather, winter
The magic remains along the creek
spread wide with naked cobbles pressed
together, exposed by flooding sheets
that ripped its sandy banks before
leaving the channel changed—
a landscape rearranged for the moment!
A summer gurgle, herons and egrets come
to wade abandoned pools of pollywogs
shrinking into moss-covered gravel.
Green cockleburs rise-up from ribbons
of sand, high-water veins bleached white
until colored or carried away with the burrs.
The truth is endless here—it will keep
saying the same thing in different ways
well after we are gone.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Atmospheric Rivers, cobbles, cockleburs, photography, poetry, rain, truth, water, weather
We are among the many home and ranch owners whose insurance policies have been canceled because they were located in the revised California’s High Risk Fire Area that includes almost half of the state.
Drought conditions in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021 combined with poorly maintained PGE transmission lines in Northern California charred over 8 million acres that left insurance companies holding the bag for losses and fire suppression costs. After a month-long process, we found one other carrier with less coverage at twice the cost.
A decade or so ago, Tulare County used to spray the weeds on the shoulders of Dry Creek Road to reduce fire danger from catalytic converters, hot brakes and dragging safety chains. Currently, 4-foot tall dry weeds encroach on the eroding asphalt adding to our risk of fire.
An independent onsite inspection was necessary to establish baseline conditions for home, barns, tack room and shop. I waited at the end of the driveway for the inspector from the Bay Area who had become lost. Up the drive in a cloud of dust she parked in the shade of a redbud as I followed in the Kubota. As she stepped out of her 2017 Chevy Volt, it began to roll down the slope, as she grabbed the door trying both to hold it and to get back in, towards our 500 gallon fire-fighting water wagon to veer at the last moment into the skid steer. She could have been seriously injured.
Though the hybrid rocked the skid steer upon impact, it survived unscathed. After assessing the damages to her car, we tied the plastic together with duct tape and hay string and tested the brake and turn signal lights. Drivable and legal, she went about her business of asking questions and photographing the structures while I showed her our firebreaks, plumbing for filling fire trucks and water wagon from our wells, while explaining that I had even stopped one fire myself with the skid steer.
Having made it home safely, she conducted the remainder of her inspection with questions over the phone and texts over the next two days. I repeated many of the photographs she had taken because of the glare from her cell phone, plus additional pictures of electrical service boxes and their manufacturers with interiors of all structures. In order not to have to dedicate another afternoon for another inspection, I essentially accomplished the onsite portion of her inspection.
I recount this calamitous and ill-advised process from a 75 year-old’s perspective, dumbfounded by the inefficient technological progress in that span of years. Frankly, she had no more business navigating and assessing rural California than we would be navigating and judging San Francisco, the ironic culture clash between us resounding loudly.
Posted in Audio Files, Photographs, Ranch Journal, Video
Tagged culture clash, Drought, Dry Creek, Fire, insurance, State of California, Tulare County
Third day wean
when hungry heifers
eat out of my hands
at the feed bunk—
leafy alfalfa flakes
that fall apart, the rich
green of last year’s
high-dollar hay—
rather than distress
over mothers no longer
posted at the gate
that most have left
lamenting another loss
of nine-month intimacy
and their mother-daughter
companionship.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, Ranch Journal
Tagged 2023 heifers, bovine intimacies, innocence, photography, poetry, stress, weaning
I think we’ve finally caught up and close to being on time with our ranch work since the last Atmospheric River at the end of March. We got across the creek towards the end of April when flow was down to 90 cfs to see our cows while trying to get our fences up to hold them when we gathered and weaned. Since the ARs, Dry Creek is spider-webbed with streams of sand in new high-water channels requiring some leveling with the skid steer to replace fencing and to approach the creek. Meanwhile on this side of the road and creek, we’ve had a crew building fence to better accommodate the acreage changes since Robbin and I have scaled down our activities.
But on time, our first bunch of calves will be weaned and ready for Visalia Livestock Market’s “Off the Grass Sale” on Wednesday, May 17th. They are 7-weight Vintage-sired steers. The market has been strong, though slightly weaker lately. With our cow numbers down due to acreage changes and past years of drought, we will need whatever extra money the market will offer us.
After seven days a week for nearly two months, it’s a relief to feel caught up.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, Off the Grass Sale, photography, rain, Vintage steers, Visalia Livestock Market, weaning, weather
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