Tenuous, dangerous navigating
redwood sagging on rotting joists
even the dogs avoided
and it took years to make repairs,
slices of time wedged between
perpetual routines
caring for the survivors of drought
when there was no grass or water.
It took the expertise of a patient friend
we have learned to love
and work with—Robbin and I
comprising only half-a-man.
for Jeff Spoelstra
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged accomplishment, Drought, friends, photography, poetry, repairs, teamwork
They’ve taken Saturday’s rain away
with future promises
like plastic magic debt
no one intends to pay.
We’ve been here before,
crooning to godesses
not to forget us
like the hopeless homeless.
We are this ground
rooted into the future
like the plodding lives of cattle,
trusting, trusting, trusting….
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged cattle, Cosmos, Drought, godesses, Monarch Butterfly, photography, poetry, rain, trusting, weather
1.
Gray dust clouds rising
behind cows down powdered trails
off these bare mountains.
2.
The diesel feed truck
awakes a bawling chorus
to claim the canyon.
3.
All imperative
and hungry, it twists our guts—
La Niña pending.
Posted in Haiku 2022, Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged cattle, Drought, haiku, La Nina, photography, poetry, water, weather
Most people have seen or heard of the hit TV show “Yellowstone” that airs on the Paramount Network. Admittedly, I have watched the show. It is set in picturesque Montana and packed with drama, lots of action and overly-fictionalized storylines around a ranching family trying to keep together the generational ranch that has been passed down to them.
This show is hard to watch if you are involved in production agriculture for the many incorrect portrayals of ranching practices and the over-the-top daily issues faced by this fictional family. However, it seems to be resonating with the public and is causing an influx of people wishing to move to the Big Sky state. The “Yellowstone effect” is real in Montana, and we have seen population growth and skyrocketing demand for real estate.
It’s no secret that the pandemic changed work dynamics, and the ability for employees to work remotely resulted in people moving away from areas with a high cost of living to more affordable locations around the country. Montana saw a huge demand increase for property. For example, in Bozeman, where the storyline of “Yellowstone” is based, the median price for a single-family home was a mere $500,000 a few short years ago.
read more:
Posted in Ranch Journal
Tagged ag acres, Devin Murnin, food supply, ranching culture, ranchland, water supply, Western Livestock Journal, Yellowstone
Posted in Photographs
Change is made of choices
& choices are made of character.
– Amanda Gorman (“We Write”)
Nothing stays the same,
even the Earth wobbles on its axis.
We are not the same people—
we were raised with, and finally by.
Reason and truth have been inflated so
they have no value now, like fiat currency.
Yesterday, a man’s word defined him.
Today he speaks a foreign tongue.
But that’s all we have, a lifetime of words
to ease the speed and pain of change.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged Amanda Gorman, change, character, photography, poetry, reason, truth, words
Up here, the deer unafraid.
We freeze together
to see who melts away first.
Posted in Haiku 2022, Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged deer, haiku, photography, poetry, privacy
An all too familiar sight across the West, this spring and rainfall fed stockwater pond has gone dry. Rainfall for 3 of the past 4 years has been below average https://drycrikjournal.com/rainfall-history-1/ following the 2012-2016 drought. In short, for 7 of the past 10 years rainfall has been below average.
Though currently temperatures have been running above 110 degrees https://drycrikjournal.com/journal-2022-23/ our summer has been relatively cool with more monsoonal presence than we’re used to, but without moisture. Typically, it’s too warm for our grass to survive before the middle of October anyway.
As new calves hit the ground, we’re looking forward to fall and a chance for moisture and feed for the remainder of our cattle.
Posted in Photographs
Poetry is its own prayer,
The closest words come to will.
– Amanda Gorman (“CORDAGE, or ATONEMENT”)
To untangle a knot of fishing line
you must begin with the hook—
work reason gently backwards.
Don’t pull tight but take a breath,
give time away and listen
to the words that swim by.
Free the mind to find itself
not coifed in sheep’s clothing
but wild as a wolf in the woods.
Watch the water riffle and eddy.
See rocks and cobbles talking
from an ever-changing streambed.
This is fishing.
This is poetry.
This is solace.
Occasionally, I feel guilty.
I’ve killed so many
that I may allow
one to escape
my will to kill
before becoming numb
as machinery,
before squeezing
the pellet gun
the .22,
the .223
or the 17 HMR—
…like now as I write:
one breaking from
the dogs’ empty pens
with cheeks full
of puppy chow.
Little bastards,
I’ve fed tens of thousands
to our local wake of buzzards
waiting for the first report
of war in the canyon.
Falling off hillsides in hordes,
battalions of vermin
to strip tomatoes
green from the vine—
every sweet and juicy issue
from my darling Elberta,
our plump grapefruit
and leather-hided pomegranates
that will never spread
as jelly on toasted bread.
Serious business in a drought
to become an oasis
for the flea-infested
and their underpopulated
predators, but I’d like a day off.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged buzzards, gardens, ground squirrels, guilt, killing, orchards, vermin, war
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