Robbin and I are proud of our girls across the road, carrying their third calf, heading up the hill at 7:30 p.m. and not hanging at the bottom waiting for hay. They made it to the top of the ridge to spend the night before grazing down to water shortly after dawn.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged 3rd calf heifers, adaptability, hot temperatures, short feed
The past two dry years have been tough on the Great Blue Herons here, resorting to year-round rodent hunting to sustain themselves. With a measureable flow for only 18 days this year, absorbed before it made it to the Kaweah River, Dry Creek peaked at 9 cfs on April 3rd, compared to the 2010-11 season when Dry Creek ran until September 4, 2011. It’s too late for the chance of showers (and thunderstorms) today and tonight to help our feed or the herons much other than settle the dust and temporarily change the smell of things with only 5.67” of rain since October 2013. Those are the numbers, but one look at our April feed conditions says it all.
An image branded in my brain during the devastating Drought of 1977 is that of a Great Blue Heron fishing from the concrete bank of the Friant-Kern Canal near Exeter that gave me hope, that demonstrated their adaptability to me. No wonder they have become our totems—now if we can just take their lead.
Posted in Photographs
Tagged adaptability, Drought, Dry Creek flow, Friant-Kern Canal, Great Blue Heron, Kaweah River, photographs, water, weather
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