It’s a dance—
concentrate and relax,
guide the feel
of your horse
with your legs, find
the feel of your rope
at your fingertips
swing in rhythm
with the calf.
Like everything else,
it’s a dance—just
concentrate and relax.
Fuller Branding, Dry Creek – December 15, 2018
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2018, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, photography, poetry
Down the mountain, down
the four-wheel drive dirt track
to the asphalt that connects us
to home and families,
to basic urgencies far away
lost in time and space
beyond the whine of twine
around the heels of calves
stretched for branding—
when and where we are gods
for a moment, immune
to the insanities
of a civilized world.
All the old men gone
still lean against the boards.
I find my place among them,
whoop and illuminate
color with details,
hoping to see myself once more
stepping to the untamed rhythm
of heaven’s hoof dance.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2018
Tagged Blaine Ketscher, branding, Craig Ainley, photography, poetry, Shane Doering
While waiting for the irons get hot, the first brandings of the season are like social events, a community of neighbors catching up with one another, great help from the first calf to the last. Thank you all.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, Paregien Ranch, photographs, photography
It could have been dreams
in a young man’s sleep,
lightly listening for the bell mare
high in the granite scree
that glows under starlight—
a celestial showering
from a leaky bucket sky
that came over me
to be a cowboy.
I did it well-enough
to stay in the same place
to become a cowman.
But it could have happened
at a branding, watching good
young hands just come to help.
Photo credit: Audrey Maze
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2018, Ranch Journal
Tagged Blaine Ketscher, branding, photography, poetry, Shane Doering
We began baiting our cows and calves on the Paregien Ranch into the gathering field, yesterday, with the Kubota and a little alfalfa hay. We plan on branding tomorrow, trying to take advantage of our drying roads after 2.5” of rain last week. Fortunately, the Valley fog was not a factor until midday when it rose to cloak landscapes up to 2,500 feet. We’re going back this morning with horses to collect a little bunch we missed and sort the dry cows and late-calvers from the bunch. It’s still too early this morning to tell where the fog is.
With ample dry feed, we haven’t had to supplement these cattle this season except for a little ‘hello hay’ when we’ve checked them. Though the cows know our gathering routine and are camped on the hay we’ve strung-out through the gathering field in the photo, it’s a brand new experience for the calves. I found their confusion looking longingly beyond the gate, to the ground they knew, humorous enough to pull out the camera.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, Calves, Paregien Ranch, photography, weather
I’m fasting before I have to brave the dark, foggy drive into Visalia this morning to have some blood drawn. I woke at midnight on the 9th of November with excruciating abdominal pain that put me in the hospital for a week with an infected gallbladder, an errant gallstone stuck somewhere in my plumbing beneath my sternum.
At my age, ambulance paramedics and emergency personnel are trained to assume chest and abdominal pains are likely to be a heart attack. Despite X-ray and a CT-scan, the correct diagnosis required two trips to Emergency before beginning a regime of antibiotics and pain killers. Too infected for surgery at the time, we’re currently working towards a date to remove my gall bladder, a month or so away at best.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we got rain, the grass is coming, the Angus bulls are out and the Wagyu bulls arrive next week—it’s time to brand, our annual dance around the weather with the help of our neighbors. It’s good to be back home.
We did brand at the Paregien yesterday with the fine help of good neighbors and friends. Despite the lack of rain so far this grass season, the cows and calves are doing well at this higher elevation. The ample old feed from last year has protected the new green that has surprising strength, everyone glad to have these calves marked before they grew any bigger. A big THANK YOU to the crew from Robbin and I.
We’ve pushed the start time of today’s branding back 30 minutes due to rain. I’ve been watching the radar since 3:30 a.m., trying to figure the trajectory of this last wave of a weak southern shower that’s due to arrive about 8:00 a.m. The bulk of it is headed north of us and dissipating.
Decisions, decisions. Damp mountain roads, wet hides, phone calls to neighbors. Tell me who’s in control.
Though little went according to plan, we marked our second bunch of calves in Greasy yesterday. The cows and calves had been separated into two bunches based on the pasture they were gathered from, but when we arrived, the bulls had flattened the fence between them and most of the cattle were in one gathering field. We branded and turned them all out together leaving the gates open to their respective home pastures, just as we had done during the drought years to ensure that all the cattle had access to water.
To expect perfection is a silly notion with livestock in this terrain, but with the help of good and understanding neighbors, we got the job done with little time lost. Our objective was to have the calves in Greasy marked before the welders came to finish the pipe pens that Earl McKee started a decade or so ago, so that neither we or the welding crew would be in one another’s way. Too dry and flammable to begin yet, all we need is some ample rain. Thank you all.
How I craved the physical,
the hot rush of blood
within my flesh, the might
of muscles flexed
to my will, the loop’s
quick flash secure
around the boney
feet of calves
in the branding pen—
no two quite the same,
how I welcomed them
as a measure of a man.
drycrikjournal 