Tag Archives: branding

First Wagyu Branding

Posted on March 3, 2017 by | 12 comments

 

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Though the cattle appreciate going ‘old people slow’, it makes for a long day, especially when the calves have grown past the ideal time to brand them due to our ninety days of rain since Thanksgiving. As the ground begins to dry out, all our neighbors, whom we depend on for help, are busy trying to get their calves gathered and marked as well.

 

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Fortunately we were able to enlist some youth to help get the calves on the ground, without which the day would have been much longer. Thank you Brett Moody, Tell Blanke and Nate. Special thanks to all the old timers, our friends and neighbors, who like us, are trying to hang on to this way of life.

 

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TRADING LABOR

Posted on October 23, 2016 by | 5 comments

 

February 12, 2015

February 12, 2015

 

A black and white macro of weathered wood,
corrals and hills beyond, old guitar song
and chiseled men follow smoke to the ridgeline

and back to the fire and branding iron. A ringing
cell phone colors riders, a black calf stretched
between two sorrels—blue denim action

of men and women, old neighbors dancing,
each genuflecting to a moment on the ground.
“We’re branding calves,” a limp loop

answers from the corner, looking down
canyon past hazy orchards, somewhere town
as if he could see the caller, the papered desk,

stretch the thirty miles. A guy with a drone
reports, “We got ’em all.” Empty white tables
and chair legs licked by green tongues wait

with meat, bread and beans on an oak fire, ice chest
beer below a towel, soap and water, plastic glasses
and fresh jug of whiskey ready on a tailgate.

Close again, the chatter of visiting face to face,
gossip, stories and mysteries unveiled, fading
with cows with calves strung up the canyon home.

 

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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Gallery

McKee Branding 2016

Posted on March 20, 2016 by

This gallery contains 14 photos.

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February 10, 2016

Posted on February 10, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Temperatures in the single digits, we left blowing snow outside Tonopah a week ago in Nevada’s Great Basin. Since we have gathered our last bunch of cows and calves to brand this morning to a forecast high of 76°. Here the hillsides are green, spattered with early patches of golden poppies and fiddleneck, as white popcorn flowers begin to creep up the lower slopes. The visual and mental contrasts from Elko to Dry Creek are startling, two different worlds either side of the Great Western Divide within a week’s time.

 

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Got Weeds!

Posted on February 8, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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Malva neglecta, Common Mallow, Cheeseweed, doing well.

We, as well as all of our neighbors, are busy branding or gathering to brand before the next forecast wave of El Niño arrives in the middle of next week. Hampered by the good fortune of past rains, we’re behind schedule. The grass is growing, cows milking well, calves now range over 400 pounds that is tough on ground crews and horses, as well as the calves. Depending on one another’s help to brand takes planning with an unmistakable sense of urgency in the air to get the work done. We’re planning to brand Wednesday, but not before helping a neighbor brand on Tuesday so he and his ground crew can help us.

But we’ve got weeds. The Common Mallow loves disturbed ground, and a scourge in places where cattle gather and chew their cuds. Not surprisingly, Malva neglecta has a long history of medicinal uses. Friday, I encountered a healthy patch that obscured the road as I left Dry Creek to scout the Top before meeting Clarence and the girls in our gather. All but one cow gathered or accounted for as of yesterday, we hope they stay until Wednesday.

How ‘bout those Super Broncos? What an intense defense!!

 

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Sabbath Branding

Posted on January 18, 2016 by | 5 comments

 

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Rain has been the recurring forecast with measureable amounts on over half of the last thirty days, pleasant and needed relief from four years of drought. Picking a day to brand is tricky business, usually requiring a day or two before to gather the cows and calves off steep, slick hillsides. Putting a crew of neighbors together to help often conflicts with their own branding schedules. Then the planning of a meal, perishables hanging in limbo to feed friends afterwards, keeps us tuned to the TV and several weather Internet sites for a composite report to insure we won’t be rained out before we go for it. But no one complains. Robbin jokes that when the call goes out, “We’re having a picnic, bring your horse.”

Yesterday’s approaching storm cloaked the canyon in soft ethereal gray, muted morning light where it narrows four miles above us at the Buzzard Roost Fire Control Road, corrals deep within its walls of almost-iridescent green, large ghostlike patches of naked Buckeyes on the north slopes, surrounded by skeletons of leafless Blue Oaks, some dead, some alive.

A perfect day for us to help Steve and Jody Fuller brand, I’m told that everything goes with green and gray.

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: “Alphabet”

 

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APPLE ORCHARD BRANDING 2016

Posted on January 13, 2016 by | Leave a comment

 

Like the old days, hillsides
slick and wet, we brand
between rains, hurried loops

neighbor-to-neighbor, each
bunch a hard-won victory
for work-worn bones.

Morning Advil or Aleve
for squeaky hinges
lubricated with a plastic cup

of Crown, hot meal grinning
with good company.
For a moment we are young again,

but with muted bravado—understand
Tony’s deadpan disappointment:
tonight’s storm retreating north.

Not quite the coup to drink whiskey to,
we want more sore evenings
by the fire, just to hear it pour.

 

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Posted in Deck Poems, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal

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Adios 2015!

Posted on January 1, 2016 by | 1 comment

Photos: Lee Loverin and Terri Drewry

 

We ended the year with our neighbors helping us brand. Beautiful day, big calves, rain on the way. Happy New Year!!!

 

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Back to Work

Posted on December 31, 2015 by | 11 comments

 

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Though the impacts of our four-year drought are fresh in everyone’s mind, and far from mitigated by recent rains, our approach to work has changed. With most stockwater ponds less than half-full and Dry Creek just beginning to run, no one dares suggest that the drought is over.

But instead of gathering and branding calves in the dust this year, we are watching weather forecasts trying to get our calves marked between storms. But so are our neighbors with whom we trade labor. It’s tricky business, though a welcome change.

Trying to get anything done between Christmas and New Year’s Day is usually futile, but with a promise of over an inch of rain early next week, we’re branding another bunch this morning. We gathered Tuesday and Wednesday, cut wood for the branding and cook fires, planned a meal, and even had to weed-eat the grass in the corrals so we could rope today. The pace has been tough, but with an eye towards the coming El Niño, no one is complaining (too much).

Eight inches to date on Dry Creek, more than the 2013-14 season.

 

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Mustard Greens

Posted on December 20, 2015 by | 7 comments

 

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A beautiful day Friday, I took my camera while checking the calves we branded, photographing this one resting comfortably in a bed of mustard greens, along with the gray cow and calf born late September.

 

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We’re taking the whole bunch back to Belle Point this morning after a slow 0.30″ rain yesterday afternoon and overnight–the same rain we raced yesterday morning while branding Tony Rabb’s calves just over the ridge in Antelope Valley.

Forecast for 8:00 a.m. up until the last moment, skies were clear at daybreak as the storm approached from the coast. Tony made the call and we hustled through 100 calves before the first drop landed at 11:30 a.m.

I note, not so much for posterity but to jog my failing memory, that we had a lot of fun at the quickened pace, far from ‘old people slow’. My first opportunity to help the neighbors brand this season, I took Bart, Robbin’s wonderful gelding, who worked well-enough to have some fun himself, a tough little horse hard not to like.

 

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I also found the Burrowing Owl in his digs Friday while checking the heifers just recently exposed to Wagyu bulls. The first wave of family arrives today. ‘Tis the season.

 

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