Tag Archives: Calves

CHRISTMAS 2014

She breathes, her flesh
with hair enough to hold cattle
and rain to her breast

should it come hard and fast
to fill the canyons. Gray clouds
linger with nothing left

but to offer color and contrast
to these hills greening yet
in Christmas Day’s last light.

Black from the bottoms,
sunset’s shadow crawls
to an island lit with rosy hues

dotted with the dark silhouettes
of cows and calves grazing
the iridescence of fresh green.

She breathes, her flesh
with hair enough to hold us close
to her soft breast.

 

Merry Christmas

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We are blessed this Christmas with the gift of grass after thirty-plus months of historic drought in California, with extraordinary conditions beginning with a 1.76” warm, slow rain at the first of November followed by a thick germination of feed and warm growing weather, and just enough rain to keep it alive until the 2.5” storm two weeks ago. We have good feed now and the calves are growing quickly—from one extreme to the other, a magnificent start to our grass season. Still getting comfortable with the color green, with wet weather, we are grateful and relieved. These hills are miraculously resilient!

And we truly appreciate you and the 400+ others who have followed this blog and endured the drought with us—the recent dusty poems and photographs that are recorded here—and took the time to leave encouraging and sympathetic comments. Thank you all.

Robbin and I wish you a Merry Christmas as the year unwinds, hoping for peace and understanding among all men as we begin 2015, another opportunity to find that common strand within each of us to share. From our family to yours: MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR ☺

 

FOR FAMILY

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‘Traveling the same track
makes ruts when it rains,’
I tell myself, shoveling,

bringing future runoff back
to gutters and culverts
as if I might make a difference.

They hear me in their home
and come to the chainsaw’s whine
limbing a fallen tree on the fence—

old wire that can be spliced
and pulled up into place
only they will see, gathered

in rock piles above me
like Great Aunts, lifting
wet noses to a light breeze.

I left the house with salt
to see the cattle, check
the rain gauge, photograph

the grass ‘lest my memory slips
again and spins a yearning
into some other poem

for Winter Solstice 2014.
We are family, these cows
and calves, this wild about me

as I stack brush for quail
before I leave with Live Oak
limbs—come home with wood.

From dull light into the dark, we
will roast a rib between us warm
‘round our never-ending fire.

 

BEFORE CHRISTMAS 2014

Sulphur - December 11, 2014

Sulphur – December 11, 2014

 

No father or mother left to leave
a Christmas gift under the tree—
even the child in us understands.

An ever-ready substitute, the old
Hereford bull plods along the fence
looking past the asphalt, gutturally

conversing with the neighbor’s
registered Angus mothers
while his younger brethren work

the steep brush and rock,
gather families in the wild
from last year’s seed.

Kept another year, just in case
someone gets hurt, we become
the extras for the gods—

walk the sidelines
lending words to the old songs
‘lest the world forgets

the melodies of Christmas
when it rains, or snows low
leaving only grass under trees.

 

Gathering the Paregien Ranch

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Across Dry Creek Canyon, a light dusting of snow on the Kaweahs and the Great Western Divide, from Alta Peak to Sawtooth, as we gathered yesterday to brand today on the Paregien Ranch.

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Almost solid filaree in places, we’ve had a good germination in the granite at the 2,000 foot elevation. Not a lot of grass, but better than in the clay at the lower elevations, our south and west slopes still struggling.

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Clarence and I watch the gate as the girls feed hay where the cows and calves will spend the night. None of our facilities is air tight, so we hope they’ll still be in the pen when we get there this morning.

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Lee, Teri, Robbin and Clarence replay a good gather.

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Forecast rain for Thursday and Friday, we’re hoping to get the calves worked while we can still get up and down the road.

Growing Up

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We’ve been up and down the mountain to the Paregien Ranch most days for the past two weeks, packing a little alfalfa up and stove wood down as we get ready for winter and to center the cows and calves near the corrals for gathering and branding today. We have become part of this bovine family, welcome—always bringing something to the party. But after today, some of these calves will lose their curiosity, see us differently—they’ll grow up to feed somebody else.

 

SUNNY SABBATH

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All-day tryst in the middle
of milling cattle upon the green,
it could be spring in December—

good sign after two dry years of hay,
something normal like bucks in rut.
Mounting and breeding surround us,

black bulls weave through the bunch
with urgent optimism and aplomb.
No forecast fog, rain, or snow.

Monday gather. Tuesday picnic
upon the green with the neighbors
bringing horses to brand some calves.

 

FIREKEEPER

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She knows her wood
and how long it will last—
loves Blue Oak coals
and the Live Oak with little ash.

Redwood splinters for an ember,
Manzanita for heat and flame,
she keeps a never-ending fire
three months warm each year.

 

Ranch Journal: Having Fun (6 pix)

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With no worries about stockwater nor under the gun to feed cattle everyday, Robbin and I went to the Paregien Ranch Saturday to check on the bulls we put out Monday and to cut a Kubota load of stove wood ahead of the rain forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.

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The grass is fading in places but the cows are holding up fairly well with growing demand from their calves. What feed we have lacks strength, but with our reduced numbers, the cows are staying full.

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We were a curiosity to a couple of bull calves, approaching three months old, as we cleaned up a dead tree near the solar pump that we installed this summer. Robbin took pictures while stacking the brush.

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Liking the smell and taste of the wood chips and sawdust, I was worried that they might try to lick the chain saw blade.

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Just checking on our cows and calves and cutting wood are the fun jobs we haven’t had the time or luxury to enjoy,

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and getting comfortable with relaxing seems to come in stages after virtually two years of feeding and trying to keep the nucleus of our cow herd intact. But we made real progress towards becoming human again over our fun-filled Thanksgiving weekend.

 

NEWS OF THANKSGIVING

 

Once in awhile a fellow blogger will poke a poem out of me. Thanks Evelyne, I feel a little better now:

 

Herd camped at the gate,
waiting for it to open
to the corral,
to the lead-ups and chutes
for processing
before spitting them out
to rush into another
crowded pen

on the TV news as if
Wall Street’s making hay
with everybody shopping
for the holidays—

as if we’ve traded
mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing
and gravy with cranberries
and family for a bargain
with a credit card—

as if all the cattle
really want in.