Certain privileges, prerogatives
to come and go as she pleases,
she’s more like a cat than a cow,
sometimes leaving reasons to return
now, like ex-lovers can, dancing
at safe distances out of reach
and out of touch. I don’t begrudge
her company, her gossamer veil
or frivolous wet kisses—she does
what she wants. We don’t have to be
in love, but his ground needs more—
and repeated thunderstorms of lust.
I stumble on Bukowski early in the dark
morning, pleased to hear him voice
basic town stuff from the other side
of the page, but glad he’s not been
riding shotgun through this drought,
cussing everyone including God.
We hung a little hope on the gray
rolling in, gathering on the ridges—
on gusts stirring up, then down canyon
and grinned like foolish children
who still believed in weathermen
and Santa Claus. We dreamed
of how much rain it would take
to fill all the new cracks in clay
where the thin grass fades—
of an errant thunderstorm
that could fill the dirt tanks
and let the creek run
enough to meander and pool
under canopies of sycamores and oaks
for the Wood Ducks, cattle and us.
Through the black screen door,
wind under my skin,
I hear it begin to rain.
Ever-hopeful and in anticipation of tomorrow’s rain, I took a few photos of today’s feed conditions, intending to concentrate on the filaree, having turned red a week or so ago in places, then purple and brown. A miraculous and extremely strong non-native cattle feed, it is the predominant species in dry years. With good moisture, it can come back to life and turn green again. With less than 4” of rain and only about 30 days left in our rainy season that averages about 16” annually, the grasses never really germinated completely, resulting in a mosaic pattern almost everywhere today.
Just through the fence that separates our driveway from the pasture, I wanted a good shot of where the filaree had turned a purplish brown, only to draw one of the Roadrunners nesting in some nearby Prickly Pear cactus, closer.
Short green turns under
clear skies, no place to hide
rocks and cattle grazing.
March 29, 2009
Thin grass fades
like awakening from a dream
to truckloads of hay
like any other day
of no rain—like nothing
I have ever seen.
819 & twins
We realize the practical importance of documenting our drought, its impact on the ranch and cattle, on us. Even in dry times, our life is rich with details, most all symbolically tied to moments of truth, some of which last for a long time.
Denial can be a dangerous thing with so many lives at stake, so many cattle waiting for rain. But now I doubt a rain could help the south and west slopes of brown native clay.
As we branded the calves this winter, we culled the cows for those that had turned old and thin since we culled them last summer, most without calves, bringing them off the mountain to allow more feed for the remainder that is holding better in our granite upper-country. By the end of branding field-by-field, we had collected a truckload where we fed them hay on the irrigated pasture of only dormant summer grasses.
Clarence and Robbin trailed behind the bunch slowly following the Kubota with its single bale of hay, each cow eagerly filing past me as we got closer to the feed grounds and corrals as I assessed them, judging fullness and fitness—how they’d look in the auction ring. Moving closer, they began to buck, kick and run with excitement, with just the thought of hay.
In the corral, Robbin assured me that she didn’t see anyone she was sorry to see go. We brought the cameras that we forgot about while crowding the cows up the foreign loading chute, reserved primarily for our annual crop of calves. Now old replacement heifers, they’d never seen a truck. “You can tell,” said Van Beek, the driver, after the first two drafts, “they are ranch raised.”
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged 819, Big Valley Cattle Co., blog, culling, Drought, haiku, photography, poetry, Rick Van Beek, twins
Stocker operators have long shipped their steers, but cow and calf producers have been supplementing with hay since August, while calving in between. Bad year, dry year, call it what you may, what green feed that has germinated is all but gone.
Though classified as a non-native invasive weed originating in the Mediterranean, Red-Stem Filaree (Erodium cicutarium) is exceptional cattle feed, oftentimes thriving best in a dry year. In the clay, however, most south slopes are bare below 2,500 feet and patches of filaree on the west slopes are beginning to turn red and purple with lack of rain and above average warm temperatures in the 70s and 80s for the past two weeks. Weather Journal 2013-14
Even in the sandier, non-grazed areas along the USACE easement road to Terminus Dam, the Red-Stem Filaree has turned or is turning.
Or in some cases, headed-out and gone to seed without producing any leaves.
None of this is good news, given only lip service by the local media, but a precursor to the devastating impact of this drought to agriculture in California. With no rain or snow of any import, there will be no surface water available to farmers, making them dependent solely on diminishing groundwater. Some with older orchards have already been advised to push them out. Not only is the price of beef going up (some more), but all food stuffs of quality are soon to follow.
Plant your gardens!
We’re adapting as well as we can without panicking, but shipping another load of cows to town tomorrow.
Poem from this time of year:March 2011
Who else could take a break from their bookwork for Uncle Sam and look upon a mountain and see the calves we branded Wednesday, grazing with their mothers? Though it seems so unfair to ruin the prettiest time of the year here with tax accounting, even in a drought, I feel blessed. Thanks to Robbin, our ranch records are substantially better since she took over the daily bookwork in an organized manner.
I awoke early with loose numbers on my mind that tried to interfere, with some success, with my writing time. Language and math must reside on different sides of the brain, or some aspect of them, drawing battle lines in my head. The numbers usually win and I hate my smugness afterwards, finally with an answer. But usually balanced-out quickly with a poem, this morning’s offering is my first effort ever finished, mid-accounting.
Though I don’t pretend to understand it, I find the creative mindset interesting. So much depends on our eye, how we see things as individuals as we appeal to something common within us all, by adding our perspective. So opposite from filling out IRS forms. Done, time to let it rest overnight.
Posted in Photographs
Tagged creative process, Drought, dry spring, IRS, short grass
Robbin and Lee took a load of hay to the Paregien Ranch yesterday to check on the condition of our cows and calves as well as the feed. On the first of March we measured 1.68″ of rain with temperatures in the 70s since—ideal grass-growing weather, one would think, except that the Paregien Ranch has only received 4.5″ this season. The ground is dry, competing with the grass, absorbing every drop.
It was a comment on our March 1st, ‘Our Window’ post that “Drought is the worst limbo” that’s become richer since, the waiting and indecision the past two weeks, branding calves as if by some miracle we might yet have a grass season.
We have a program for our cows that fits this particular ranch most all the time. Out of limbo, it’s now apparent that we won’t have enough dry feed to carry our cows through the summer and fall. More than likely, we’ll wean the calves early and cull the cows heavily at that time, ending this grass season with about half the cows we began with in September. Hopefully we’ll have enough stock water to support them. We will have to monitor conditions closely, as that will determine when we begin to wean. Robbin returned with photos that show some improvement in feed and flesh while I stayed home to assemble our tax information.
The photo above is the remains of Effie Hilliard’s rock fireplace on the Paregien Ranch that overlooks Antelope Valley and Woodlake beyond.
Great Western Divide – March 14, 2014
March 10, 2014
Elevation: 1000-3,477 feet
No plumber to call
to break the lines loose
to free a year of rain
backed-up, flooding
the UK and Montana,
freezing East.
Helpless as town dogs,
we don’t know
how to fix anything
anymore. No time
to sit and pray,
to meditate the dry
away, or cry.
No other home
but red dirt hills
that never greened.
They don’t know
tomorrow’s zip code
nor do we—exactly
when, or how many
trucks to order.
drycrikjournal 