Tag Archives: pandemic

TWENTY DAYS (part 2)

Posted on October 4, 2021 by John | Leave a comment

Drought and dust,

pandemic and the masks

we need to breathe and feed—

day’s end cloaked in smoke

and gin—how tough are we

and every living thing

looking to escape

to a Li Po poem

and Chinese tapestry?

High Hopes

Posted on December 13, 2020 by John | 3 comments

After a lifetime in the cattle business, 52 full-time years by my reckoning, I’ve maintained that there are three variables that determine our economic equilibrium: the market, the weather and politics. When only one of these variables is unfavorable, we can usually get by for another season. But when all three are unfavorable, we’re in dire straights.

To make matters worse, 2020 has introduced another variable I never considered: an international pandemic that has bludgeoned the global economy, and here at home closed restaurants for all grades of beef. We are not the only business impacted, further impacting us all.

At the moment, any realistic hopes of corralling Covid-19 to some sort of normalcy are six to nine months away. But those hopes may encourage better beef markets at the end of spring 2021. How the political impacts, stimulus packages and reduction of tariffs, etc., will ultimately shake out is anyone’s guess.

Now two months into our rainy season with less than a half-inch of rain to date and no green grass, we are keenly focused on the weather while feeding lots of hay. The Wagyu bulls have arrived and we must have our cows in shape to breed.

Here on Dry Creek on Saturday, we only measured 0.16”, but our hopes hang on the latest forecast of 0.3” today and tonight and another 0.45” Wednesday and Thursday. Always optimistic, the combination may be enough to get our grass seed germinated. But like always, much can change in the next four days.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Drought, marketplace, pandemic, politics, rain, weather

HALLOWEEN

Posted on October 31, 2020 by John | 5 comments

Dark morning chill stirs the flesh
to welcome winter waiting
for flaming tongues 
to lick between
dry Manzanita branches
igniting Blue oak 
in the woodstove’s glow.
 
I recall storms, the floods
and endless downpours,
creek too high to cross
for thirty days and pray
for anything wet enough
to start the grass
for cows and calves—
 
for my sanity, something
akin to normal
in these crazy days
of politics and pandemic—
something to trust 
as right as rain—
something to believe in.

5 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calves, cows, pandemic, poetry, politics, rain, winter

MICROCOSM

Posted on August 2, 2020 by John | 1 comment

                  It was impossible to make it through the tragedy
                 Without poetry.
                      – Joy Harjo (“Becoming Seventy”)

This other world of cows and calves,
of motherhood exemplified, and bulls,
like men, trailing wire of down fences

is yet to be expected. A bumper crop
of rodents and snakes surround us,
the full moon coyote count of duets

and trios draws closer around us
in the half-light. The metaphors
and similes come easily to favor

humanity ‘midst the tragic chaos
where the latest issue of the truth
has come to be disbelieved.

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2020

Tagged Covid-19, Joy Harjo, pandemic, photography, poetry, politics

APPETITE FOR ANARCHY

Posted on May 31, 2020 by John | 5 comments

Son, they all must be crazy out there.
– Michael Burton (“Night Rider’s Lament”)

We get the news as black or white,
reckless words that conceal the truth
reduced to red and blue enamel.
No sage advice from Washington,
no common sense to right the Ship

of State, and no one at the tiller
to face the tempest’s hate—too busy
painting enemies to blame
while adding anger to the storm.
We get your craziness in colors

with the rising smoke and flames
on a planet waging war
in the cloud of a pandemic
neither understood nor cured—
a collage of clashing colors

without a brushstroke for compassion,
discipline or pride lucrative enough
for the media to cover
with an appetite for anarchy
where only self-righteous ride.

“Night Rider’s Lament”