Day breaks into rafts of red,
early weather precursors for sailors
and shepherds in any shade
this side of the Sierras
as the sun bathes Nevada
with long shadows.
How we crave the changing
light on green, yellow willows
set afire as white-limbed sycamores
undress beside the creek—
how we need the miracle
of moisture to hold us altogether
before this ballyhooed
Storm of the Century lands
somewhere north of here.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, red sky, water, weather
A beautiful day for a branding with friends, Teri heels a calf for her Dad.
Sid and Javier
Robbin and Lee Loverin
Tony Rabb
Kenny McKee
Break time between teams, we try to keep the work slow for us older people, time to visit, have a snack and a beer.
Clarence Holdbrooks and John
Virginia McKee, Craig Ainley and Kenny McKee
Bev Drewry, John, and Maggie Loverin
Teri Drewry and Lee Loverin
Bill Drewry
Brent Huntington sets one up for Teri
And the oak tree, one of two in the branding pen that keeps the pace subdued. Clarence renamed it “The Release Tree’.
Bill leads one for Teri.
For our first branding of the season, everything was just right. A good place to start on the ranch before the ‘forecast’ rain, still on for Thursday night and Friday, makes our road too slick to travel for who knows how long. Good to get the calves worked before they get too big.
In this ever-modern and high-tech society of work saving devices, we are yet a throwback cattle culture trading labor within our small community. Miles off the asphalt, the branding corrals become another world apart from the latest media hysteria, an opportunity, we like to think, to talk about important things.
Proud, pleased and exhausted, Robbin and I collapsed on the couch.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, community, culture, John Virginia McKee, Paregien Ranch, photographs, rain, weather
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.
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.
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.
Lee, Teri, Robbin and Clarence replay a good gather.
Forecast rain for Thursday and Friday, we’re hoping to get the calves worked while we can still get up and down the road.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Alta Peak, branding, Calves, cows, Dry Creek, Dry Creek Canyon, Great Western Divide, Kaweah, Paregien Ranch, photographs, rain, weather
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.
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.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, buck, bucks in rut, Calves, cows, deer, doe, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, weather, wildlife
We float like leaves—
moments balanced
between extremes
we haven’t seen—
for small epiphanies:
the intersections
of imperfect circles,
elliptical orbits
of other planes
and gravities.
Season to season,
we float like leaves
as fodder for the earth
returning to the roots
and the skeletons of trees.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged cycles, Dry Creek, epiphany, leaves, photographs, poetry, roots, trees, weather, wildlife
Work women left in rock,
tracks of generations
since creation.
“At Wuknaw — Creation Myth of the Yokuts”
WPC(2) — “Gone, But Not Forgotten”
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Creation Myth, haiku, photographs, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge, Wuknaw, Yokuts
Rare October Redbud bloom
summoned Monarchs,
began a two-year drought.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, haiku, Monarch Butterfly, photographs, poetry, Redbud, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, wildflowers, wildlife
A song, not mine,
stuttered in the flame.
– Wendell Berry (“From the Distance”)
I was awake and she was smiling,
eyes speaking through the darkness—
tears of relief in my own.
We have our visitors, hear the gravel
on the drive turn under wheel,
without warning. Or the dog barks.
Or upon the happenstance of a phrase
yet echoing, they arrive
around the fire we are warmed by.
Living beyond the life we contemplate,
they assure us with a sign, align
the flight of birds with words
gliding, or in a whir of wings
they clutch our hearts. Are we
but aging flesh measured by numbers
and graded like meat to be consumed
by the machine, or is there another
currency common among all men?
The wells run deeper now
past the Pleistocene and into salt
at half a million bucks a pop
for the last of the water
as the Valley collapses
under the weight
of farming investors
for the moment
leaving Mom and Pop
and forty acres
high and dry
with one last roll
for agribusiness—
one last extraction
from a thirsty future.
No dirt farmers left
to turn the earth,
make sweet love
with furrows
and pruning sheers
for a crop to harvest,
wobbly wagon loads
to railroad towns
grown bright and urban
in a couple of lifetimes
farming the future.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged agribusiness, birds, Drought, farming, groundwater, photographs, poetry, Red Tail Hawk, San Joaquin Valley, water, weather, wells, wildlife
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