Tag Archives: photography

RARE

Posted on July 11, 2019 by | Leave a comment

 

 

Hot early—
pack water,
perspire more,

find a breeze
to face
with a distant grin

and measure
the daylight left
until you’re done.

 

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AFRAID

Posted on July 6, 2019 by | 2 comments

 

 

                  When I got a little older, I changed.
                                    Maria Lisa Eastman (“War Bridle”)

Summer winds breathe fire
with a bouquet of hollow wild oats
bent on chance and luck—
but we cannot look away
or ever dream relaxed.

One would think with age
and long experience, a man
would become emboldened
with skid-steer-bladed
firebreaks and phoschex

that always help, but time
has proven reason often
beyond the comprehension
of some of us who wait
for the smell of smoke.

 

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ELECTING WATER

Posted on July 5, 2019 by | 5 comments

 

 

The creek still runs dry,
spends itself as it shrinks upstream
on oaks and sycamores

                  despite the goosenecks,
                  despite the cowboys
                  hauling calves to town—

                  despite the busloads,
                  despite the caravans
                  of weekend Christians

looking for God in the pines.
The County had to move the road
after the Flood of ’55

and rebuilt bridges in ‘69
where the canyon narrows
and the creek runs dry.

Still talk of a dam
every election year
as if it could make water.

 

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MONTEREY SAND

Posted on July 2, 2019 by | 2 comments

 

 

Neither cowman nor a threat
to his counterfeit Brahma cows,
he shuffled afoot at eighty-five
with a flake of grassy alfalfa
tucked under his arm, led them
out of the brush into his splintered
board pens mumbling under
his breath—dried spittle of snooce
upon his gray unshaven chin.

Like loading deer to help him
haul his calves to town, kept
his cash in the freezer of the fridge
before they robbed and tied
to a chair for two days and nights—
before his girlfriend missed him
with his POA in her hand—
before she sold him downriver
to move to Monterey sand.

 

* * * *

POA: Power of Attorney

 

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Velvet in the Wild Oats

Posted on July 1, 2019 by | Leave a comment

 

 

Good to see a couple of bucks in velvet this morning, especially close enough to photograph with a cell phone while we were hauling some young cows up the hill to replace the old ones we took to town last week.

 

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BUGS AND BUTTERFLIES

Posted on June 30, 2019 by | Leave a comment

 

 

Families of milkweed make stands
in a mountain pasture of long-blond feed
where last year’s pods burst with seed

spun within the floss of silky filaments,
scattered outposts of native settlements
I have avoided except for nods of respect.

Host to bugs and beetles, wild bees
and butterflies, they get-along
together well, without and despite us.

 

 

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Horsenettle or Silverleaf Nightshade; Solanum elaeagnifolium

Posted on June 29, 2019 by | 8 comments

 

 

Ran across this striking perennial earlier this week after loading some dry cows to go to town. Apparently common, I have never seen Silverleaf Nightshade, so I went back this morning to photograph it. Related to the tomato, potato and many other garden vegetables, it is poisonous with narcotic properties. And like many nightshades, natives prepared concoctions with the fruit to address headaches, sore throats, etc. Also the root was chewed before sucking rattlesnake venom from a bite. I continue to wonder how the natives knew when to pick the berries and how much of their preparations to ingest. All in the realm of the medicine keepers, I suspect it was not just trial and error.

 

 

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Rest of the Story

Posted on June 27, 2019 by | 3 comments

 

© Terri Blanke

We processed a nice bunch of steer and heifer calves this morning that averaged 700 lbs. yesterday after hauling them from the Paregien Ranch. The steers will probably weigh in the 750 lbs. range, the heifers lighter. Today’s market wants calves in the 650 lbs. range to turn out on Mid-West grass, and pays less/pound for the heavier cattle, essentially giving away the extra pounds of beef we’ve worked to produce over the years. But nothing stays the same.

Despite market conditions, the good news is that there are many very nice replacement heifers in this bunch. Robbin and I maintain that we’re raising cows and that the steer calves help pay the bills.

 

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Five Star Day

Posted on June 26, 2019 by | Leave a comment

 

@ Allie Fry

 

We saddled in the dark and drove up to the Paregien Ranch this morning to haul the calves down the hill to be weaned, a 3 mile, 30 minute, 4-wheel drive one-way pull off the asphalt from 700 feet to the 2,600 foot elevation. Terri, Allie and Robbin got the cows and calves to the old corrals at sunup to sort the cows from their calves. Nice, smooth sort. We had to lighten our gooseneck loads to about 7,000 lbs., instead of 10,000 lbs., because of this year’s slippery dry grass on the roads. But safer to make the extra trips than to lose a pickup and gooseneck, not to mention calves, or to get someone hurt.

It feels fantastic to finally have the last of the calves in the weaning pen. We’ve been gathering and weaning on other parts of the ranch since the second week in May. Tomorrow these calves get processed and bad eyes doctored. Next Tuesday the steers head to town. Whoopie-ti-yi-yay!

 

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RECKONING

Posted on June 23, 2019 by | 7 comments

 

 

I would have flown had I known where
the rainbow ended, slogging knee-deep
down a vineyard row before kindergarten—
I believed everything my father said.

Pulling sound and intension from empty
pages, painting pleasure, an additive curse:
over granite scree to the Kern River canyon,
the roar beyond the beaver ponds reflecting

white clouds on blue islands between sugar
pines quivering from the nose of a rainbow trout
spreads across my flesh, opens a lifetime up
to great escapes that conserved my sanity.

 

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