The weeks take wing and flutter
like coveys of quail to safety,
seasons spin into one another
as the dawn rides up and down,
north and south, upon the ridgeline,
never resting in the same place twice
no matter the year—this moment
unique. And these old eyes
still sharp at a distance, see more
than they used to—know the details
to look for. I am learning how
to talk with my eyes, conversations
accompanied with words:
reverberating murmurs in my chest
from a gentle land we understand.
Outside, the Maytag
wringer-washer chugged with diapers
to be hung on a rope line
from cedar to pine.
Inside, you could see out
through bat and board cracks
after the war and Relocation Camps
your family had come from,
you but a child holding my hand
afraid to let go
when the buzzing began
coiled on a rock.
You ran as fast as you could drag me
down a trail you don’t quite remember
sixty-five years later.
* * *
Robbin and I had the pleasure of coffee Sunday morning with Evelynne Watanabe Matsumoto and family. Evelynne babysat my sister and I, and initiated contact from Southern California a couple of years ago. Her letters have been delightful rememberances of her time in Exeter before heading off to UCLA to become a teacher, marry and raise a family. She told me that the $250 she saved from babysitting paid two years tuition in those days.
Matthew Ormseth Photo
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Evelynne Watanabe Matsumoto, local history, photography, poetry
Temperatures have eased off in the past few days, mornings in the low 60s, allowing our cattle a little more time to graze. The replacement heifers were undeterred by the Kubota or my presence this morning while the pump was filling their stockwater tank, intent on breakfast before heading to shade.
Though the highs have been just over 100 here, a good part of the day feels like fall, though we know summer is a long ways from being over, but a welcome relief from the highs of 113 at the end of July. Forecasts for the next ten days appear to be relatively mild, more of the same.
It could be anytime past
that you brought back
and left to us
incubating hundreds
of turkey eggs,
illegally eliminating
as many predators
to keep a few alive
to become ‘street smart—’
at home in the wild.
You made the rules
you lived by
surviving yet beyond
your fences, ever
since you’ve been gone.
for Gary Davis
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged photography, poetry, wild turkeys
Even the oaks that are still alive are pruning themselves. This Valley Oak lost its top Saturday night into the Holdbrooks’ driveway, either side of their electric gate, missing the solar panel and keypad pedestal. As a direct result of the four-year drought, trees and limbs of trees are falling on fences and into access roads everywhere. We’ll be packing chainsaws as we go.
The sun is bearing down upon your shade,
wearing brown the skin of crops you’ve made,
ain’t the way they say a man gets paid
farming from Washington D.C.
The sky is white on the other side of dust,
the tractor’s paint has given into rust,
you pray much less than you have cussed
farming from Washington D.C.
You believe in rain before your God
to fill the furrows cut deep into your sod—
old flesh follows seasons—on you plod
farming from Washington D.C.
The song you hear rattles in your head,
in the movies played when you fall to bed:
who will feed the town when you are dead
farming from Washington D.C.?
With temperatures breaking into the teens, most all of us have routines that begin early. The Canadian Geese above have been spending the night on the irrigation pond, more nervous than most honkers that visit us from northern golf courses. They take flight with an urgent, splashing and flapping commotion at their first sight of us, raining feathers across the pond.
We have moved the second bunch of our first-calf heifers to the pasture across the creek across from the house, due to calve in 45 days. It will be their home until next May when we wean and ship their Wagyu calves. They are just getting acquainted with their new pasture of dry feed and developing their grazing routines that also begin early, but in the sycamore shade by 9:00 a.m. until they graze out at dusk.
Our new replacement heifers, now weaned for 60-75 days, are utilizing part of the irrigated pasture, with a pasture in between them and our bulls that we trust will act as a buffer zone, as they await the Wagyu bulls coming in December. These heifers graze out into dry feed in the evening, spend the night and graze back to the irrigated green by 7:00 a.m. before leaving for shade around 8:30 in the morning.
Our routine includes feeding these replacement heifers, currently once a week at a rate of 18 lbs. of good alfalfa to supplement our ample dry grass. We spoil them, actually, with 21% protein licks available plus dry mineral and salt. We will gradually increase the amount of hay we feed hoping to get the girls in shape and cycling before the Wagyu bulls arrive.
Our morning routine is centered around irrigating and pumping stockwater for the replacement heifers who have chosen to drink well water this year rather than drink from the irrigation pond filled from Lake Kaweah, more water than our solar pump can provide alone. It takes about 45 minutes for the 2 hp submersible pump driven by a gas generator to replace the 2,500-3,000 gallons each day. In that 45 minutes we check the bulls and fences and go through the replacement heifers to be sure the neighbor’s Corriente bulls haven’t caught wind of the girls and upset our breeding program.
Robbin is out early in the garden, checking her irrigation lines that are timed to run at night, augmenting where need be, then tending and picking fruit and vegetables before nine—currently the Elberta peach tree, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, and squash. With a great tomato crop this year for a change, she’s made both green and red salsa as well as dill and bread and butter pickles from her striped Armenian cucumbers. Our garden is producing more than we need, giving us the opportunity to share and swap vegetables with our friends and neighbors.
By noon we’re normally done with outside activities, 102 at eleven this morning.
October 29, 2015
There is much to envy
cows content with fate,
grass at their feet, shade,
water, friends close—
no one preaches more
nor promises relief.
They’ve left irrigated
green for dry ground,
tall, brittle stems
fold beneath bellies
growing with calves
for the first time.
Under sycamores,
112° churns,
burns on a breeze
out of the south,
too hot to find
the open gates
to their new home
as mothers nursing
new life, new love,
devotion on the fight.
There is a place they go
if need be: head low,
blood in their eye,
red swirls in brown
pulsing towards crimson.
They will learn
to bellow and bawl,
shake and salivate
and come to the call
of others, like family,
within 45 days, well
before the vote
and victory dances
beyond this world.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged first-calf heifers, photography, poetry
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