Sunday morning’s horoscope suggests why not write some poetry planets aligned for me to be feeling especially inspired or artistic and I try, despite the broken tooth too short to extract with vice grips, crumbling, throbbing with coffee.
Devastation at the distant feral cat’s food down at the shop, a raccoon, I suspect, stuck in the small door cut in its thirty-gallon cover. I envision the coon panicked, flipping over— kibble scattered like gravel, empty dishes upside down, secret humor as I reclaim the mess.
And the weeds we sprayed yesterday from the welcome rains that washed-out all the fences across the creek between neighbors, their cattle headed south, tentatively exploring our empty pasture across from the house.
Dark shadows shrink upon the green, a picturesque pre-spring day in-the-making. I sip cold coffee and wait.
It’s swirling now around the planet bumping the coasts of continents with the miracle of rain sustaining earth and flesh by the design of details yet to be noticed and digitized
when Dad would watch neighbor’s windmill for confirmation, three days out of the southwest, or by his journaled cycles see seventy percent success. Instead of signs, we await the forecast and cuss the weatherman when wrong.
Lots of commentary on the cattle business lately with a focus on the price of beef. But relative to inflation, $20 will buy a cheeseburger, fries and a soda or a USDA Choice New York steak at Costco. What a deal!
Our 4-year drought (2012-2016) doesn’t seem that long ago when we had to cull some older bred cows for slaughter in order to feed the rest of our herd expensive hay. A good part of the reason why producing cow numbers are at a 75 year low. Though the media has its red meat theories, nobody mentions that the US population has more than doubled since 1951. This is simple to understand: supply and demand.
KEEPING SECRETS
How do they know, these old fat cows that read a baggy sadness in my walk among them checking irons as they pull
alfalfa stems apart to tongue green leaf in the corral? The gates are set, waiting for the truck to town. There is nothing
right about the moment, that they know— little consolation in my voice, they eye me suspiciously searching for details
in my muted gestures. If I told them all I know of town, of auction rings and rails, they would all revolt
for the brushy hills, lay fences down to take their chances without water through the summer—that I know.
-JCD (“Best of the Dry Years, 2012-2016”)
The three variables for the cattle business are weather, price and politics, any one which can reduce our once-a-year paycheck to a loss, but two or more can be an economic disaster—none of which have we, nor the government, any control over.
In the photo above, Robbin and I fed a few replacement heifers before the forecast Atmospheric River. The grass geminated last month has become short and spotty and we have to keep them in shape to cycle and breed when we turn the bulls out in two weeks—just part of the business.
drycrikjournal 