Tag Archives: rain

Surprise Feeding

Posted on November 5, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

It’s a waiting game now for our bare hills to take on a shade of green as the first cotyledons of our grass seed break the crust left after Friday and Saturday’s remarkable rain. It’s not typical to begin our rainy season with 1.76” on Dry Creek, or 2.62” in Greasy Creek. Usually, we hope to get a half-inch to start the grass, but more often than not fail after our first storm event.

Everybody’s hungry and there’s really not much to eat, actually less immediately after a rain, other than what we are feeding our cows. With some calves two months old and growing, demanding more from their mothers, it’s starting to show on the cows, less fleshy now than a month ago. We’ve been increasing the amount we’re feeding right along trying to keep everyone in shape, hoping that when the grass comes that the calves will keep right on growing, and that our cows will be in good enough shape to cycle and breed back when we put the bulls out next month.

All very subjective. Working around slick roads elsewhere, we fed the girls above a day early yesterday as we drug our road up into Greasy Creek to fill in some of the gullies and ruts accumulated after the past two years of not enough moisture to effectively smooth them out. And good that we brought a little extra hay, as the calves were as glad to see us as the cows.

POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

Posted on November 4, 2014 by John | 4 comments

Now soft in places, red clay slick
feeding cows in the brown
bare flats beneath naked hills

loose piles of last year’s alfalfa,
each dry flake spaced to fall
into small green haystacks

where cows camp in an undulating
line within a cloudy chill
until this promise of grass

changes the color of everything
we have known for too long.
Looking down, plodding still,

eyes occupied with searching for
the first cotyledons to break free
from the crust, glad hands open

to the elements believing in more
good rains. Vote for those who know
growth without water won’t work.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged cows, Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, politics, rain, water, weather

FOREVER WORN

Posted on November 3, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

Dark brown and naked after rain,
these hills have held together
despite their deep dust and our fears

after years of drought. Impossibly,
we even see a tinge of green
before the clouds clear the ridges.

Come alive and breathing, ready
to raise lush leaf and grass, they will
never be the same again in our eyes!

Nor we, forever worn by lack of moisture
on this earth and all across our minds—
growing closer and more grateful.

AWAKENING

Posted on November 2, 2014 by John | 8 comments

Day and night comes much the same
as an evening of time—not ticked,
but slurred one word into the next

like a soloist might his octaves
into prolonged song. Soft and low
at first, a rumbling from a dusty

cave of lungs, a subtle clearing
of the passageways for all things
since the common miracle of rain.

Well-short of whole, she learns
to breathe again, her heartbeat sure
awakens color deep within her flesh

for the moment, and then the next
until she’s fit for more natural activities,
more normal rules for mortals to abide

in her simple service and generosity.
It’s an old tune we have forgotten,
a harkening of high notes for sopranos

and baritones to blaze before us
as she awakens. Dark or light, her each
new breath is ours come back to life.

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014

Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, rain, water, weather, wildlife

RECIPE FOR SOUP

Posted on November 1, 2014 by John | 10 comments

We’ve been getting ready for a week—
cleaned the gutters and the woodstove,
stacked and corded oak and Manzanita,

brazed a soup bone with plenty meat
and vegetables, just in case the neighbors
drop by to watch it rain—some more.

Inch and a half overnight, we take
and release a deep, moist breath.
For all ingredients, just add water.

10 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calves, cows, Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, Vegetable Soup, water

LEARNING TO LIVE IN TREES

Posted on October 28, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

                                When god visits us he sleeps
                                without a clock in empty bird nests.
                                      – Jim Harrison (“The Little Appearances of God”)

We give ourselves away
perhaps too generously
in poetry, leave bare

the tree, its cankered burls
we’ve grown to live with
season after shorter season

shedding pages
to a southwest wind
before the storm

leaves us clean
once more to dream
the winter long

of green—yearning for
pastoral perfection
between each heartbeat

of littered pages—
we give ourselves away
to open space, to all

the new and wild beginnings
we’ve yet to see
until we learn to live in trees.

“I Wish It Would Rain”

Posted on October 27, 2014 by John | 4 comments

The trailing end of a storm front that brought heavy rains to the Pacific Northwest lingered along our Sierra Nevada foothills all of yesterday, keeping temperatures in the mid-70s beneath dry, but fairly constant, cloud cover. The below-60° chill lasted well into the morning, a winter feel that made us want a fire. A near-perfect day as Robbin was playing and singing a Nanci Griffeth song in the other room while I was at my desk.

Humor us:

With the weather change, testosterone levels down at the bull pen (Go Giants!) have elevated a notch leaving me substantial fence to fix after they ostracized a young bull into our buffer zone between the cows and calves. Though he was the loser, he had found his way to the cows nevertheless, 30 days early — leaving a another job for today after we finish feeding.

The Internet weather prognosticators are still holding to fair chance of a 1/2-inch rain for Halloween:

Forecast

Until then, we wish it would rain.