Tag Archives: Turkey Mullein

Feeding

As is apparent in the photo, native feed is all but gone, but on the hillsides, accessible and a little taller.  Here in the flats where most of the cows will choose to have a calf, only Turkey Mullein or Dove Weed that cattle will not eat.

Most of these cows are close to calving.  Fed alfalfa hay strung-out like this, they are easier for Robbin and I to check in the Kubota and to pair-up newborns with their mothers.  Too early really for a rain, though 3 hurricanes in the Pacific, most grass started now would probably die unless followed by more moisture.  We’re rooting for a rain nonetheless.

CHIPPAWAS

 

The acrid smell of battle

in the disturbed ground:

Turkey Mullein vs. Vinegarweed

 

claiming more territory

to choke out grasses—

that knee-high cling and tell

 

where you’ve been

and your approach to life.

After a good wet spring,

 

I smell my father here,

twenty-five years

after his departure

 

and remember

his lace-up Chippawas

busting clods behind a plow.

 

 

YERBE DEL PESCADO

 

 

Had we fish to stupefy
with turkey mullein seeds
the late rains have left

in turquoise waves
above the knees—
we could be native.

Instead we feed
the squirrels beneath
these fuzzy canopies

where shotgun hunters
will wait for mourning dove
to light and leave.

 

 

Croton setigerus: a native of the western United States, and found commonly from southern California north to Washington, particularly in the more arid locations away from the coast.

I don’t ever remember Turkey Mullein, or Dove Weed, so tall and thick and claiming such large tracts of dry summer pasture, or its color quite so blue—worth journaling, I think.