We’ve been busy returning our replacement heifers to the Wagyu bulls after we could ford the creek, 40 or so scattered over our neighbors with no watergaps between us. Moving some cows and calves away from the creek this morning before the first of three storms arrives to linger through Tuesday, about 3 more inches of rain predicted, but the the bulk of the storms are aimed at the wet and icy Northwest. Here we go again.
High cold wet fog after rain
puts a lid on summer’s cauldron
earth wet to rock, each crease
leaks rivulets into the canyon
to join a muddy creek.
Curiosity burns in his belly,
lone winter coyote edging closer
by different approaches
mid-day or night—
dogs hold him at bay
until he leaves the edge
of our territory.
Young downstream cowboys try
clay flat, pickup, gooseneck
just inside the gate, diggings
piled behind the drive wheels
as I pass by.
Twenty years ago
I’d have stopped to help
got stuck
and they learn nothing.
Two hours back from town
with a burn permit,
they’re hooking up
on muddy asphalt.
High cold wet fog after rain
creek too high to cross
I clear my desk, bag years
of paper files for proof
of our busyness
for the burn pile:
dry summer prunings
up in smoke
lost in fog.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2017, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, photography, poetry, weather, winter
Dry Creek is running over 500 cfs this morning @ 6:00 a.m., after over an inch of rain in the past two days, over 6” for the first half of January—10 consecutive days of measurable precipitation—it’s wet! Any plans to cross the creek to fix fences and sort cattle won’t happen today. Furthermore, the moisture is deep, a good thing, but the only vehicle we have to get to the fence work will be the Kubota and I’d prefer to wait until Dry Creek is running less than 100 cfs.
Oh, I know the stories when Earl McKee and his sorrel horse swam the channel to ride five miles to free cattle locked in his Greasy corrals; or Clarence Holdbrooks swimming his red horse to move cattle stranded on the other side of the creek fifty years ago. They are my heroes still. All we have at risk with our current cattle mix-up is that our replacement heifers are running with the neighbor’s steers, at a time of the month, unfortunately, when the majority will be cycling, yet not exposed to the Wagyu bulls. But no livestock is at risk.
According to the 10-day forecast, we have a 5-day window to dry out before the next series of storms begin on the 18th, then 5 more days projected to leave 2.5” of rain. But no one’s complaining, yet, no one’s hollered ‘uncle’.
Not unlike the drought, Robbin and I have been making contingency plans. It dawned on me last night that making a ranch work within all the variables of the weather requires some hands-on creativity—that the art of cattle ranching starts with thinking well-outside the box. C’est la vie!
Weekly Photo Challenge: ‘Ambience’
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photography, poetry, rain, weather, weekly-photo-challenge
Too wet for us to get off the road or cross the creek, but Kaweah Delta was back on Dry Creek cleaning the lower brush catchers this morning before the next storm starts about 4 p.m., forecast to bring 1.5 – 2” of rain through Thursday. Dry Creek: 236 cfs. Operator: Erik Avila.
No other love song, only
the comforting sound of fury
rumbling, rolling, churning
upstream like an old lover
returning to hold and stay
awhile with sycamores,
waist-deep, remembering
the boy with single-shot .410
reaching from the far bank
for dove in the top limbs
before the floods of ’67 & ’69
enveloped them, before
our high-water kisses in ’97
shared tears with rain—pure
ecstasy after so long dry.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2017
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photography, poetry, rain, weather
10:00 a.m., January 8, 2017: 629 cfs
Not quite the storm of the decade, Dry Creek peaked at 1,390 cfs early yesterday morning. As of this morning, accumulated rainfall since the first of the year on lower Dry Creek has been a little over 4 inches, with yet another storm forecast to bring about 1.5″ due midday tomorrow—all welcome.
The continual gray clouds and rain of late seems miraculous when contrasted with the bare hills and dust of the past four years that have been permanently imprinted in our minds as more normal than not. The drought changed our thought processes and how we operate the ranch. And despite the ample availability of water streaming in nearly every canyon, I have often caught myself still worrying about stockwater. It’s how we lived, day to day, for a long time.
It’s good to see the creek running, the literal lifeblood of the canyon, a psychological lift as we inhale the moist air and relax a little before addressing the work that waits ahead of us. We have calves to brand and watergaps to fix as soon as we can physically get to them, when the roads dry out and creek goes down, which probably won’t be until next week if tomorrow’s storm materializes.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, photography, rain, water, weather
courtesy: http://www.pic2fly.com
Bred to be resilient, this earth
and all its faces, from stern to joyful,
offer sustenance to each of us
unequally. We find our place
eventually incorporated
into the fertile mulch of mankind
always ready for a storm.
Close to the ground, we trust
upon the old-time gods
to herd the winds our way
with young deities-in-training
to gather the renegades, black
clouds refusing to settle
against the Sierra’s jagged grin
to feed our rivers, creeks and streams—
myths more cryptic and credible
than today’s gadgetry designed to be
tomorrow’s useless obsolescence, yet
with the all the right apps
we can give-up on dreaming,
even believing in ourselves.
It’s habitual, looking to the mountains for our future, the Kaweah Peaks over Remy Gap in the southern Sierra Nevada above, not completely dressed in snow from the last storm on December 16th— another forecast for the 23rd. Ideally, the snow is laid in while it’s cold enough to freeze before mid-January, then slow melt to feed our rivers and replenish the groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley, once the most productive agricultural region in the world, or so I was told in college.
Much has changed since the 60s when Visalia was a town of 16,000. Now a city populated by 124,000 people drawing on groundwater resources year-round. The growth of Valley towns has also displaced some of our best agricultural ground in a short span of fifty years. The implementation of flood control structures on nearly every river on the west slope of the Sierras since, regulating surface water flows, have also had a severe impact to groundwater levels in the Valley. Add the wild cards of drought and more deep wells, less low snow as the climate changes, ours is not a hand to bet on long.
Well-meaning, but onerous, water legislation will not create more water. Nor will the monies set aside to build more dams, especially since we haven’t filled the ones we have in years. But for us, and most foothill livestock producers, we look to the Sierra snowpack this time of year for our future summer stockwater, the small leaks in granite cracks that feed our springs providing water for cattle and wildlife.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Great Western Divide, photography, water, weather, wildlife
1.
Other worlds beyond,
beneath the canopies
of the woods gone wild
to shed their leaves,
naked near the Solstice,
unending limbs entwined
unseen unless I move
outside my cluttered mind—
ignored and warmed
by the murmured songs
of smaller gods
I sense when I am gone.
2.
It is a mistake, you know,
to map your favorite fishing hole—
to let trout leap from photograph
to fire in the company
of hungry strangers. Best
leave your luck to the mystic
and the magic of cryptic poetry
felt before it’s understood.
3.
I imagine a narrow wild rag,
your gift of Raijin thunder
and lightening coming—
an angry Japanese print
I might wear anywhere
outside to get attention
from stormy weather,
for the bladder full of water
slung over his shoulders
we might all profit by.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016
Tagged Japanese myths, photography, poetry, rain, water, weather
No wet redwood reflection, I look past black morning,
scan the radar for a chance the last forecast stalled
before it got away to who-cares-where into the future
on the other side of the Sierras, then search for stars beyond
the gray for an out-of-habit game plan between rains:
soft warm earth too wet to work too far from home.
Forty years ago I slowed, took the Fowler exit off
Highway 99 for Madam Sophia’s neon sign of things
to come my way from the landscape of my palm:
low range of callouses spilling into the deep canyon
of my heart—she read both hands and lit a candle,
saw lots of water in my future and I was glad.
Dawn is gray above the green and last year’s bleached
dry feed, chorus line of sycamores undress white limbs,
show flesh between their rosy leaves to tease a good
hard rain to bring the creek to sweep its cobbled bed
of four-years’ deadfall in a rush to wipe out water gaps:
fixing fences into a future that’s not quite guaranteed.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged Dry Creek, fences, Madam Sophia, photography, poetry, rain, water, weather
drycrikjournal 