It’s chilly in the morning (40s), foggy in the Valley after the 1.81” we received from the tail of the Bomb Cyclone earlier this week. Normally, the ridge between Dry Creek and Antelope Valley keeps the fog out, allowing more sunshine for our fresh cotyledons. What a beautiful day, the sycamores are turning as winter knocks on the door.
We’ve been feeding lots of alfalfa trying to keep the cows with calves and replacement heifers in shape enough to cycle before breeding. We’re in the process of getting the bulls out now. With no forecast rains, we’ll begin branding soon.
After a brutal summer, we are enjoying a major change in temperature: a high of 87 yesterday and 55 this morning as storms hit the northwest and Canada.
As I’ve posted before, my father’s model for predicting the weather was based on a 30-day cycle beginning with noticeable changes in the month of August. If these changes were confirmed in September, he would count on rain on those days in October and/or November. My brother and I still rely to some degree on his model, but with the volatility of the weather in recent years, it’s anyone’s guess.
We’ve begun feeding as we wait for our first calves to arrive. We’ve moved our calving date back two weeks, from the first to the fifteenth, in response to the trend of high temperatures in early September. Not only is the heat hard on calving cows, but often there’s always a couple of first-calf heifers that leave their newborns in a hundred degree sun.
September also brings the catalogs for bull sales in California that offer a wide array of Genomic Enhanced Expected Progeny Data as well as links to videos of the bulls. I still rely on my eye, but it’s a far cry from the old days when I was starting out.
As the days get shorter, we still expect the temperatures to return to the century mark, but for the moment it’s delightful.
Only one day since the Solstice has the temperature been below 100 degrees, 54 days with a high over 116. Tough on man and beast. With a slight weather change, yesterday was 99. We’ve been rising early to feed the bulls and heifers and try to be done with our chores before 11:00 a.m.
Despite the advance of new scientific instruments utilized for weather modeling, this year’s Atmospheric River phenomenon for Central California hasn’t followed predictions. However, we have enjoyed beautiful weather and average rainfall standing currently at 10 inches with March and April yet to go. Last summer seemed cooler, fall and winter warmer with yesterday’s high reaching 71 degrees.
Robbin snapped this photo about the time the deluge was forecast to arrive yesterday evening, but it didn’t start raining until 3:00 this morning. I love the rainy days, almost always smug when the experts are wrong.
drycrikjournal 