farming & ranching

The cows called all night. The storm was peaking over Boulder mountain, the rain slow and light. Four little boys slept in the cab of the semi. They were gone in the morning, presumably up the mountain with their folks to look for stray cattle. They drove the cows down the highway at dusk, not guessing it would be that late, hoping for little traffic. Cow shit piles dot the road, their hooves clomp clomp clomping. I couldn’t tell if it was their feet or dinner about to boil over, with the way the wind blew. The dog gave some pitiful barks, mostly to talk me into letting him inside, where he’d rather put up with the baby pulling his hair than suffer through the beginning of the storm.

My husband was late for dinner. It was dark now, the daylight disappearing dramatically more every day. I eyed the sky, the baby whined. I wrapped her up and got ready to go looking for him. Afraid maybe he fell off the tractor, or twisted an ankle loading the hay up. He was hauling hay by himself from the lower fields. Hunting season is full on though, and I didn’t know where the neighbors were posted up.

A friend of mine lost an uncle. He fell off the tractor, or the tractor rolled on him, or he had a heart attack. Something that kept him out all day, till his wife found him dead. She was a good woman. Stern, but really warmed to a good joke. She always served us cakes when we called in on her, but that is the way with the Swedes. I think of her a lot when I’m alone out here, waiting for my husband to come home.

He returned as we walked out the door.

This morning there were 18 sheep. We counted and recounted them. Eighteen. Staring at us and huddled close. There slight defensiveness I took for our own presence, though they seemed more spooked by us then normal. My husband set off along the fence line, I drove to the bottom gate to check the fences there, searching for the nineteenth. We did not find a tangled strangled sheep. With baby on back, I hiked up and he went down to the lowland swampy area. Thinking we’d find one of the old girls, probably laying dead from a heart attack. Twenty steps up a bright shiny red stuck out low on the black rocks. The ewe’s body blended with the tones and shadows of the rocks. Her stomach was swollen, dark colored organs and the bright red of her insides bubbled up. Another cavity clawed out under her arm. Her neck crooked back, unnatural like.

Whether it was coyotes scrounging on an already dead ewe from bloat or a cougar, we weren’t sure. My father-in-law came over to scour the ground with us. We looked together. He knew immediately as we had suspected that it was cougar, from the wound on the neck. A young cat. Grabbed her while she was bedded down. Bit into her neck, clawing with its hind legs at her body, puncturing her gut and under her arm by the heart. Must of been a young cat, scared off by our dog’s barking, not knowing enough to drag its dinner away with it. To hide the ewe till it could come back later and feast.

The magpie called from the tree. Speaking to my father-in-law. We stood listening. It spoke for a while. The baby babbled on my back. Of all my walks along these trails, it was the first magpie to come forth and not shy away at my approach. There was nothing else to do, but begin digging the hole for the ewe. My husband set off to finish the winter coral, a necessity now that the cougars had found us.

It is the middle of October. I walk barefoot across the grass. My mother-in-law has promised a wicked El Niño winter storm so horrible- so horrible indeed- that we will certainly freeze to death in our camper. The snow will come in unending waves off the mountain, piling high against our door. It would seem she is trying to frighten me into action. When in fact she is scared. She is scared we won’t find a home for the winter. She is scared of how we live- we live the way we want to. We live with faith that what we need will be provided. To a great extent this is true, but in her mind our success has been the exception to the ultimate disaster that is always ready to fall down upon our heads. The aspen are yellow and orange, creeping every day down the mountain, tip toeing between the dark green juniper and pinion.

Ole Mamma sheepa died under the apple tree in the orchard, the one with the tree house in it. Her lamb and her adopted lamb sat with her all day. They called for her in the morning, after she was buried.

We tied a bell on her collar about a month ago. She wandered away from the herd, trailing her two lambs behind. Pacing and pacing a senile path over the food. She rounded the pond continuously, not remembering where she’d been, not sure where she was going. We found her one afternoon home in the yard. Her real lamb had escaped with her. Her cud was a gooey mess on her lips. Her hip bones jutted out, her body concave. She could hardly take solids anymore.

The rest of the herd stayed below in pasture, including her adopted lamb who kept looking for her. The adopted lamb’s birth mother had suffered prolapse severely early in the season. We kept her alive as long as we could- but that is a sad tale for another day. Ole Mamma took that lamb under her wing, mothering it, comforting it, bedding down with it at night. Her mothering was strong, for her own and for lambs lost in the herd. She adopted a lamb and nursed it with her own the season before.

We locked her and her birth lamb in the hay storage. She could eat all day if she wanted, but she paced and paced, nervous, her bell ringing all day long. Enough to drive me mad. She was a good ole sheep. I was relieved it didn’t come to shooting her.

We waited for an hour for the buyer to show up. The four goats already loaded in the trailer. They called for their mamas for a little while and gave up calling when we gave them their food. We penned the wether lambs up the day before so they’d be easy to catch. There is nothing to do to prepare them for this permanent separation. We can not warn them, we have to trick them, distract them with some food, grab their back leg, drag them out and away from their herd, their mama, the life they’ve known.

The buyer came. She was a nice woman, with a nice husband and two daughters. They have a bunch of goats north of here. They keep them like we do, for milk, for meat, for the small profit at the end of season. Yes, they were also interested in our doelings for sale. We had about 9 more goats we had to cull out. After the negotiation we decided on seven goats, and off went Helen and her baby, Cookie Cutter’s little baby, Cookie Brown’s baby, and Plank.

Plank was born in Washington. It was a bad season, the corral was over crowded, the wetness persisted threatening hoof rot. The babies that spring all had worms and diarrhea. We nursed them all back to health, but they seemed permanently stunted. Plank was so named because when we loaded her in the trailer to go clear brush she was as tiny as a plank of wood you would lift over your head.

As her peers grew, she remained small, escaping from the corral every chance she got. She’d wander over to us unloading hay, or sitting by the fire. We’d hold her and cradle her. She was family.

I promised her a place in our herd forever last spring when we took her ailing mother to the butcher. Her mother, her protector, her ally. She was alone then in a herd where you have to defend your position in the pecking order. You have to bully for your food. She was small, tough, but not prone to fighting.

She loaded up last night without protest. She has loaded in trailers her whole life. She stood in the trailer without panic, looking around, wondering.

The mothers will call for their babies today. Scarlett will wonder where her son is. Cookie Brown will call for her daughter and her daughter’s daughter. In a few days they’ll settle down, readjust. Will they forget? Or just let it go? Do they remember this culling year after year?

I don’t walk out to the goat corral anymore, going in and playing with them like I used to. Petting them, feeding them, holding their babies. The goats that remain call up the goats we have gotten rid of, I think of Alphabet, Pippi, Earling, Peaches, the Monkeys, Plank. These goats’ sisters and mothers and grandmothers lay around the coral in their family groups. Smaller groups now. Much smaller.

There is a scene in Grapes of Wrath when an Okie family stops in at a rest area. They are about to cross the Mojave and need to fill their truck up with water. Their kids drink from the hose. The father asks the diner waitress if he can buy a loaf of bread. She doesn’t want to give it up, she can’t just be selling bread to everyone, they’d run out and wouldn’t have none for the customers’ sandwiches. Plus the bread truck won’t be back for a few more days. Her husband in the back yells at her to give it up. But the loaf is too expensive, he asks to buy half a loaf. She is more annoyed. Her husband tells her to sell the whole loaf for half cost. So she sells it to him with reluctance. The two boys come inside, and stare at the candy case not saying anything. He asks her how much the candy is, she says two for a penny. The father buys both boys a piece of candy, they thank them and leave. The waitress, her husband, and the truckers watch the family putter down the road to California. The truckers look at the waitress, that wasn’t penny candy, that was two cent a piece candy, they tell her. Shut up she says. When the truckers take off they leave her a big fat tip.

Like her, I struggle between myself and faith that there is enough for us all.

From the corral I hear the does whining. Trotting in circles, Jill runs from Elijah, Colleen from Curly, round and round. The other does lay in the sun away from the barn, they don’t lift their heads. It is a sick sound, a squeal, a cry, a sort of yelp that the does let out, these younger ones who don’t want to be mounted. Elijah gives chase, lowering his curled horns almost grabbing her back hooves. I turn away and down the lane. I can not help sympathizing with the does. I do not take their trotted circles for coyness, these girls really don’t want it. I wish we had a buck pen set up so the two ole bastards could stare at each other all day, pissing on themselves and each other. There is no smell like a buck in rut.

The baby is distracted by a bird, she does not notice the commotion. The dogs lay in the shade. Our neighbors plant young cottonwoods- slightly yellow with the fall- along the fence line. I am embarrassed they can hear the primal grunting and crying from the pen.

The water feud goes back 30 years to the previous land owner and the dead husband next door, it landed in our laps 7:30 on a Sunday morning with a call from the water master. It has to do with pressure and shares of water, auxiliary water systems, it has to do with some getting too much and some getting more, with large pastures fighting to stay green in the desert, cows stripping every last bit from the land, it has to do with what I think is right and what my neighbor insists is right. The water feud was long buried, both with the sale of the land and the death of the neighbor. But 30 years of water flowing against your will is something hard to get over, the ole lady next door jumping back into the fight.

She is really sweet, not a push over, she plays with the baby teaching her tricks, like sticking her hand in a water glass. She always sends me home with brownies or cookies pulled from her deep freezer. Usually she has a fire going, it is chilly here even in the summer and she likes to be comfortable. Her husband died before I ever landed here.

It’s not personal, I tell my husband. He is pulling hay from the field, hundreds and hundreds of bails by hand. Of course it’s personal. I want to defend my neighbor, the ole lady, her nephew, his wife. I don’t want to grimace when I see the water master, our friend, who left carrots and fresh tomatoes on our trailer steps. I don’t want to feel guilty that our partner is taking all the heat on this, himself a member of the Church, going every Sunday, seeing these people. What happened to the small community I was a part of?

My husband is right. It is personal. Water is personal out here. And though no one is starving, the cattle are still fat, and the overflow of our neighbor’s water seeps down to our fields, one day it might not be that way.

Carcass Creek feeds the valley. It used to freely wind through the valley catching cattle and sheep in its steep banks, devouring them, pioneers finding their livelihood drowned. Cottonwoods hugged its sides, deer, elk, coyote, mountain lion, all drank from it. Whose creek is this? Who owns the water, the underground springs, the snow that melts in the spring? The Grover Irrigation Company does. They divvy the shares of water – all taken now- to the residents of the valley. New residents threaten to drill deep wells to tap into underground water, to access what they are not allowed to buy into.

The creek ran free for centuries until now. On the upper side of it, up the mountain a ways, the wild roses, moss covered rocks, a spongy green oasis still exists. It rushes over rocks in the soothing tone water gets as it moves wild and untethered. Below it hits the head gates, is diverted to both sides of the valley.

From the top of the hill this morning I could see our pastures and our neighbors’ pastures, I could see the cows, the deer my dog chased from the field, jack rabbits running from my daughter’s sounds, ravens flying below me, their wings flapping loudly- sending wind across my ears. And from everywhere I could hear the swish swish swishing of irrigation heads spitting onto the fields.

A sprinkler is a bird, and the number of birds you can run depends on the shares you have. And you can’t buy more shares. They are already designated, a long time ago, before we were here. Newcomers beware, you can put up a house, but this valley is closed for ranching and farming.

A rich guy up the highway doesn’t worry about the non existence of new water shares. He can afford a deep down well drilled into the earth’s core, tapping the underground aquifer that feeds all of our wells. He uses it for several acres of pasture that will feed a few horses, that will look good and awe his guests. His property has the bright red barn and three car garage, you can’t miss it, when you head up the mountain. He is the last house before Dixie Forest. His bright green water hungry pastures stand in the middle of the pinions, pines, junipers, red rock cliffs that come natural to these parts.

But it’s nothing personal, he says. Land is for sale. Water shares are not. He is just making due with what he’s got. The ole lady next door relents at the pleading and persuading of her grown children. Her nephew waves hi and thanks us for our help with his loose calf earlier. We are not bad people. We are neighbors. We are all making due with what we can. Stretching the hay fields as long as they’ll last. Pasturing the cows a little too long in each field. All this tension and it hasn’t even been a dry year.