The Field of Cultivation

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OM AH HUM ON THE RANGE

Richard Denner

Photography: Howard Rigley


 

 

 

Richard and Cheri (Photo: Howard Rigley Copyright 2000)
  
Richard and Cheri

Om ky yi yippi, can a beatnik be a cowboy? and how. "Cattlecountry, Love It Or Leave It!" 800 acres with a section under irrigation. 300 head of cows with calves rotating over four fields. Cheri and Theo and I pack our household and head for the prairie. We are accomodated in a two-story Tudor style stucco house with a view of Mount Rainier's sunrise side. The boss just bought 10 head of Hereford cows with a duke's mix of calves.

The squeeze shute is disfunctional, so we rope and wrestle the calves for branding. Diamond Hanging J Floating I. I pick out a green-broke part quarterhorse, part thoroughbred mare, who twists like a snake in hot water. She picks up cow savy pronto.

The land is irrigated from canals built during the 1930's Land Reclaimation Project. Water flows out of Lake Keechelus in the Cascades Mountains near Snoqualamie Pass. The head ditch circles the Kittitas Valley and supplies small, single family ranches. A hundred head of cows, a crop of timothy hay or silage corn, fancy horses, beet farms and vineyards. This is the old Ingersol Ranch at the far end of 4th Parallel Road in Badger Pocket.

House (Photo: Howard Rigley Copyright 2000)
  
House

It is laid out with four forty-acre fenced fields under irrigation and 600 acres east of the ditch - rangeland, greasewood, rattlesnakes, coyotes, chuckers and badgers. Never hem in a badger. I remember, during the Watergate Era, Nixon said, "I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." This is as clear as it gets.

Setting water here is a different matter. The water district allocates a certain amount to each ranch based on senority, need, and the supply in the reservoir. A ditch rider drives the road to check that the flow is set at the right mark. Woe to him who rustles a little water, he'll find a padlock on his watergate.

So I push my water. I keep the cowpies out of the corrigation. I spread it out. Run it up hill if I can. Get the ground soaked without letting it run into the neighbor's field. There's an art to this. My neighbor, Glen, gives me pointers. We walk the pastures, and he points out difficult features in the lay of the land. There's always fine tuning can be done, but mainly it's a matter of covering the ground, getting the ground wet, and moving the water to the next parcel. And the cattle eat the grass, and by the time they are finished in one field, hopefully the next field is ready for them.

Winter (Photo: Howard Rigley Copyright 2000)
  
Winter

After the herd has been rounded up and brought in from the outback, they are deliced, tagged, dehorned, given shots, a shave and a shine. Then they are ready for the green pastures. The Taittiriya Upanishad sustains me: "I am that food which eats the eater of food." Count the stock. And again. Still one heffer missing.

Down by the west fence line, four legs stick out of a catch ditch. Eyes rolled back, nose bleeding, my presence adding to her fear. I dismount, tie my horse to a cottonwood branch and check out the situation. More than I'd want to rope and tie, I wrestle her to her feet. Moaning, she makes for the feed. She'll be alright, if she can walk and eat. Later, I tell Glen, and he guesses I was some kind of lucky. I see a hide on his fence. Says he's lost one. No sooner born, it coughed up its guts. So, he goes down to the "graveyard" and buys a new calf, one whose mother has a blown udder. Dress the new calf in the dead calf's coat. Cow takes it for her own--calf graft. "This morning," he says, "I smelt something dead in the barn.  That skin rotting from the calf's heat."

Wagon (Photo: Howard Rigley Copyright 2000)
  
Wagon



DIAMOND HANGING J FLOATING I BLUES

I mend the fences.
I tend the herd.
The shit is ten feet deep
and the shitters play for keeps.
What are you after, they ask
a hoof in the mouth?
The shit is ten feet deep
and I can't eat or sleep.
Coyotes yap all night
at the blown moon.

The shit is ten feet deep.
Shine on, shine on.
Hold it down, you buggers
or I'll rope your ass, I sing.
The shit is ten feet deep.
Hay has more than doubled in price.
There's no market for feeder steers.
The shit is ten feet deep
and clings like it's alive.

Pour on gas.
Set those doggies afire.
Give those cow a hotshot.
The shit is ten feet deep
and thick.
Chew your cud, mama
let those juices flow.

The shit is ten feet deep
and sometimes it hums.
The shit is ten feet deep
and here and there a head protrudes.
The Angus are black---
purgatorial beings.
The Herefords are red---
mythological monsters.
The Charolais are white---
easy to spot against the dung.

The shit is ten feet deep
and covers the fences.
The shit is eleven feet deep.
My shovel is hooked to coke.
The shit is beginning to climb
making inroads through the hills.
The shit is infinitely deep
and running still---running.

 

SNAPSHOTS

A sorrel gelding dreams, hind hoof cocked under an apple tree. Bright apples against the leaves. Unmoving and unmeaning, the scene's the same from field to field. Cows with necks to barbed wire reach for roadside weeds. A John Deere tractor lugs up the track. Met by an appaloosa with a girl in chaps, the ploughboy raises a finger to his cap. Eyes clouded, she smiles inwardly and trots past. A herd of Herefords steam and stamp. Chew their cuds and crap in place. Magpies pick the warm grain.

The poem Diamond Hanging J Floating I Blues was first published in dPress chapbook, Scorpion, Berkeley, 1975, and later anthologized in Pacific Northwest Spiritual Poetry, 1998, Tsunami.


Richard Denner is a Cowboy Beatnik Poet. He can be contacted by e-mail at:
rychard@sonic.net
 

info@physikgarden.com

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