My five mile long pinball machine
I would like all of you that are reading this blog to now visualize that you are no longer looking at your cell phone screen but your standing with legs spread slightly and ready to put a nickel in the coin slot of a 1950s or 1960s Pinball Machine. Nickel is in and the machine comes alive with lights on and a bell rings and up pops a shiny one inch chrome plated ball in the lower right hand corner of the playing field. I pull back the plunger and release it. It sends the chrome ball to the other end of the playing board and because the board has about a 5% tilt up that’s when gravity grabs the shiny ball and sends it back to me. The trip back won’t be easy for the shiny ball as there will be round shaped pillars that can send the ball back in different directions. Just when the ball is about ready to exit through the game over hole I put my right and left index fingers on the flippers, one mounted on each side of the pinball machine, then with the touch of the flipper send the ball careening back up the board. Only to then have gravity once again catch and send it back down through the maze of obstacles causing some meandering along the way. But gravity always wins, forcing the shiny ball to leave through the game over hole then head downstream leaving a big path of destruction or a little path or possibly a regenerative path which is the trail I wish to follow.
As you can imagine, a shiny ball is but a drop of rain and all those round shaped pillars are trees, brush, and other obstacles that will slow the velocity of the water thus robbing it of its destructive power. My job then will be to change the dynamics of the creek to encourage the healing of bank erosion, by giving young trees and water grasses a better chance to get started. The problems of today got their start with the arrival of the Homesteader’s in the 1860s and 70s that’s when too much impact on the land caused the health of the Little Cholame Creek to subside. I’m not sure but I believe that I’m the first landowner to make a conscious choice to make things better for all parts of the ranch.
I believe when managing a ranch such as the V6 that is mountainous and there is only grass harvested by cattle and a 100 acre Pistachio orchard that must be irrigated in the summer months, timing is the most important practice that I have control over. So where should my cattle be when it’s raining? I have two criteria for our Central California location which is quite different then all the land that lies east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We have but only a few perennial grasses so I depend on my annual Mediterranean grasses to feed my stocker cattle from late October to the following June. I have learned the hard way that I should not put as many stocker steers I can crowd onto the land, always hoping for that really good year when the ranch can carry an excess amount. The reality is that we have more dry years than wet ones. So what I base my numbers on is the number of pounds per acre that the V6 land can carry and not overgraze. I start my grazing season in late October then vary my numbers as the season progresses many times adding light weight steers in March that will stay for perhaps 15 months. My second criteria is to keep my cattle away from the Little Cholame Creek from June to October and away from pastures that are prone to pugging in winter until the middle of March when the grass is good enough to support their weight. Last but not least is my unfair advantage that gives me a wonderful family that now numbers from 2 years to 88 years that’s me, which total 19. This number presently is scattered from Texas to Montana to California to the V6 where over the years, I hope will migrate back to the V6 and then we will reinvent ourselves and there will be a vigorous Little Cholame Creek and plenty of room for all to make a living and loving life.
See Ya,
Jack