Bueno perro

I just received my first copies of the about-to-be-released bilingual version of my Brave Dogs, Gentle Dogs: How They Guard Sheep book. This was my first children's book, and is still my favorite, because it's some of my favorite subject matter. The Spanish translation was done by Aida E. Marcuse, and the new edition is being released in both hard cover and paperback. This new edition was just honored as a Junior Library Guild selection and is featured in their monthly magazine.

Milton v. Dante, the Cage Match

Continuing the ecclesiastical theme begun by Cat, our shepard, I thought I'd share some thoughts on related readings.

I've been on a damnation kick lately (possibly spurred by a recent birthday) and have read in the last few weeks C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, all of Wayne Barlowe's fascinating infernal art and text, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno. I suppose I'll have to get around to the Holy Bible at some point.

Curious about my reading list, my sainted mother asked how I find Milton and Dante and how they compare. I sent her this brief review:

...I am not quite done with Inferno, but here's my sense of how these two poets differ.

The Dante is in translation, and evidently his many translators disagree on how various passages should be read, and whether the translation should be literal or in spirit (as interpreted by the translator.)

The guy who did my version (Mark Musa) wrote a lengthy introduction titled, "How to Be a Good Lover," in which he argued for a gentle but active approach to translation. He sees Dante as speaking to Everyman and interprets the poet's choice of words as colloquial, so translates them in kind. He tries to mirror Dante's puns but did not try to mirror his rhyme, which he sees in other translations as making for a tortured work that serves the wrong master. He frequently prints the original Italian lines in his page notes so that you can decide for yourself if the cognates make sense. Interestingly, there is a good bit of falconry referenced in this (Dante lived in the 1300s) and obviously he knew the sport; the translations of it are accurate and meaningful.*

All that said, I find Dante's poem a little too pedestrian, considering the subject matter. He seems to be using the work mostly as a vehicle to make his political statements and lampoon his contemporary rivals. I could be wrong (probably am considering the legs this poem has!) and even after Inferno I will have the epic's other two parts to read (Purgatorio, Paradiso) so will reserve judgment.

Milton, on the other hand, is glorious, top to bottom. I wept in a couple places where the meaning and the beauty of the words hit a harmonic note. Milton uses every device to get his message across: It reads on one level as an adventure story (I'm sure its original audience ate that up--sex and violence and all!). On other levels it makes painfully clear the wages of sin, and then counters its own arguments with plausible, thoroughly modern excuses for our worst behaviors. No one is set up as a straw man. There are no purely rhetorical figures, a fact that amazed me. Satan, whom Milton paints with incredible complexity and even pity, would be a high-paid talking head in today's media. Hell, maybe he is!

Milton's angels are brave and wise in ways that do not seem at all contrived. They seem inspired. Adam and Eve are drawn as complicated full-scale people, faulty in ways we instantly recognize and better in ways we should want to emulate. Eve, like Satan, is thoroughly complex; and while she gets her due, she goes down swinging and comes back up better off. Milton makes Adam do the best he can as a wide-eyed, somewhat naive man who truly loves his wife and his God but cannot do either of them full justice.

It's just great, start to finish...

* Interesting falconry references from the Dante: First, Emperor Fredrick II, that paragon of falconry lore and higher learning, is right now burning in Hell, according to our guide. In Canto X, we learn that Fredrick repents eternally for the sin of Epicureanism, the seeking of modest pleasures and worldly knowledge. Well, so much for that option!

In Canto XVII, Dante's narrator and his companion Virgil travel into a lower circle of Hell on the back of the monstrous, winged Geryon, who is none too happy about providing this service. Near the end of the flight, Geryon's annoyance becomes hard to conceal:

As the falcon on the wing for many hours,
having found no prey, and having seen no signal
(so that the falconer sighs: "Oh, he falls already"),

descends, worn out, circling a hundred times
(instead of swooping down), settling at some distance
from his master, perched in anger and disdain,

so Geryon brought us down to the bottom
at the foot of the jagged cliff, almost against it
and once he got our bodies off his back,

he shot off like a shaft shot from a bowstring.

Here and in the next passage (from Canto XXII) we see something remarkable about these falconry references that prove to me Dante not only knew falconry but expected his 14th century readers to know it as well: These two passages are descriptions not of glorious falconry but of mundane failures, "blown slips" we might call them today.

In this passage, two angry devils are in pursuit of a cheating government bureaucrat (evidently as common an occupation in the Middle Ages as today):

Little good it did, for wings could not outstrip
the flight of terror: down the sinner dived
and up the fiend was forced to strain his chest

like a falcon swooping down on a wild duck:
the duck dives quickly out of sight, the falcon
must fly back up dejected and defeated.

In the meantime, Calcabrina, furious
also took off, hoping the shade would make it,
so he could pick a fight with his companion.

And when he saw the grafter hit the pitch,
he turned his claws to grapple with his brother,
and they tangled in mid-air above the ditch;

but the other was a full-fledged hawk as well
and used his claws on him, and both of them
went plunging straight into the boiling pond.

I'd wager Dante spent many a day in the field with hawks and falcons. Or rather, I wouldn't risk to wager, lest there be eternal consequence!

The mark of the cross

There are plenty of legends and stories about what wonderful and loyal companions burros make – miners and shepherds of long ago talked to their beasts of burden and treated them like old friends, which they often became. I’m going to venture into new territory here and share a story about the cross mark on a burro’s back. I think of it often, especially when I see the sheep are peaceful, protected by their sweet burros. Our burros are mellow creatures, kind but brave.

Some say that the cross mark on a burro’s back is a sign of love from God. In the story of the Crucifixion, Jesus rode a burro to Jerusalem. The burro wanted to carry the heavy cross for Jesus, but was not allowed, so he followed Jesus to the hill of Calvary. His heart filled with sorrow, the burro was unable to bear to watch the horrible scene before him as Jesus was nailed to the cross. The burro turned his back, but stayed nearby Jesus on the cross, and heard Jesus pray for those who had harmed him. To reward the sweet beast, the shadow of Jesus on the cross fell across the burro’s back and remains there to this day, as a visible symbol of God’s love.

Evening in the pastures

Final check of the day today was beautiful, with stormy skies and a breeze. The sheep and their burros were down by the river, munching on greasewood and bluegrass. Never got a photo of the guard dogs, since they were getting fed at camp nearby.

On our way out of the pasture, flushed two red-tailed hawks from their nesting tree, drove by the female kestrel that hangs out on the fence, and saw a prairie falcon hanging out near where I saw a brood of young sage grouse having a dust bath yesterday.

When we pulled into our driveway, a couple of the rams were posing, and I couldn't resist. Handsome boys they are.

Bat quest

We have a maternal colony of little brown bats in the barn next to the New Fork River. There is an old stack of doors and plywood leaning against a partition, and the bats move into the spaces between the wood every summer to have their babies.


I call the photo above "The Four Amigos." Click on the photos to see the larger images.


Yesterday, I asked husband Jim to help me with a project when he got home from work, and he scowled at me, wondering what I was up to. I told him he could hold a beer in one hand, and all he had to do was hold a heatlamp up with the other hand so I could have more light. We went into the barn and with the red bulb in the heatlamp, the bats didn't seem too disturbed. I got about 30 photos in a couple of minutes, before we closed the doors and left them to the darkness.

We also caught a packrat watching us during the photo shoot, but I never got any good photos. The buggers are sure cute with their big ears, but mercy do they stink!

Turkey vultures

I know very little about turkey vultures, but am fascinated by them. Thirty years ago when I reported I had just seen two vultures in Sublette County, I was met with disbelief. Although still not common here, we do have a few turkey vultures in the summer these days. Our western migrants spend winters in Central or South America. Official maps of turkey vulture summer distribution indicate we still have only a few in this region of western Wyoming. They are wary of human presence and are easily disturbed here, but I know that isn’t the case in areas where they are more abundant.

Hawkwatch International reports that there are about 2 million turkey vultures in North America, which it estimates is 29 percent of the global population. Hawkwatch also reports populations of the Turkey Vulture have:
• increased substantially throughout northeastern North America in the last 30 years and expanded the species’ range northward; and
• increased since the early 1980s in western North America, but declined since the onset of regional drought in the late 1999s.

If you know something about this species, please share some comments. I shot these photos of two vultures yesterday on my way to an artist guild luncheon at Boulder Lake Lodge, in the foothills of the western slope of the Wind River Mountains.

Caption contest?

Okay, clever minds, submit your captions for this photo.

Beaverslide

My post of draft horses yesterday included a photo of what we call a beaverslide, which is this wooden contraption used to stack loose hay. Beaverslides dotted ranches throughout the West until the last few decades and its modernization/mechanization of hay harvest. Nowadays, most outfits use gas or diesel-powered balers, but there are still ranches that put up hay in loose stacks – they look like huge green loaves stacked in fields.

From what I’ve read, the beaverslide was actually patented in 1910 as the Sunny Slope Slide Stacker by two ranchers from the Big Hole region of Montana. The slides can stack hay 30 feet high – about 20 tons of feed.

Here’s how it works. On the Campbell Ranch of western Wyoming, first the hay is mowed with draft teams:

After the hay is raked, Walden drives the sweep (a modified tractor with a sweep attachment – this also used to be done with horses), to sweep up the cut hay:

Walden sweeps the hay onto the basket of the beaverslide:

In the old days, the horsepower supplied by a team of horses would run the series of belts or cables that move the basket of hay to the top of slide, allowing it to drop over the top into the stack. Today, this (slightly modified) pickup truck is hooked to the cables of the beaverslide. When Walden’s aunt puts the truck in reverse and slowly drives backwards, the basket rises.

When the basket reaches the top of the slide, the hay spills out into the stack. The men working atop the stack with pitchforks are called stackers and their job is to level the stack as hay is dropped in.

Once this stack is finished, the beaverslide can be skidded to another place in the hay meadow to create the next stack.

To feed the hay in the winter, a draft horse team pulling a sleigh is driven to the stack, where the hay is forked off the top of the stack onto the sleigh. The sleigh is then slowly driven across clean snow (a clean plate every day) and the hay is forked off in a feedline to nourish the livestock.

Mystery Hound

I would have said Taigan myself, as did about 90% of respondents, here and on email But she is an Afghan- poodle cross-- a rescue, but unaltered. After three hours with her I can see nothing about her that isn't oriental sighthound- temperament, gait, structure, voice, even smell. Fascinating! (Yes, Jess, she has the "Afghan "boing").

I imagine she will shed in spring if she develops a true winter coat, which she may not as she lives in Dallas. She is only 8 months old (Chris?) now so we will have to wait. I know the northernmost one of Ataika's pups, a male, develops almost this much coat on his legs in winter.

Apparently all 5 litter mates were similar in coat and disposition, but two were (brindled?) gray.

The couple who owns her thought she looked taigan but wanted us to see her--- they only knew about taigans from us (Chris knows tazis well, as he is a friend of son Jackson's (Peculiar), and has been around tazis since his teens).

We will probably feature reports on "Bisy" as she grows older. She is coming out to run with us in the fall.

Incidentally the one breeder of real old- style fierce Afghans we know said that a some Afghans (not hers) were bred to poodles to "improve" them (?!) in the fifties.

Working drafts

Bondurant, Wyoming, gets one heck of a lot of snow in the winter, but grows lush crops of native hay in creekside meadows in the summer. The Campbell Ranch at Bondurant is an old-time outfit, been there forever it seems, and still uses draft horse teams to cut hay in the summer and feeds the hay on horse-drawn sleighs to their cows in the winter. It makes sense for them, with fluctuating diesel prices, and tractors bogging down in snow, to simply continue on in a long-standing tradition. The Campbell men are good friends, gentlemen, and excellent horsemen. They do have tractors and trucks, but each tool has its place, and for the most part, if it can be done with a horse, that's their preference.

When it's time to start the hay harvest, things take a logical progression. First, the horses are run into the corral.


My friend Walden Campbell, 12, is the next generation starting to work the draft horses on the ranch. He enjoys the process of harnessing these gentle giants.


This is a portion of the Campbell outfit, with the Gros Ventre Mountains in the background.


The horses are lined up to begin the process of hooking onto the cutting equipment.


One of the summer hands cuts hay behind a team on the ranch. That's a beaverslide in the background, used to stack loose hay.


This is what a stack of loose hay looks like - a huge bread loaf. You can see the teams working to cut fresh hay in the meadow behind the stack.


While there aren't many ranches left in this area that use draft teams to harvest their hay crop, there are actually numerous outfits that use draft teams to feed the hay in the winter. Husband Jim has the harnesses for a team hanging in our shed, waiting for the right team to find us as well.

Amicus Brief by POMA

For those following the Professional Outdoor Media Association's effort to combat U.S. v. Stevens (details below).


SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT
18 U.S.C. § 48 is overbroad and therefore unconstitutional. By its plain terms, the statute sweeps broadly: it criminalizes images “where an animal is wounded or killed” even if the underlying conduct, as with lawful hunting and fishing, is legal where it occurred. Under the statute, outdoor photographers and journalists who engage in their livelihood do so at their peril. These members of the media capture images of hunting and fishing for publication in the many outdoor sports magazines and other materials that are widely distributed and read throughout the United States. Their otherwise lawful conduct falls squarely within the zone of conduct that the statute criminalizes.

MORE...

A Discourse in Schooners and Candles

Patrick Burns, our friend and reader, can make an argument worthy of a terrier. His mind is unrelenting, unafraid to dig and always pressing home. While you may get in a bite or two, you’ll soon find all your exits blocked and him waiting with a snare. If you’re lucky, he’ll let you go unharmed.

Happily, Patrick is one of the good guys. He’s a champion of working dogs and a no-joke sporting gentleman of the old school. He is also an expert in public policy and a general polymath. He is several different kinds of the real thing.

But as a regular reader of his Daily Dose, I know our opinions collide at odd angles; and given the large field of our agreement, this always takes me a little off guard.

One of Patrick’s recent posts hit a particularly tender spot, right between my Wendell and Berry, you could say. In this essay (read it here and some of our discussion in comments), Patrick pulls the rug from under Michael Pollan by placing the blame for modern industrial agriculture (see: Food, Inc.) in our own laps.

Rather than the result of bad government policy and Big Ag greed, America’s disaster diet of corn syrup and soy protein is our own fault: to wit, we choose poorly in the supermarket aisles, clearly preferring processed foods over whole, and so driving the demand for Cheez-its.

Thus, says Patrick, we have our current system of vast protein and sugar monocultures, grown with fossil fertilizer in diminishing topsoil and harvested by an army of migrant foreign workers. We support it willingly with our wallets. Conversely, the organic revolution has very thin grass roots.

“And you know what? It's not such a bad thing.

“So what if there is no longer ‘a season’ in America's supermarkets? Why is it such a bad thing that folks can get lemons, oranges, melons and mangoes in winter?

“And why don't we stop blaming America's farmers and supermarkets for the fact that so many of us are fat and stupid?

“Each of us controls what we buy for food, and what we put in our own mouth.

“It's time we stopped infantalizing ourselves and took responsibility for what we eat and how we look.

“The problem with the American diet is not in our fields, it's between our ears; the same place it has always been.”

The delicious malevolence of Patrick’s arguments is part of their appeal.

But while it’s always fun to blame fat, stupid, and irresponsible Americans for our collective woes, it leaves us rather vulnerable if in fact the case is more complicated than that.

Bad government policy and corporate greed are at least as guilty for the pitiful state of American agriculture as is our own thoughtless consumerism. Together these forces have turned a healthy, decentralized agricultural system, comprised of millions of independent small land-holders, into an unsustainable colossus of profit and tradable surplus benefiting a tiny minority and imperial interests.

But here’s the thing: Regardless whom you choose to blame, the threats of the current food system to national security (of which “food security” is only a part) and to democracy are equally serious. Whether driven by personal gluttony or industrial greed, we are a weaker nation for our dependence on fossil fuel farming and our vast, vulnerable monocultures. We are a less democratic one for our corporate monopolies and centralized policies, and their collusion in the global economy.

Given a greater facility with the relevant data, I believe I could twist a few small concessions from Patrick. But like many apologists for the status quo, Patrick’s unassailable trump is: We can’t go back to schooners and candles!

“Why do we need to go to 19th Century production? To support Wendell Berry's unsupportable romantic philosophy?”

“I love reading Wendell Berry, and I love his values, but as far as agricultural policy or economics, it is largely nonsense. Berry lives in Ketucky and works 125 acres with horses, and horses alone (no engines at all). Great. In my area, land is a million dollars an acre, and I don't have 125 million dollars. Even in rural Virginia, land is $3,000 to $10,000 an acre, so Berry's little farm would cost me somewhere between $375,000 and $1,240,000 for the land alone (no house). Berry is about 75 years old now. Question: who is going to hitch his horses when he is 80?

“…we no longer live in an era of schooners and candles, and the reason we had to get rid of the horses (and invent the car) was that we had no place to pasture them because there were too many humans in America and in the world. And guess what? We STILL don't have the room to pasture all those horses of Wendell Berry's.”

Patrick charts our course to the present as if it was inevitable and our path to the future as the product of continuing technological advances.

“…the good news here (and there is good news) is that we have TONS of energy (we always have had), in the form of solarpower, geo-cooling and heating power, tidal power, bio-gas fuels (ethanol and biodiesel), nuclear, stream and river power, wind power, coal, natural gas, methanol, methane hydrides, etc. There is no shortage of energy -- only a bit of confusion as we decide which one is best for economics and sustainability. We are transitioning from oil to whatever, as we once transitioned from coal and wood to oil. There will be some bumps and burps, but we are getting there very fast, I think.

“As for fertilizer, there is no shortage of fertilizer: we get most of it from the air (nitrogen fertilizer plants can be put anywhere). We only use petroleum fertilizers because they are so cheap, and fertilizer is an easy byproduct of oil production. Once oil is gone, we will still have fertilizer so long as we have air.”

Yet where in these technological solutions do we find the necessary limits that will bring our own burgeoning population under control?

Patrick’s Number One concern (human overpopulation) is handicapped by his faith in endless technological progress. Fueling our growth economy with supposedly unlimited nuclear, solar and geological energies will do nothing, by itself, to stem the tide of human growth. It can only support it.

I suppose that in such a scenario, wise government policy will provide the guiding hand and necessary check on human expansion. Very smart people can no doubt imagine successful schemes to contain bulging populations, move or omit them from certain areas, settle their disputes and keep them fed. And when the last possible nuclear-powered house butts against the last acre of farmland, I’m sure we’ll switch to processed kelp, or colonize Mars.

I admit to wishful thinking about a world of schooners and candles. I do. And I make my coffee in a stove-top percolator, ride a bicycle to work and hunt rabbits with a trained hawk. I am a guilty romantic. I am guilty also of using a computer to make this statement and relying on coal-fired electricity to put it before you. Like my blog partners and many of our readers, I straddle a fence between two worlds.

But in one of these worlds lies the possibility for life in abundance, for a life compatibly in context of the place in which it was created. In the other I see only a life in constant conflict with its own setting—one that can’t be satisfied without more concrete.

I’m not going to win this one. I know it. The terms of a fight are dictated by the stronger hand; the winning side here speaks in quantifying figures (measurements, percentages and money) while the losing side values qualities impossible to enumerate. The true champion of the losing side is not Michael Pollan nor even Wendell Berry but rather John Milton. And he’s been dead for 335 years.

Below the Fold

Readers please note a few photo-blogs from Steve just below Cat's fine flowers. I just posted them this morning.

Wild beauty

Last weekend, my family went rock-climbing in the Wyoming Range. Even though Jim and I were much better at it 25 years/pounds ago, it was a blast. Cass will head off to college next month, so these are the good times. I’m not looking forward to the empty-nest thing at all, and am considering that I might need one of the items from this list: a pair of baby yaks; a Haflinger horse; a Harley Davidson trike; or a snow kite – something to fill what will be a huge chasm in our daily lives at the ranch. Feel free to provide your view, or weigh in on the list.

Anyway, the wildflowers were in full bloom all over the mountains. We climbed some limestone cliffs above a snowfield and there were flowers blooming out of cracks in the rock wall. Here are a few photos from the outing. Please understand that I seem to have a short attention span when it comes to wildflower photography, so if I see a bug on a flower, it’s the bug that gets my attention. The first flower is a columbine; the second is a wild flax; the bee is on some unidentified purple pretty thing; the fourth is my short-attention span thing; I have no idea what species are in the last two photos. Anyone want to help me out?

Quotes of the day

"In an 1879 letter to John Fordyce, Darwin wrote: "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist."


"..I think the FDA’s war on raw milk in favor of pasteurization is a fitting allegory of American life writ large—all life must be killed before it kills us!!! -- Caleb Stegall at Front Porch Republic.

The Kids Are All Right

Our own youngsters are growing too fast to keep up with-- in photos anyway. Both have grown in the last week.

What is it?

This lovely young dog came to visit this past weekend. What breed is she? Those who already know-- Brett, Chris, Daniela et al, please refrain from giving it away!. I'll answer soon.




(Photos by Daniela Imre)

"Eagle Warrior"

And while we are on weird images, Sari Mantila sends this from Finland, with that title. Actually it is an un- retouched photo of a Cinereous vulture (Aegypius monachus). But doesn't it look like some weird ape- raptor conflation?

Raptor art?

Zac Eads sends this from autoblog.com. It isn't a shield for a tsuba- it's a manhole cover. With a Goshawk. Only the Japanese...

Disgrace

In Boston, the Franklin Park Zoo may close. As many as 165 employees may lose their jobs, and a large percentage of the animals may be euthanized.

“These are extremely difficult times across the state, and there have been tough cuts in every area,” a [Governor Deval] Patrick spokeswoman, Cyndi Roy, said in a statement. “This is an example of an unfortunate cut that had to be made in order to preserve core services for families struggling during the economic downturn.”

Boston's mayor disagrees:

"This is just another bad decision on budget cuts, affecting working families,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said.

"It's a big deal,” he said of the possible closure of Franklin Park Zoo in Dorchester. “It's a great resource for the community. The zoo is an inexpensive place to spend a day in tough economic times."

The zoo opened in 1913 and is set in a beautiful green park by Olmstead. As the article notes, it "represents something of a touchstone for virtually anyone who grew up in Boston and walked through its majestic gates."

I admit to being utterly prejudiced-- I worked there in the early seventies and met many lasting friends , including my late partner Betsy Huntington and frequent commenter Annie D. But the zoo is an architectural treasure, a place where Boston's many communities come together peacefully, and part of a great tradition.Massachusetts spends money like a drunken sailor on everything else; the zoo is unique and irreplaceable.

How to write

This whole thing is so funny and true I can hardly excerpt. But I'll try:

"Find that single cartoon frame from “Peanuts” that you keep in a box somewhere, the one in which Snoopy is reading a publisher’s rejection letter for his novel that goes, “Has it ever occurred to you that you may be the worst writer in the history of the world?” Read it and laugh. Later that day, read it again and not laugh. Feel really, really sad. Go over your notes one more time. Look at earlier drafts and passages and realize that maybe this stuff here is the lead, actually, and then if you follow that outline from seven outlines ago, it just might work. Re-read the last couplet of the first strophe of Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella. Look at those riffs in the earlier draft again and realize some are not that bad. Convince yourself that your bike chain really does need another good cleaning and what’s that gunk on the inside of the rear fender? Read the latest draft-like substance and think that, with a little work, maybe this won’t be too embarrassing. Feel mildly excited that there could actually be something here worth reading eventually. Look at the list of details again. Re-read the edited draft and start to feel better."

Big Ag Blues

I might be less skeptical about the Obama Rhetoric below were it not for developments in the real world. This article from the San Francisco Chronicle may be the most horrifying yet: despite the so- called "Green" attitudes of California voters, apparently perceptions of what is "sanitary" trumps all sense of what is good for the land and its inhabitants.

" Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides.

"He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind.

""I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop," he said. "On one field where a deer walked through, didn't eat anything, just walked through and you could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks and annihilate the crop."

It gets worse.

"In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world's biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national.

"Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare - spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.

"In pending legislation and in proposed federal regulations, the push for food safety butts up against the movement toward biologically diverse farming methods, while evidence suggests that industrial agriculture may be the bigger culprit."

(Snip)

"A food safety bill sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, passed this month in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It would give new powers to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate all farms and produce in an attempt to fix the problem. The bill would require consideration of farm diversity and environmental rules, but would leave much to the FDA.

"An Amish farmer in Ohio who uses horses to plow his fields could find himself caught in a net aimed 2,000 miles away at a feral pig in San Benito County. While he may pick, pack and sell his greens in one day because he does not refrigerate, the bagged lettuce trucked from Salinas with a 17-day shelf life may be considered safer."

(Snip)

"It's all based on panic and fear, and the science is not there," said Dr. Andy Gordus, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

"Preliminary results released in April from a two-year study by the state wildlife agency, UC Davis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that less than one-half of 1 percent of 866 wild animals tested positive for E. coli O157:H7 in Central California.

"Frogs are unrelated to E. coli, but their remains in bags of mechanically harvested greens are unsightly, Gordus said, so "the industry has been using food safety as a premise to eliminate frogs."

"Farmers are told that ponds used to recycle irrigation water are unsafe. So they bulldoze the ponds and pump more groundwater, opening more of the aquifer to saltwater intrusion, said Jill Wilson, an environmental scientist at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in San Luis Obispo.

"Wilson said demands for 450-foot dirt buffers remove the agency's chief means of preventing pollution from entering streams and rivers. Jovita Pajarillo, associate director of the water division in the San Francisco office of the Environmental Protection Agency, said removal of vegetative buffers threatens Arroyo Seco, one of the last remaining stretches of habitat for steelhead trout."

There is a LOT more-- read it all. Meanwhile, also on the farm front, NAIS is rearing its ugly head again. Wendell Berry says he would go to jail over it, read it all and don't weep-- get angry!

Dog/sheep days of summer

It's 65 degrees this mid-morning, and the herd at the house has been complaining about the heat and mosquitoes. Here are old ewe, Friendly, with some of the orphan lambs, and Rant the Aziat, all trying to enjoy the shade.

Things to smile about

After depressing myself with yesterday's post about eagles, I decided I'd better share some better news. Remember the seven pronghorn antelope fawns I photographed a few weeks ago? They are really growing. Here are five babies from the same meadow, taken earlier this week.

That same morning, I saw this cottontail at a gravel pit - I hate being caught with food in my mouth, but this one is cute while it eats.


The good news is that I'm seeing a lot of sage grouse this year. There are plenty of bugs, so the chicks should have done well. Our bats are back in the barn near the river, so I might sneak in there soon and fire off a few shots. The other interesting thing I saw this week was a "kettle" of nighthawks as it flew over the house. There were at least 200 birds in the group, a beautiful sight.

Such an unnecessary loss

Press accounts tell us this week that PacifiCorp, which does business locally as Rocky Mountain Power, has agreed to cough up $10 million for the killing of golden eagles in Wyoming through electrocution. Although the federal court case against the company was for 34 violations of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, according to the Associated Press, Rocky Mountain Power admitted that at least 232 golden eagles were killed in six western Wyoming counties in less than a two-year period. That is absolutely stunning. Think about it – 232 golden eagles, dead.

Under the federal lawsuit settlement agreement, according to press accounts, the company will pay $510,000 in fines, $900,000 in restitution, and spend $9.1 million to repair/replace/retrofit its equipment to protect raptors from electrocution in Wyoming. Wyoming Public Radio reported that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went after PacifiCorp because the company claimed it was taking action to protect raptors, but it really wasn’t. Now that will change, since the company is on probation for five years as it works to correct the dangerous situation for raptors in the state long known to host the highest wintering concentration of golden eagles in the nation. Research in the mid-1970s indicated that more than 26,000 goldens wintered in Wyoming.

One PacifiCorp spokesman says that wintering goldens began concentrating in an area outside of Worland, Wyoming, in response to a booming jackrabbit population, and once the magnitude of eagle mortalities became obvious, the company began work to retrofit the power facilities.

The thing is, power companies have been doing this retrofitting since at least the 1980s. Why the heck it has taken so long to get it done in this extremely important area for eagles flabbergasts me.

I guess we’re lucky. Wyoming hosts a thriving golden eagle population, and even though it appears golden populations are on the decline in states throughout the West, eagles here seem to be holding their own (despite the big loss to PacfiCorp).

Hawkwatch International is a fine organization devoted to long-term monitoring of raptor populations. Of all the Hawkwatch monitoring sites in the West, only western Wyoming’s Commissary Ridge site showed increases in golden eagle numbers in fall 2007 over the long-term average. At that site, located about an hour southwest of our ranch, 328 goldens were counted, a 24-percent increase from the long-term average at that site. The timing of the count should have provided for monitoring of a resident population, not our winter migrants.

There is some indication that golden eagle populations fluctuate with our jackrabbit and cottontail rabbit populations, which experienced substantial population booms in the mid-2000s, but it appears the jackrabbit population in western Wyoming has crashed this year. We’ve also suffered nine years of drought, with this year providing our first decent moisture in a decade. It could be that we’re about to see a decline in eagles, with the crash of a primary prey species.

Recent research has attempted to present a West-wide population estimate for golden eagles. The research, conducted by Western EcoSystems Technology of Cheyenne, Wyoming and published in 2004, indicated that Wyoming has 4,174 pairs of breeding golden eagles, the highest of any state and nearly half of the known breeding population in the West.

But one of my favorite research citations involves a survey conducted by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personnel in the early 1970s. FWS personnel recorded their golden eagle observations as they went about their duties, driving, year-round. The number of golden eagles observed per 1,000 km ranged from 1.2 in Arizona to 10.4 in Wyoming. The more recent WEST research involved aerial surveys for goldens, and detected 12 eagles per 1,000 km flown in Wyoming during late August/early September survey efforts. That’s a lot of goldens.

The President on Independence, Freedom, and Food Security

Last week President Obama addressed the people of Ghana, west Africa, at the end of an extended overseas tour. I was pleased to hear and later read his address, which focused on the importance of independence and democracy among Africa's nations. Pointedly, Obama encouraged the Ghanaians to pursue self-sufficiency in food and fuel, while pledging continued US aid.

But, said the President:

"Aid is not an end in itself. The purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it's no longer needed. I want to see Ghanaians not only self-sufficient in food, I want to see you exporting food to other countries and earning money."

On the topic of energy, Obama re-tuned "sea to shining sea" imagery to an African rhythm:

"From the Rift Valley to the North African deserts; from the Western coasts to South Africa's crops -- Africa's boundless natural gifts can generate its own power, while exporting profitable, clean energy abroad."

Continuing this theme, the President offers more support for self-sufficiency while delivering also a prescient warning:

"The continent is rich in natural resources. And from cell phone entrepreneurs to small farmers, Africans have shown the capacity and commitment to create their own opportunities. But. . . Dependence on commodities -- or a single export -- has a tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few, and leaves people too vulnerable to downturns."

So here and elsewhere in his address Obama makes the link between local and regional independence, self-sufficiency and self determination, economic diversity and finally, freedom:

"Opportunity won't come from any other place . . .It must come from the decisions that all of you make, the things that you do, the hope that you hold in your heart.

"Ghana, freedom is your inheritance. Now, it is your responsibility to build upon freedom's foundation."

I was so pleased to note and to share these words, of course, because they should apply equally to us, the President's own people. It would be a shame to recommend such good policies for others if contemplating or pursuing other programs at home.

So, more local and regional independence, Mr. President! Self-sufficiency in food and energy first, then surplus for export. And economic diversity: the widest possible variety of agriculture, manufacturing, and value-added services to ensure America does not someday become "vulnerable to downturns."

Lane Batot on Trailhounds

Part 1, Trailhound tales

In relating some of my experiences with my canine family members, I will start with my two trailhounds, as mention of them has been made on comments in past discussionsons this blog. I prefer the term "trailhounds" to "coonhounds", which is how most people identify these scent hounds, if they can identify them at all! It apalls me no end when people refer to a Black-And-Tan as a "Doberman cross", a Walker as looking like a big Beagle, a Redbone as a Visla(and I have suprisingly heard that a lot! How in the world does someone who doesn't know what a Redbone is, know what the heck a Visla is?), and merely shrug in ignorance when confronted with a Bluetick. This incredibly urban-spawned ignorance, of some of the most incredibly functional hound breeds ever developed(and developed right here in the U. S. of A.!), is something I try to rectify every chance I get!

And although "Coonhound" is the official name of the six breeds in this category(Black-And-Tan, Redbone, English, Walker, Bluetick, and Plott), it is something of a misnomer, as these hounds have been used for all types of game throughout their development, and still are! "Trailhound" is an old pioneer term indicating a scent hound that trails game, and is a broader, more appropriate name for these breeds, I think. Deer, bear, boar, fox, coyote, wolf, 'possum, cougar, bobcat, and feral housecats, as well as raccoons, are all North American game successfully pursued by these hounds. Although the majority of these scent hound breeds are today mostly used to hunt raccoon exclusively, their ancestors in pioneer days were expected to fulfill a variety of uses.

This is often forgotten by modern-day hunters, especially competition hunters, who train their hounds to trail and tree raccoons only(or else!). They would consider a hound that runs anything else as "running trash". Ditto if they are exclusively bear hunters, cat hunters, etc. Growing up in a culture where this view regarding hunting dogs has reached virtual religious adherence, it is considered blasphemous by houndsmen when they discover that not only do I know my hounds to "run trash", I encourage it! I had toyed with the idea for many years--to acquire a trailhound or two of my own, and allow them to trail and tree or run anything they wanted(outside of domestic stock, that is!), because I was curious as to how the old-time pioneers utilized their hounds this way, as I had read in various accounts. Apparently they could tell just what critter their hounds were trailing by the variances of their baying, and allow them to continue or call them off using a hunting horn.

I planned to get such a hunting horn and learn how to use it. Which I did. I thought that going out with trailhounds that would track and run just about anything would be a unique(for nowadays) and interesting way to learn about a variety of wildlife. It has been. Yup, my hounds are "trash" hounds to the core, and I'm proud of it! If I ever had to rely on them for survival, as the old pioneers did, I'd much prefer to have hounds trained my way than the reigning U. S. Champion Nite Hunt coon dog! Raccoon can get real old real fast if that's all that's on the menu! Though I was raised in country where both coonhounds and foxhounds were common, and despite my admiration for these dogs, and my continual acquisition of many other types of canines over the years, it was a long time before I finally got a hound of my own, and when it did come about, it was by pure, unsolicited happenstance.......to be continued.........

In Defense of Pets

This post is ill-considered. I mean, it responds to only one part of what's probably an important, interesting and maddening discussion that I didn't read.

By the time I found the thread, it had come around to whether it's OK to eat your pets.

Caleb Stegall of the Front Porch Republic bloggers responds to the question with something of a screed about the entire concept of "pets." His perspective, which I share in part, holds that pets are an indulgence of the modern commercial age--a kind of symptom of a kind of mental illness. He cites as evidence the still-brisk trade in pet-related products and the results of surveys that indicate people tend to see their pets as members of the family or as surrogate children.

By contrast Stegall, who describes his home as a "ramshackle farm," host to an array of domestic stock and wildlife, makes a distinction between pets and the kinds of animals he prefers:

"...we have had at various times, and usually at the same time, domesticated cattle, hogs, poultry, goats, rabbits, dogs, and cats. Roaming wild we regularly encounter deer, turkey, coyotes, fox, coons, possum, all manner of water fowl, birds of prey, songbirds, turtles the size of your leg, snakes and sundry slithering beasts large and small. As for our domesticated animals, each has been useful, which is what distinguishes them from mere pets. Cattle, hogs, chickens (meat and eggs); goats and rabbits (4-H projects and cash sale); dogs and cats (security and pest control).

"Usefulness fructifies in a certain elegance and beauty, which in turn bears fruits of conviviality and yes, companionship and even love between man and beast. In the words of Wendell Berry . . . man’s flesh is magnified in the flesh of another."

He had me at Wendell.

But I think Stegall is missing something. He speaks about animals from a position of rare privilege these days. Specifically, his life as a "son of the prairie" is one that still holds a place for working animals and livestock, not to mention wildlife.

On ranches, farms and in rural landscapes generally, animals tend to have more complicated lives, closer to the kinds they've lived for millennia. Animals are arguably more capable, tougher and smarter---and more interesting and beautiful, in my opinion---in these settings. It is a matter of necessity for them.

Working animals and livestock share their lives, livelihoods and home places with people whose work depends on them. They have to justify themselves in some way, and they frequently have to fend for themselves as well. A farm dog can't afford to live as a pet any more than a farmer can afford to sit around the house all day himself, just eating and sleeping and pooping.

So I'm saying, of course Stegall disdains the idea of "pets." And as a self-made working man at home in a rural setting, he can judge the owners of pets likewise.

But in terms of percentage of American animal owners, Stegall is nearly alone. Most of us keep pets.

While I sometimes indulge in eye-rolling at "useless" designer animals (my hawk and dog have real jobs!), I can't bring myself to dismiss the persistent impulse that lies behind breeding, buying and coddling of "mere" pets.

Many people without access to the kinds of activities that benefit from (or simply require) working animals nonetheless have the same instinct or tropism toward animals that humans have always had. Animal companionship of some kind is nearly (universally?) a human norm. Some percentage of adults may feel perfectly at ease without animals, but it's a rare child who is not drawn to them, who does not literally reach out to every animal she sees.

I think it's a good impulse, something to be preserved and encouraged---although without the shaping influence of work and some significant experience of life and death, a generalized "love of animals" is easily perverted and exploited: Like any instinctive impulse, our natural affection for animals can leave us vulnerable to hucksters and charlatans.

For this, the city folks and suburbanites will continue to fall prey to big box retail schemes and PETA's direct mail campaigns. Those in rural settings, who still know animals as working, semi-autonomous partners, will continue to be marginalized.

But so long as people still yearn toward animals and desire to keep them close, we can have the upper hand on that tiny, shrill minority who would destroy all domestic animals and refuse our communion with the wild ones as well. This fringe element, fueled by the stolen money of millions of misguided animal lovers, is far stronger than Stegall may imagine. In truth, his best friends and allies (and mine) remain among the very passionate pet-owning American majority.

Revolutionary Update

The latest monthly garden report reveals troop-strength at historical summer lows.

The legions of tomatoes, once proudly at attention, are now "at ease" and nearly falling out of formation. In fact, two recently went AWOL.



The sunflower looks to have enjoyed a little too much R&R.



And the beans are just plain going to seed.



But there is hope yet for the Rebellion. A few new recruits were drafted by my uncle during a trip home a couple weeks ago. I've given these bush beans the barracks formerly occupied by the lettuce, none of which survived the last solar assault.



And though the tomato plants have seen their finest hour, they have a few surprises left. We ought to have enough for a few salads yet.