Anyways, Horse Progress Days is here! Heading for the announcing wagon in the field, I fight off the normal knot in my stomach. I have been tasked with the first hour of announcing equipment. Regardless of how often I have done this, my stomach still has pre-game jitters. First up, manure spreaders, a smaller forecart pulled with 2 Fjords from Daran Nelson. Very fitting to have Fjords used in Rich Horovy’s home area. Rich had been a national committee member and long time Fjord breeder. The manure spreader is a Lancaster, one of the main horse drawn spreaders today. The forecart, a Homestead, all the way from Lodi, Ohio. Sharing the announcing, for horses, is the eloquent Henry Detweiler. The manure spreaders continue, fittingly.

And there we were, in open rolling country a few miles shy of Montgomery, Indiana, approaching Dinky’s Auction Center, the host for this year’s Horse Progress Days. This is the 28th year for the event, missing only 2020, that is rotated through the Amish communities in five states – Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania – usually taking place on two days, before the 4th of July. It is an event to showcase the modern utility of animal power in farming, featuring the latest equipment and the best in animal training and performance.

It was the weekend before the fourth of July and ten thousand people descended on Montgomery, Indiana for the 8th annual Horse Progress Days. There can be no doubt that this revolving event is the premiere international showcase for animal-powered agriculture. The previous two years it was held in the Lancaster area of PA. Before that, two years in Mt. Hope, OH and before that Indiana. The governing committee for the event has wisely chosen to revolve or rotate the location through Amish communities.

There is a rather neat phrase in German – ‘wenn schon, denn schon’ – which literally translates as ‘enough already, then already;’ but what it actually means is ‘if a something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. That would be a fitting description of Pferdestark, the German version of Horse Progress Days. For sheer variety of different breeds of draught horses, regional and national harness styles, or for that matter, languages or hats, it would be hard to beat Pferdestark.

There is, for my money, no more dramatic, clear view of the powerfully pertinent and viable future of the work horse than Horse Progress Days. And I was fortunate to have a dandy view. This year I was honored and graced to be asked to assist in announcing the field trials at Horse Progress Days 2003 in Mt. Hope, Ohio. Floyd Bontrager, Dale Stoltzfus, Raymond Yoder, and I shared the field microphone in an auctioneer’s pickup for two glorious days.

Although this journal goes to many parts of the world and features many interesting features on farming methods in other countries, it is nonetheless a very American publication, so it was with some trepidation that I, as an Englishman, offered to write a report on the foremost work horse event in the United States, the Horse Progress Days. For more than a decade this is the event that I have most wanted to visit, and as it has grown in size and stature, reading the reports, seeing the pictures, and watching the films only increased my desire to make the trip over the Atlantic. So it was with no little anticipation that I arrived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in late June this year, and with great excitement descended the steep grassy slope from the car park above the Henry King farm.

As I drove south in a rental car from Champaign to Arcola, and began to transition into the landscape stewarded by local Amish communities, subtle shifts began to appear in the land use patterns. Of course, the first noticeable change was that the farms had horses – and lots of them – big drafts for work in the fields, saddle horses, trotters for the buggies, and minis and ponies to haul the kids around in carts and to give first lessons in the joys and responsibilities of horsemanship.

All the good implements were on hand with a few new surprises. There was a bale accumulator, all gravity – which gathered 10 bales to one spot. And I & J showed a cover crop roller especially designed to flatten and crush thick cereal rye before no-till corn planting. This tool had resulted from research done at the Rodale Institute. Pioneer, White Horse Machine, Shipse Farm Supply, Gateway, Hogback produce and all the other manufacturers put on an excellent field display.

This is my third Horse Progress Days, including 2008 in Mount Hope, Ohio, and 2016 in Howe, Indiana. We could note a few trends in a nutshell — how tall draft horses are back, and miniature horses (which are not stocky ponies but perfectly proportioned horses more pleasing to the eye) are being bred to ever more refined and useful conformations. How the current style for most big draft horses is to have their tails severely docked, though the tails of miniature horses are left long. By way of footwear these days there seem to be few of the brightly colored Crocs for the whole family, but gray and black Crocs aplenty. One huge change over three years ago is that here were as many bicycles, with and without baskets and trailers (and some with batteries and motors), as the dark square family buggies drawn by identical lean brown trotters and pacers. Bicyclers include both youthful and older farmers, using this healthy and efficient form of transportation to get around.

I had only been to Horse Progress Days once before, at Mount Hope, Ohio in 2008. It had been an eye-opener, showing how strong and in touch with sustainable farming values the Amish are, and how innovative and sensible their efforts could be. So at the 23rd annual event in Howe, Indiana, I was there partly looking for signs of continuity, and partly for signs of change. Right off I spotted an Amish man with a Blue Tooth in his ear, talking as he walked along.

On the surface you could say that George Dimick was an Oregon horseman and logger, born in Washington in 1908, to a hardworking farm family. His father drove the horsedrawn school bus to make extra money. When Dimick senior was stricken by Typhoid Fever, not-so-little 8 year old Bud had to take over the route until his father returned to the job.

As evidenced by our letters and the frequent comments of contributors to this magazine, the question of size in draft horses is a hot issue. I suppose we’d all like to think that it’s a contemporary subject, one which did not trouble people back when horses were the norm. The BREEDER’S GAZETTE gathered the opinions of the most respected Draft horsemen of the 1910’s on the subject of how big a draft horse should be and we’ve reprinted them here. As you can see the subject has provided controversy for a long time and I’m sure it will continue.

When an Amish neighbor had his moving sale a couple years ago, Khoke and his grandfather William, attended and hoped to acquire the old horsepower well digger that they would be selling. It was a rather cold, miserable day and they had several hours of standing as they waited. But the wait was worth it and $3,000 later the well driller was theirs.

The Conestoga horse was an early native North American breed of draft horse developed in the early 1700s. It was bred for farm labour and to pull the distinctive Conestoga freight wagon. Unfortunately the breed was absorbed through cross breeding and disappeared.

In the eastern part of the country rolling hills and wide valleys form the landscape. In this area the farms are a lot bigger than the average Norwegian farm of 25 acres. Grains and potatoes are mainly grown in this region. In the west mountains, lakes and fjords dominate the landscape. The farms are small and often situated on steep hills. Milk production is dominant in this area, with milking goats where the land is too steep for cows to graze. Until the end of the 50s the majority of the farms were powered with horses. Fifteen years later tractors had almost completely replaced the workhorse. Today most of the workhorses can be found on smaller farms and in the mountains.

In August 2001 my wife Cathy and I visited the late Charlie Pinney in Scotland. Grown up and having run a horse farm in southern England, Charlie moved later to the north of the United Kingdom where he farmed for some years with his second wife, Ella. It asked for some perseverance to arrive at their home, named Animal Swordle Farm, as it was located far away from every sign of civilization and only a small path guided you to the farmstead. Situated in one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen in whole Europe, the Scottish Highlands, it could easily be the motif of a postcard. Just a five minutes’ walk away from the rough west coast of Scotland facing the Atlantic, it was surrounded by nothing else than sheep and even herds of red deer grazing on the impressive green mountains.

I recently assisted, during my daily work as a teacher at a technical high school, on a training course of the so-called “global training program” of one of the German premium car manufacturers. Together with twelve of my colleagues from three different schools in Luxembourg, I learned during two days diagnostic methods for “Telematik” systems. “Telematik” is one of these crazy new German words, resulting of the combination of telecommunication and informatics. I not only found myself confronted with bizarre electronic malfunctions, but also with a lot of new words, which haven’t found yet their way into my small world.

Sickle bar mowers are no high performance machinery and need a lot of maintenance, compared to disc and drum mowers, but are definitely the better mowers in my opinion. This is not only due to their low impact to the nature, but also due to the quality of their work. The knives cut the grass instead of knocking it off like fast rotating drum and disc mowers. A sharp cut lets the grass grow better again, thus optimizing the next harvest. In Luxembourg you can even get financial support by the Ministry of Environment when participating in a wide-ranging program called “maintaining the biodiversity,” as this mowing technology is recognized as environmentally friendly.

Logging and forestry activities have always been one of the most dangerous professions. In decades past, when horses were the primary power for logging, they were just as subject to injury and death. There is a reason every logging camp had a butcher shop. It wasn’t just for moose and deer, cattle and pigs. With the return of horses for logging, horses are once again subject to the loss of life and limb due to these activities.

My husband and I have a small 7 acre farm in Beavercreek, Oregon, where we ride, drive, and farm with our horses. When working horses there can be as many opinions about how to do it correctly as there are people you ask. Here are some of my thoughts about how to apply knowledge of horse dispositions to the driving horse and farming set up based on my experiences working primarily with my three saddle-horse-sized Kiger Mustang mares.

Auctions are a great place to meet your next work partner and equine friend. It is also an opportunity for them to find the new homes that they need. I appreciate the trainers who help make horses the helpful partners that they want to be. Above all I am grateful for the gift of the wonderful horses that have been in my life and thank you Waverly for helping us meet some of them.

William Castle is a craftsman. As such he is steeped in the traditions of work process, of the fit and effectiveness of tools, of the grain of each circumstance, of the integration and protection of heritage, of the next earned comfort. All of these things and much more go into the assessment that here is a man who is best suited to step up as guide and instructor of this way of working. In an artisan’s manner Castle accumulated, over his long service with work horses, measurements of the appropriate and of the transformative, tools and fittings.

Discipline was not only the name of the game in the road traffic, but also at our first destination, the “SM Brukshästar,” the Swedish championship for draft horses. The 2008 edition took place near a gymnasium for agricultural educations in Rättvik, located more or less in the centre of Sweden. To come to the point, speaking about the Swedish Champions is simply an understatement. The people we saw at this 2 day event are worth being called the true European Champions. Not only in the horse lodging contest, which took place at the same time as a riding competition on Saturday, but also in a coach driving contest on Sunday. The harmony in the cooperation between men and women and horses was impressive.

It seems to take forever, but how can a young seven-year-old boy on his way to pick up his first horse measure time? Dad has made a deal for a horse with a rancher named Andersen. Their place is way out “on the reservation.” West of our town, farther than my usual trips to town with Dad, hauling grain to the elevator or picking up supplies at the local general store. This time we’re headed out of town on rough dirt roads.

Humankind is only a link in a fragile chain. Maintaining biodiversity is for me definitely a question of survival on this planet. Our future life depends on maintaining biodiversity as not only the susceptibility for natural disasters is reduced by an intact nature, but also the access to clean water, all kinds of food or raw materials is assured. The nitrate and pesticide pollution of the drinking water resources around our village is only one of the problems I can mention here within context.

It’s one thing to find out your daughter has been assigned to drive the Hagenbeck cage wagon #85. It was built in 1905 by the Bode Wagon Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, is 10 feet 6 inches tall, 15 feet 9 inches long, and weighs 7,240 pounds. It’s an entirely different thing to learn these crazy circus people intend to put not one but two tigers in that cage. What were they thinking? What were we thinking when we agreed to let our teenager do this?

For ten years now the Mohawk Valley people have been coming together for the event they call Community Days. Elmer Stoltzfus owns the businesses 7M Supply & Double O Builders, which are on his farm, where he also raises Percheron and Standard Bred horses, along with some beef cows. 7M Supply is a hardware and building supply store and are also dealers for some horse drawn farm equipment. At one time they were dealers for Pioneer Equipment. Pioneer required their dealers to have a yearly event to showcase their lineup of products, thus was born Community Days. Starting as mainly a horse drawn equipment show, it has morphed into a multi-featured two day event for the whole family.

You know how to work? `Cuz if you don’t you will have no relationship with these animals. How would you know how much to expect if you don’t know that about yourself? Meanwhile, what makes you the judge of your neighbor’s boys with work animals? You remind me of a man standing out on a diving board over an empty pool arguing about needing to get his lawn mowed.

These types of team implements for digging potatoes were the first big innovation in horse powered potato harvesting in the mid-19th century. Prior to the horse drawn digger the limitation on how many potatoes a farmer could plant was how many the farm crew could dig by hand. The basic design of these early diggers works so well that new models of this type of digger are once again being manufactured by contemporary horse drawn equipment suppliers.

This is the account of how one farm put more horse power into the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of its potato crop. Ever since we began farming on our own in 1994 one of our principle aims has been the conversion of our farm operation to live horse power wherever feasible. This has meant replacing mechanized tools such as tractors and rototillers and figuring out how to reduce human labor as we expanded upon the labor capacity of our work horses.

One day my stepfather brought over a magazine he had recently subscribed to. It was called Small Farmer’s Journal published by a guy named Lynn Miller. That issue had a short story about an old man that used a single small mule to garden and skid firewood with. I was totally fascinated with the prospect of having a horse and him earning his keep. It sorta seemed like having your cake and eating it too.

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Work Horse Handbook

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In 1945 McCormick-Deering International published their Blue Ribbon Service Training Course “Serviceman’s Guide” for Hay Machines. Included in this excellent booklet is a section entitled “Horse-Drawn Mowers.” The material in this chapter section is all on their Number 9 High Gear Mower and offers some exceptional information presentations which are somewhat different from the operators manual. We reprint here, unedited, the complete contents of this section. Hope you find this material as useful as we have.

I jumped out of the truck and ran into the barn. Lady was in the last stall and pulling the door open. I grinned. She was definitely ready to ride. Grabbing her halter, I kissed to her and slid it on leading her out, I tied her to the stall. I grabbed a brush and curry comb from the tack room and started my favorite part of the morning “now lady we’re going with getting you used to standing still so I can get on” I said. I tried to talk to her as much as I can so she gets used to my voice.

Although they are most famous for being hypo-allergenic, Curly horses have many other exceptional features. Nature has provided these horses with a unique heating and cooling system. Their thick curly winter coat repels rain and snow. Underneath, air is trapped near the short hair coat next to the body, keeping them warm. They are able to withstand cold winters, and can stay outside year-round. In the spring, they shed their coats. Their hooves are extremely hard and do not require shoeing. Curlies come in all colours, plus they may also be appaloosa, pinto, tricolour, etc. The coat can range from a crushed velvet look, to a gentle wave, to tight corkscrew curls over the entire body. Their thick manes often appear wavy.

The difference between safe, high quality hay and low quality questionable hay (containing molds and dust) is primarily in the harvesting. The plants in a certain field will make some difference, of course — whether it’s a good stand of alfalfa, palatable grasses or has gone mostly to weeds — but poor harvesting conditions/methods can reduce a good hay crop to poor or even unsafe feed for horses.

The driller is like an auger type post hole digger powered by one horse walking around the machine. The gear is stationary. The platform and everything on it (including operators) goes around and around with the horse. The auger shaft is clamped to the platform so the auger makes one revolution as the horse makes one revolution. The gears operate a winch. It appears the winch can also be cranked by hand.

An understanding of the desirable and undesirable conditions found in horses, together with a knowledge of their relative values, will enable the purchaser to select a better animal, with a considerable saving of time, inconvenience, and expense. A thorough examination for the various forms of blemish, vice, faulty conformation, and unsoundness in a horse is absolutely essential if serviceableness is to be secured, and a definite method of procedure should be adhered to in making the examination, which should correspond to the order in which the various steps most conveniently present themselves.

Horse-radish, the well-known condiment used so much with roast beef and oysters, is a member of the natural family Crucifarae, to which belong cabbage, turnip, wallflower, stock, charlock, mustard, and many other vegetables, flowers and weeds. It comes to us from Great Britain, where it is thought to have been naturalized from some more eastern European country. It is often found growing wild in moist locations, such as the margins of streams, in cool woods and damp meadows, and, in some places, notably in the state of New York, is troublesome as a weed.

Having reached the fabled three score and ten (plus two) I have been looking back on my time with draft horses and farming to see where I have been and where I think we should be going. Please indulge me. I had graduated from college and had bought an unbroke 800-pound mule who was named “Elizabeth Jane” from a local horse trader. I paid $125 for her and later learned she had jumped over a 3-foot gate with a rider on her back. So, I had grossly overpaid for her. Luckily, we were well matched – neither knew enough to pour water out of a boot and both were equally stubborn about our lack of knowledge.

One Horse Seed Drill • Barrel Pump

In early September of last year, I visited the Suffolk area of England, to see Suffolk Punch horses firsthand and to attend the Suffolk Punch Spectacular. I also wanted to learn more about the history and origins of the breed, since I have a Suffolk Punch mare of my own. The breed dates back to 1768 to a stallion known as Crisp’s Horse of Ufford. The pedigrees of modern Suffolk Punch horses can all be traced back to this horse. Once popular in the East Anglia region, their numbers greatly diminished in the late 1930’s due to the increased use of mechanized agriculture.

After I decided I had enough horsepowers and was going to retire collecting farm machinery, a scrapper from 80 miles east of Freeport came to me at our annual show and he was cleaning up a farm that the bank had foreclosed on, and there was a large power in the woodlot. I did not want to tackle another power as all the old powers have too many missing parts and you need to know how long the equalizers etc., are. However, I went and looked at the power. This had the largest bull gear of all powers, so…I bought it. It took almost two years to find some of the things I needed to restore it. This is “the Kelly,” ten-horse, the easiest and nicest power of all.

The greatest challenge I have faced while developing a functional one-horse farm has been haying. It has taken some time to design a good shaft cart, cut down a mower to four feet, learn to dumprake, and build SOMETHING to haul the hay to the barn. I started with a TRUE TEMPER “hayloader” and a Ford pickup hood “hay slip.” This was great for the first half acre. However, I was worried about finishing the next seven acres before it finished me. Next, I tried roping the hay. Even with a willing horse, I could not rope up a jag. I finished that first year having the hay round baled. King, my horse, hauled the bales to the barn on the pickup hood hayslip.

There are hundreds of plants that can be toxic to livestock. Some grow in specific regions while others are more widespread. Some are always a serious danger and others only under certain conditions. Poisoning of livestock depends on several factors, including palatability of the plant, stage of development, conditions in which they grew, moisture content of the plant and the part eaten.

Market gardeners who already have an up and running tractor-powered operation and think they might want to explore transitioning to live horse power are often attracted to the idea of starting with a single horse. The single horse can also be a viable option for creating a mixed power system where the tractor is used for heavy tillage and the horse is used for secondary tillage, cultivation, and other light draft tasks around the farm. And for the complete beginner looking to get started in market gardening and working with horses, a single horse has a lot of appeal.

The upright or stumpy hoof is that form in which the quarters, with relation to the toe, are too long (too high). The wall at the toe stands very steep, in some cases perpendicular, and is strongly worn away by standing and travelling. It may arise gradually from neglect of the hoofs of horses running barefoot. It may arise from excessive shortening of the toe in relation to the quarters.

The boundary between health and disease of the hoof is difficult to determine, especially when we have to deal with minor defects of structure or shape of the hoof. Ordinarily, we first consider a hoof diseased when it causes lameness. However, we know that diseases of the hoof may exist without lameness. Therefore, a hoof should be regarded as diseased or defective when it deviates from what we consider as normal or healthy, whether the service of the animal is influenced by it or not.

Time slips on, it could be twenty five years ago; we met a friend in the supermarket in Newry. We knew she had retired from school teaching but what we didn’t know was that she had married and was living in rural County Cavan, some eighty miles away. In conversation she mentioned what I took to be an ancient festival in her parish; a hill field with a prehistoric stone and the oldest horse fair in the land. I must say I’d never heard of it, nor had anyone I knew.

A team of horses will typically skid about 3,000 board feet in a full workday. This volume consists of approximately 25 logs cut in lengths of 12 to 16 feet. The logs are dragged by draft horses hitched to a two-wheel cart. As the team begins to pull, the log raises where it’s secured by the swivel grab skidding tongs, which enables less resistance when dragging the log. It’s not uncommon to drag a log a half mile to the loading area.

According to the size of the horse and his hoofs the nails should be driven from five-eighths to an inch and five-eighths high, and as even as possible. As soon as a nail is driven its point should be immediately bent down towards the shoe in order to prevent injuries. The heads of all the nails should then be gone over with a hammer and driven down solidly into the nail-holes, the hoof being meanwhile supported in the left hand.

An examination should be made while the animal is at rest, and afterwards while in motion. The object of the examination is to gain accurate knowledge of the direction and movements of the limbs, of the form and character of the feet and hoofs, of the manner in which the foot reaches and leaves the ground, of the form, length, position, and wear of the shoe, and distribution of the nail-holes, in order that at the next and subsequent shoeings all ascertained peculiarities of hoof-form may be kept in mind and all discovered faults of shoeing corrected.

As there are well-formed and badly formed bodies, so there are well-formed and badly formed limbs and hoofs. The form of the hoof depends upon the position of the limb. A straight limb of normal direction possesses, as a rule, a regular hoof, while an oblique or crooked limb is accompanied by an irregular or oblique hoof. Hence, it is necessary, before discussing the various forms of the hoof, to consider briefly the various positions that may be assumed by the limbs.

Having written this down I must admit to a slight embarrassment. It is not because I worry about admitting to a lack of skill, or fear being seen as a romantic. It is because some of you will have similar stories, perhaps more impressive stories, as this is just the sort of thing that happens when you spend enough time with horses at work. It is at once normal, but also extraordinary.

Horseshoeing, though apparently simple, involves many difficulties, owing to the fact that the hoof is not an unchanging body, but varies much with respect to form, growth, quality, and elasticity. Furthermore, there are such great differences in the character of ground-surfaces and in the nature of horses’ work that shoeing which is not performed with great ability and care induces disease and makes horses lame.

We own a 40 jersey cow herd and sell most of their milk to Cobb Hill Cheese, who makes farmstead cheeses. We have a four-acre market garden, which we cultivate with our team of Fjord horses and which supplies produce to a CSA program, farm stand and whole sale markets. Other members of the community add to the diversity of our farm by raising hay, sheep, chickens, pigs, bees, and berries, and tending the forest and the maple sugar-bush.

Three different parcels of land were committed for a series of tests to directly compare the impact of tractors and horses on the land. One side of each parcel was worked only with horses and the other only with tractors. There were measurable differences between each side of the worked areas; the land’s capacity to hold water and greater aeration were up to 45cm higher in areas worked by horses as opposed to tractors.

In New York State one does not explore the world of draft horses long before the name of Ed Button is invariably and most respectfully mentioned. Ed’s name can be heard in the conversations of nearly everyone concerned with heavy horses from the most experienced teamsters to the most novice horse hobbyists. His career with Belgians includes a vast catalog of activities: showing, pulling, training, farming, breeding, and driving, which Ed says, “I’ve been doing since I was old enough to hold the lines.”

Over the last few years of making hay, the mowing, turning and making tripods has settled into a fairly comfortable pattern, but the process of getting it all together for the winter is still developing. In the beginning I did what everyone else around here does and got it baled, but one year I decided to try one small stack. The success of this first stack encouraged me to do more, and now most of my hay is stacked loose.

In parallel with making hay on the ground, nearly every year I have also made some hay on tripods. The attraction of this method is that it only needs one day of good weather to dry the grass sufficiently before it is put on the tripods, and then the hay takes very little harm no matter what the weather, usually coming out green, dry and smelling of hay two weeks later when it can be baled or stacked.

From reading the Small Farmers Journal, I knew that some people are equally happy with either model, but because McCormick Deering had gone to the trouble of developing the No. 9, it suggests they could see that there were improvements to be made on the No. 7. Even if the improvement was small, with a single horse any improvement was likely to increase my chance of success.

For the last ten years, I have made hay mostly with a single horse. This has not necessarily been out of choice, as at one time I had hoped to be farming on a larger scale with more horses. Anyway, it does little good to dwell on ‘what if ’. The reality is that I am able to make hay, and through making and modifying machinery, I probably have a better understanding of hay making and the mechanics of draught.

“We had four different practice sessions. Although we had a person alongside each horse it was difficult getting the horses to walk together. Each horse wanted to walk at different speeds. And then it was hard to get all the horses to stop at the same time. After the first practice, I wasn’t sure it was going to work. With follow up sessions things came together nicely.” Once the horses became acclimated, they worked well together. Henry commented, “After the fourth practice, we simply said, ‘giddy up’ and off they went.

Set in the heart of the Lake District National Park, Tarn Hows Wood lies on the eastern flank of Yewdale. The valley is characterized by Yewdale Fell to the west, with Yewdale Beck flowing in headlong rush from its cascades in Tilberthwaite Gill, to its tumbling rapids in the lower reaches of the valley before flowing into Coniston Water. The flat valley bottom is a miniature agricultural patterned landscape consisting of small hedged fields, punctuated by small groups of trees.

North Country Pioneer Days. Organized by Cecil and Caroline Andrus on Rockfield Farm, Boulter, Ontario

I can’t say specifically when the bug bit me, but it did. I had an opportunity to work for someone who offered to pay me in draft horses. Like, two draft Percheron mares to be specific. I thought about it, and took the deal. After my work was completed, my wife and I were the proud owners of two draft animals. And then all of a sudden all the horse articles became so important and pertinent! It was like a light turning on!

For the past few years we had seen posters for the Northern Minnesota Draft Horse Association’s Field Day event, but it was always too far away for us to make it. But this year, while putting up feed at the mill, a bright blue poster on the counter caught my eye. It was the Field Day poster. Location: Forest City, MN. Forest City?! Less than an hour’s drive from us! Hallelujah!

The efficiency of a lever depends upon the relative length of power arm and weight arm. These principles particularly apply in draft work to the question of lowsetness. The weight of the load is a direct force that corresponds to something pulling back on the animal. As stated above, the longer the power arm the greater the advantage, hence the longer the limb of the horse the greater the advantage that the load will have over the animal. The teamster consequently requires that his draft horse be lowset, in order to gain a greater efficiency.

Duke had been broke to harness but couldn’t pull himself out of a paper bag. He wasn’t very experienced and didn’t know his strength yet. Soon after Duke came to us, Dad brought home Mary. She was an old red Belgian mare that Dad used to teach Duke how to work. Mary had come from an Amish farm and had spent her life plowing and other field work. Her calm and ready responses educated Duke much quicker than a person could as he followed her lead.

The scoop has two steel sides about 5 feet apart sitting on steel runners made out of heavy 2 X 2 angle iron, there is a blade that is lowered and raised by use of a foot release which allows the weight of the blade to lower it and then lock in the down position and the forward motion of the horses to raise it and lock it in the up position. This is accomplished by a clever pivoting action where the tongue attaches to the snow scoop.

Book Review – The New Horse-Powered Farm by Stephen Leslie: Working with horses is not something you can learn exclusively through watching DVD training videos and attending workshops and seminars. These things and experiences can be very useful as auxiliary aids to our training, but they cannot replace the value of a long-term relationship with a skilled mentor.

I was brought up in a different world than other kids were brought up in. I spent a lot of time with my father, uncles and retired men in the rest home or senior citizen home. From them I learned all about old style farming, trapping animals, cutting wood, panning for gold and mules. I went trapping with the old men, fishing, and hunting. I had lots of fun, but there was no school. We were on the farm and many of the old men helped out on the farm because they just wanted something to do. I learned how to plow a field with mules, disc, harrow, seed a crop and other farm work.

What is a horse owner to do when hay is in limited supply and/or very expensive? Drought has resulted in an extremely short supply of hay in some areas in recent years. Naturally, hay prices increase in these situations. Extremely wet weather can also negatively impact horse owners. These conditions make it difficult to make good-quality hay. Moldy hay should not be fed to horses. Horse owners have several management alternatives in these situations.

The sun’s not yet up. The sky is a cold silver-tinged with reds. Even before I step outside, I can see from the kitchen window that all eight horses have their eyes glued to the door of the house in anticipation. They are looking for me, for my approach, for my errands of service to them. As I walk from the house, towards the shed which serves as our barn, the horses begin to nicker from their night pens. I slip from a low down deep throated hum to a soft whistle and back to a hum again, this morning it’s an Argentinian Tango. ‘Lucky’, the Australian shepherd, follows me, excited for responsibility. The horses bob their noses and shuffle front feet as if to say ‘it’s about time.’

Every October a small farm in Eastern Missouri comes alive with vintage farm and barnyard activities reminiscent of a bygone era in the Ozark Hills. Eight years ago, what started as a small pumpkin patch and horse drawn hay rides has evolved to a unique demonstration of vintage farm and barnyard equipment common on the 19th and early 20th century small farm. Thanks to a small group of family and friends, the collection of vintage equipment is operated with our farm animals on weekends in October to the delight and amazement of many people.

One of the things I’ve learned over time is that the truly great teamsters rarely – if ever – have upset horses, close calls, mishaps or wrecks, while the less meticulous horsemen often do. Even though it may take a few minutes longer, the master teamsters constantly follow a series of seemingly minute, endlessly detailed, but always wise safety tips. Here are 10 of them:

Living off grid is a fascinating way of life that captivates large audiences with varying degrees of reservation. Here in Southern Iowa, Khoke and I carve out a life on the land that omits many modern amenities that electricity in any form is counted among. A couple of the most common concerns people ask about include, how we manage without refrigeration, and how we do laundry. To say we do laundry with horses only begets more questions. Setting aside the mental image of horses treading washtubs full of laundry, our laundry house consists of more than one wringer washer powered by an old cast iron single sweep rotary horse power unit that Khoke rebuilt.

In my case, coming to some small mastery of the craft of working horses required a fortunate blend of environments. First came an over arching hunger to acquire the skill, then came associations and friendships with teamsters I admired, then access to examples of failure as well as success, and then – to bind it all together – came a farm and farming that needed a working horse system to win out. Add in experienced work horses and their daily needs and make of it your immersion, the place you wanted to be, the work you wanted to succeed at, the talent you were in search of.

After a hard day’s work, we all like a restful bed in a comfortable environment. What about your horses? Should or shouldn’t horses be stabled? If they are stabled, what issues are of major concern to horse owners? Are there risks to stabling a horse? Does the length of time a horse is stabled impact these risks? If so, how do we address and minimize these risks? There are a number of incorrect precepts regarding placing horses in stalls. This article will dispel these incorrect ideas and aid owners in managing stabled horses.

“La Route du Poisson”, or “The Fish Run,” is a 24 hour long relay which starts from Boulogne on the coast at 9 am on Saturday and runs through the night to the outskirts of Paris with relays of heavy horse pairs until 9 am Sunday with associated events on the way. The relay “baton” is an approved cross country competition vehicle carrying a set amount of fresh fish.

Until 1994 these horses had open reign on the Suffield military base in southeastern Alberta, moving freely across one of the largest block of native prairie in the world. The Government had expropriated the land in 1941 from the ranches who had established successful operations more than thirty years earlier. It was then used by the British military for training. Up to the mid-1960’s the horses on the British Block were loosely managed by local ranchers. During this time plenty of good old line Quarter horse, Thoroughbred and other breeds, as well as sound usable ranch horses were turned out. In about 1965 the military fenced the base, cutting off access to the herds for local ranchers. From then until the roundup on 1994, the horses survived unmanaged. They started out as high quality stock and natural selection did its thing, resulting in phenomenal horses.

If it don’t feel right – check it out! Instinct is a most important applied aspect in every successful teamster’s tool chest. When things seem not to be as they should be, when things feel odd or out of balance, when everything looks a little different to you but you can’t put your finger directly on the change – PAY ATTENTION. Take the time to check the animal’s comfort, the fit of the harness, the buckles and snaps. It could be in the air and they feel it but you don’t.

Since the art of working horses has been around since their domestication, one tends to think that what can be accomplished with horsepower has surely plateaued. That we are just relearning and reusing what has been established in time past before it is lost. A subconscious belief that what can be learned, has been done, that the horizon has been reached. An arrogance that threads through each new age. Yet just as surely as machinery developed over the course of time, it continues on today. The mainstream use of draft animals may have subsided, but in the circles where they continued, the machinery they are yoked to has continued to develop as well.

After finishing one field, it was our custom to loosen the wires between two fields and staple them securely to the bottom of the posts, driving over the wire into the adjoining field. In my haste, I was careless in properly fastening the wires on the bottom of the posts and one of the horses struck the wires causing them to fly up and before I was finished, the pole of the rake, which had cost in the neighborhood of $2.50, had been broken squarely in two. I think I would just as soon have reported to the sheriff that I had robbed a local bank as to be faced with the responsibility of reporting this difficulty to my Uncle. His only remarks were: “Kid, it isn’t what you make that counts, it’s what you save.”

Of all things folks might do without when they’re short of cash, mushrooms might top my list. Yet Dad chose to grow mushrooms during The Great Depression. He adapted three limestone caves for mushroom farming and presided over mushrooms with the agility and savvy of a ringmaster in a three-ring circus. He cleaned and aired one cave and harvested and marketed from another while prepping the third for a new crop.

The tale started in 1980. For some time, I had had two good horses, but needed a third to make a three horse hitch. I never seemed to have any luck finding that third one without health or behavior problems. So it was that I decided to raise and train some young horses from the ground up. Opportunity presented itself when I found Bonnie, a 7-month Belgian weanling, and learned that her mother was carrying another foal. We brought Bonnie home in January 1980, and since I needed to borrow the mother to work, she came in mid-June 1980 with Mayday, Bonnie’s half sister, born, as the name suggests, on May 1. With these young ones, I could try my hand at training from an early age, and had some assurance that as half sisters they would match up pretty well.

When I wrote about Khoke’s grandfather rebuilding a 7-sweep rotary horsepower unit, I wrote briefly about some technical issues we ran into. To this, we got a response from John Brubaker, the community mechanic for the Winchester Mennonite community near Hillsboro, Ohio. John suggested we come to see the five 2-horse treadmills connected to power the silage chopper in the fall. He also suggested that it might be worth our time to check out the Scottsville Horse and Buggy Mennonite community in southern Kentucky. This community is only 50 miles west of the Vernon community near Hestand, Kentucky, where our longtime friends, the Bye family, lives. Before our travel plans were finalized, they also included a stop at the Delano Mennonite community in Tennessee as well.

Within the EU-funded Leader project “Horsepower – Innovation in small-scale agriculture and gardening” an online symposium took place on November 5 and 6. Hosted by Jeanette Junge, business manager of the Swedish Leader LAG PH, a total of 63 participants from 17 countries followed 14 presentations with current reports from research all-around the world, background knowledge and best-practice examples from European smallholdings.

The presence of springs on a horse-drawn carriage seems to be of little importance when judged by purely essential criteria. They are not needed to start or stop the vehicle. The horse provides motive power and brakes will stop the carriage when necessary. A carriage without springs could still function, as springs do not serve any absolutely necessary task. They do not light the way at night like lanterns do, or keep occupants dry in a rainstorm like a top. But riding in a carriage minus springs would be most uncomfortable, especially over cobblestone streets or on a country lane, or on a long journey.

Market horses may be divided into two main classes: Those for draft purposes, such as heavy draft, bus, express, etc., and harness and saddle horses, which include drivers, coachers, and saddlers. The heavy draft horse must have weight and strength. It is not so much a question of height as weight. A strictly first-class draft horse must weight 1,600 pounds or more. The greater the weight the greater the value.

While in Korea, London learned how to put cold shoes on his horse. This was one of the many new experiences Jack had as he rode horseback day and night. He traveled through snow that had melted into mud that was up to Belle’s belly and was proud that he never lost a horseshoe. After four months in Korea, Jack completed his newspaper assignment and wrote to his book publisher, “Can say that I know a lot more about horses than when I started.”

From time to time, someone will ask me what method I use for skidding logs. My answer is: “Whatever fits the situation”. To me it is not about skidding logs, it’s about working horses in the woods. To that end, I have spent fifteen years logging, and learning how to employ different types of equipment that augment the efficiency of working animals. I have two logging carts, a bobsled, a set of bob-wheels, a scoot, and I have twitched many logs with a single horse, as well as with a team of horses, or oxen.

Horsefolk have a vocabulary all their own. When we buy a horse it is worth while to know just what each term means. Here is a little dictionary of commonly used expressions that I have compiled.

Water is an important ingredient of the horse’s diet, since it is crucial for proper function of the body. This “nutrient” makes up 65 to 85 percent of a foal’s body weight, and about 68 to 72 percent of an adult horse’s body weight. A 1000 pound horse’s body contains about 80 gallons of water. Even small changes in total body water can have a negative impact on a horse’s health and well being. Water is contained within all body cells, between cells, and is an important component of blood, joint fluid and lymph.

A careful observation of the horse will give clues, as we try to determine how his gait is affected and then try to figure out where the pain is coming from – which part of that leg is sore. Every horseman should become familiar with the way a sound horse moves, especially at the walk and trot, in order to more readily detect when a horse is “off.” Lameness is merely an alteration of gait as the horse tries to reduce the pain of weight-bearing on a certain part of his leg structure.

The frames being hinged to the wall swing back out of the way when not in use, occupying only a few inches of space. A perfect automatic device to hold the foot perfectly solid in any desired position. Guaranteed not to skin or chafe the foot.

If you spend time around Central Oregon livestock circles you are bound to run into a sweet, quiet, lovely and strong woman with excellent hands and a good team in harness. That woman is Joyce Sharp.

All other aspects being equal, the primary difference in plowing, comfortably, with a single horse is that the animal walks on unplowed ground immediately adjacent to the previous furrow, rather than in the furrow. This will cause the point of draft at the shoulder to be somewhat higher and will dictate hitching longer and/or higher than with the animal walking down 5 to 8 inches lower in the furrow.

Horses readily adapt to winter weather. Cold temperature in itself is not a problem for a horse if he’s had a chance to prepare gradually by growing a winter coat as fall temperatures drop. Wind and wet weather are the factors that can chill a horse. In windy regions, horses need some type of shelter to protect against the wind chill that can whip away body heat.

I always enjoy Dr. Hammill’s articles on safety and training for workhorses. His words are invaluable encouragement and protection for beginning farmers and their horses. I generally agreed with everything he said in the “Ten Common Wrecks with Driving Horses” article in the Fall 2006 SFJ. I would like to add a few further thoughts on some of them.