I Work Horses

by Lynn R. Miller of Singing Horse Ranch

Back, more than a dozen years ago, the decision was made out of necessity.

I was buying a run-down, abandoned 77 acre dairy farm. No more running places for other people. I was making the plunge, taking the big gamble, heading out for deep water. And on a shoestring! I had no money to speak of ($500), just a whole lot of daring, a plan and a payment schedule. But I also had something else, something very special. I had work horses.

I had arranged to pay a small down payment on the farm in six months time. I had annual payments to make on a long term contract with the farm’s absentee owner.

It was March of the year and I had a plan. I would plow up 10 acres and plant vegetables to sell to local markets. I would plow up 10 more acres and plant Oats. The remaining acreage had good clover/grass for hay and pasture. There would be hay enough to sell some. I had a Jersey milk cow and two Belgian mares.

In the past, I had managed farms for others, working fields with the tractors they had. Now I was to be on my own and I had no tractor. I set out to see if, on the basis of my good luck with the farm purchase plan, I could borrow money from the bank to buy a tractor, implements, seeds and such. Before talking to the bank I looked around to see what this equipment would cost. Being no mechanic, I needed a dependable used tractor which would be adaptable to the tools and work I would do. I decided on a good running Ford 8N or 9N and was dismayed to find that $3,000.00 was the very least I would pay and that that particular tractor needed tires (which new would cost $700). I then would have to add a complete line of tools including plow, harrows, planters, cultivators, mower, rake, baler and miscellaneous harvest tools. With careful shopping and good prices I was looking at $15,000.00 to $20,000.00 for tractor and implements. I couldn’t afford that. I knew I couldn’t borrow that. I felt lost.

AN IDEA CREPT IN

Late one evening as I sat, sleepless, wondering how on earth I’d be able to pull it off and manage to hold on to this chance at my own farm, a little door opened in the back of my brain and an idea crept in … “work horses … THAT’S IT! I’ll do it with the horses … Just for this year, or as long as it takes to get started. Sure it’ll be hard work, maybe longer hours, but this is the chance I’ve been waiting for. I can do it! I’ll make it somehow. Horses, yeh that’s it, horses!”

Until that time I had been playing with my team of Belgian mares – plowing contests, parades, wagon rides – they were an important hobby for me. I had a few odd pieces of horsedrawn farm equipment.

So I made a decision, out of necessity, I was going to farm that first year using horses in harness rather than a tractor.

From then on I had to learn to balance within me two equally strong and definitely opposing thoughts or feelings. On the one hand, I was excited in and with my conviction that I could make it using horses. I believed in my choice. I rationalized it, I qualified it, I legitimized it for myself, constantly.

But on the other hand, I must confess there was a fear which, at times, bordered on panic. I knew that everything which mattered to me hung in the balance and depended on my ability to do a timely and quality job of the farm work. Everything depended on the · horses working. They had to work! But what if I was wrong? What if they didn’t work?

This fear I would not admit to myself or anyone else. It took years before I would look back at it with an open understanding. There was something which told me that to openly admit that fear was to invite defeat. I would never admit defeat. I was determined to succeed.

You see, these were the 1970’s and my small farm was in the midst of agri-business with large-scale industrialized farm factories all around.

This was boom time with so-called “easy” credit. If you were young, aggressive and willing to “stretch” the truth on loan applications, banks would loan enormous sums for equipment and operating capital. People in positions of authority in agriculture enthusiastically carried the banner of “modern” farming. What I proposed, farming direct and naturally, at a small scale and with horses for power, went beyond laughable, through heresy and into the realm of perceived confusing threat. My friends and neighbors worried about my decision and some considered it to be a direct affront, or slap in the face. “Why would anyone do this? What’s he trying to prove? Who does he think he is?” This was not a social climate of support. The concerns and criticisms served to aggravate my own fear and doubt while pushing me into ever more defiant postures. But some of this is a bit ahead of the story.

GETTING UNDERWAY

I decided to approach a bank and made a very intelligent choice. I first found a new, small produce wholesaler who enthusiastically promised to buy what vegetables I would grow. I asked that wholesaler who his banker was. I went to that banker and told him that I wanted to borrow some money to farm. I told him which company I would be selling produce to. He said, “what a pleasant surprise, they bank here!” To which I answered, “I know, I asked them where they banked because I figured you’d be more inclined to help me if you felt you had a handle on where my receipts were coming from.” The banker was impressed and asked for more information. I was emotionally prepared for rejection but went ahead and told him, truthfully, of the plan. When I finished he asked, “Do you know anyone else around here who’s doing it with horses?” I told him no. “And you think you can?” I told him – I know I can and will because everything depends on it. He said, “Okay, what have you got for security?”

After going over everything he said he would loan $17,000 for one year. I was flabbergasted, that was more than I had hoped for. (Less than I really needed and far too short a term but more than I thought I would get.)

I divided the loan proceeds into three categories. One was for another team of horses (I had decided I would need four to get the work done) and the equipment I would need. Another was for seed and supplies. And the third was for money to live on for at least 7 months.

The equipment I needed included a disc, a harrow, a corn and bean planter, a rake, a potato digger and irrigation pipe. I had or had access to most everything else. I had plows, mower, manure spreader, and cultivators. I made a budget of how much I would spend on each amount. And I went shopping. Boy, was I surprised! For example, I had budgeted a modest $300 each for a disc and planter. I bought both in good condition for $80 total and I still use them today! I budgeted $2,500 for a team of broke work horses (nothing fancy). I bought two 1600 lb., crossbred geldings (9 and 10 yr olds) with harness included for $1,500!!! By the time I bought everything I needed in horses and equipment (excluding irrigation) I had spent less than $2,500!! I was excited! (I was also suspicious, wondering what I had done wrong.)

Here it was the end of March and I had a farm, most all of what I needed (or thought I needed) to work it and a market for what I would grow. I thought I was all set! But in retrospect, I realize that what came next was a stroke of luck without which I would surely have failed.

Two gentlemen who raised and worked horses learned of my plans and approached me with an offer. They needed somewhere to ‘tune’ up their horses for the May plowing competitions and their lands were not suited. They asked if they could come to my new farm and help me plow up 20 acres. Ray Drongesen and Charlie Jensen were both twice my age and had lifetimes of horsework between them.

So when time came to open land I had two “experts” helping me adjust harness, “learn” my horses, and adjust the plow. The work proceeded very nicely. Working around the weather and including the time it took for them to haul their horses over, we plowed up twenty-six acres in a week’s time. (Actually spent less than three days plowing). Then they gave me some tips on preparing the seedbed and left. I was on my own! (But not really, because they were always available to help me ‘figure’ out stuff. I doubt I would have been able to make it that first year without Ray and Charlie’s help.)

GOING PAST ARRIVAL

I remember one early, misty, Spring morning when, after feeding and harnessing, I walked out to the field to check the moisture to see if I could disc or if it was too muddy. I stood alone looking at the worked up soil and felt a wave pass over me as I seemed to realize for the first time that I had arrived. I was where I had been heading for all of my life. I had my farm and all of my days were spent on it, with it, in it. And there were unexpected pleasures and advantages. Like the horses and how they seemed to be making things possible. And how I loved to work them.

Then came another wave, but this one was cold. I awoke from my daydream realizing I did not “have” my farm. I had a “chance” at it but payments had to be made or I would lose it and all I had put in. And, sure, I had some ground plowed and harrowed but there was a tremendous amount of work yet to do and mountains of unknowns and uncertainties. As for the horses, I just prayed they, in their part of the plan, would come through for me. I believed in them but there were these moments of doubt.

I walked back to the house, got my thermos and notebook, and went to hitch four abreast to the disc and harrow. Four hours of slicing and raking the soil was the only medicine for the doubt and panic I felt. And it always worked.

The Spring and Summer went that way with many successes, some sorrow, plenty of failings, moments of determination and accomplishment peppered with little doubts and panics. But those particular doubts slowly disappeared as the work got done and I came to believe, even into my subconscious, that with intelligence and hard work the horses were a sensible, practical and wholly possible power source.

I made my payments, the plan succeeded and I enjoyed my honest start with that small farm.

And, as for the horses; I had begun this adventure excusing the horses as just a temporary way to get rolling. After that first year I knew I would never feel comfortable farming with tractors again. I loved the work with these animals and felt it had given me a new connection with farming processes. In addition I realized that my good start with this farm was due almost entirely to work horses as power. These new friends of mine, the horses, were truly partners in my life’s work. It gave new meaning, substance, clarity and heft to the constantly self-renewing discovery that “I Work Horses.”