I took these photos while driving around the Mt. Hope area of Amish Ohio. Whenever I am here, I feel a remembrance for how things might be. Strong, fertile, beautiful, individual farms each self reliant and yet dependent on the overall supportive community.

I am in need of professional advice. Recently I had a bad experience with my team as I was backing them away from where I harness on my way to hitch to the forecart. Their back ends got farther and farther apart as they came back and all of a sudden Ben turned inward and came straight at me. The lines became tangled and were pulling on Molly’s mouth. She flew back the other way jerking Ben’s bit and hurting him. My friend got to Molly’s head and I stopped Ben before anything worse happened but they were very upset and almost got away. When I back them up they often spread apart in back but I never lost control before. What can I do to keep this from happening again?

This past year we decided to pursue a dream of adding horses to our farming system. In May, we purchased two Haflinger mares, Dixie and Dolly, from an Amish family near Marshfield, Wisconsin. The well-trained team of full sisters have worked together their entire lives. Last season we used them for some cultivating and pulling a wagon. Over the winter we have modified several tractor drawn implements to be used by the horses. We have also purchased a harrow, and several cultivators in the hopes of using our horses more this season in growing your food.

Carrots and beets are some of the vegetables that are easy to kill with kindness. They’re little gluttons for space and nutrients, and must be handled with an iron fist to make them grow straight and strong. Give the buggers no slack at all! Your motto should be – “If in doubt, yank it out!” I pinch out a finger full (maybe 3/4” wide) and skip a finger width. Pinch and skip, pinch and skip, working with existing gaps and rooting out particularly thick clumps.

Dad believed he’d learned enough about farming in high school to get by until “horse sense” kicked in. If he could get his brothers to pool resources with him, they could build a mushroom plant and begin harvesting by the first of the year. Depression times caused folks to view mushrooms in a new light – not a mere side dish with a juicy steak, but a protein-rich steak substitute. Dad’s brothers saw his plan as a way to fight The Great Depression, and his mother, our feisty, little Scottish grandma, said to count her in.

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.

At one time, I though diatomaceous earth was an end-all, be-all. But now I realize it’s just another ingredient, or component, of a healthy diet. There are thousands of natural things out there that have benefits for animals. For years I tracked the wild horses here in Owyhee County, to see what they were eating – to try to figure out why they would go from one place to the next. Then I would take samples of the soil and the plants there. If they need selenium, for instance, they tend to seek it out; they’ll go 25 miles to get it. They’ll eat around that area and graze awhile, and maybe eat a little of the dirt, then leave. The same is true when they need manganese.

A general barn plan showing floor plan layout and an elevation view. Also a pedal-powered crosscut saw.

The illustrations on these pages came from two old Harness Catalogs, one from Southern Saddlery of Chattanooga and the other, an Oregon company named Keller Harness. We offer these pictures to help answer questions we’ve received about the difference between work and buggy brichens as well as breast collars versus hame-style.

Researchers made multiple 30-minute observations weekly of each mare-foal pair noting aggressive behavior, such as head threats, bites and kicks. They also studied non-aggressive behavior, and spatial relationships. Foals were studied with their dams as sucklings and after weaning up to 6-months of age. Foals were weaned at 4 months of age.

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.

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.

Since the rate of seeding any oats with a grain drill will vary considerably with the degree of cleanness of the oats, the most satisfactory method of determining an accurate drill setting for any particular lot of seed is by a calibration test. To make this test, raise and block up one side of the drill so that the wheel on that side will turn freely. The seed dropped by a certain number of revolutions of the wheel should be collected in cans, paper sacks, or on a canvas spread beneath all drill tubes. The table shows the number of wheel revolutions for various drill widths and wheel diameters to cover 1/10 acre.

Brandon’s Kite • I Remember the Sun • Pedro • Poems • Speedy

“WHOA!” I shout in my 7 going on 8 voice. I pull back on the lines and the horses obey my signal and stop. Fannie and Jenny are two strong workhorses. Fannie is a bay. She is brown with black socks and black mane and tail. Jenny is a sorrel. Her coat is red and she has a blond mane and tail. In size I’m hardly more significant to them than one of the annoying flies they flick away with their tails, but they do as I command with both my voice and the leather lines I hold in my hands. It is haying time on our farm in Wisconsin. I have an important part to play in the ongoing process of producing and harvesting that makes up our daily lives.

I understand the necessity of manure management and don’t mean to make light of such an important environmental concern, but let us not forget to use common sense. The main problem is animal numbers. The more animals confined in a given area, the bigger the problem with waste disposal. It is a sad state of affairs in today’s agriculture when a once valuable commodity, becomes an undesirable by-product.

I have seen both sides of Mexican “immigration” — their homes and villages in Mexico and their struggle to survive here. I think “displacement” would be a better word. Most Mexicans don’t want to leave their country and most of those who are here hope to return. They line up to send money orders back home. They dream about making enough money so that they can leave a land where they are often lonely, isolated and without an official identity.

Bob Olson is unquestionably good at building a foundation that relies on impeccable safety skills. His attention to detail and comfort for his horses is apparent in the way they are so happy to work. He continually stressed that our attitude is carried right up from our feet and out our hands, thus the need to be in the correct frame of mind to work with the horses. We were taught to partner up with our horses and feel them. Mr. Olson demonstrated the correct rein techniques by the students holding onto the reins imagining that we were the horses. It was very apparent that good hands and the techniques he showed us made a really big difference to the way the horse experiences your cues.

The Orange is one of the oldest of cultivated fruits. Its nativity is still in doubt, but it is probable that it is indigenous to the Indo-Chinese region. It is now widely distributed in all warm-temperate and tropical countries, in many of which it has run wild and behaves like a native plant. In parts of Florida the Orange was found wild when permanent settlements were made, but it had probably spread from stock that was introduced by the early Spaniards.

Well, like the sign says… plans for building an Ox Yoke and for setting up a Three Abreast Evener for an implement with a Standard Tongue.

Raised beds may not be right for everyone, and our way is not the only way. I have seen raised beds made from rows of 5’ diameter kiddy pools, and heard of a fellow who collected junk refrigerators from the dump and lined them up on their backs into a rainbow of colored enameled steel raised beds. Even rows of five-gallon pails filled with plants count as raised beds in my estimation. Do it any way you care to, but do it if it’s right for you.

In order to get a clear idea of the modern valuation of the soil and its effects, it is well to begin with the opposite of the unavoidable sketchiness of a trans-continental survey, such as that of the last chapter, and to concentrate upon self-contained examples on a small scale. Small islands offer themselves at once as the opposite to great continents. By nature they are self-contained. Their inhabitants get food from the sea, a source with which they are unable to interfere as they can with the soil. Sea-food, therefore, has the natural quality of wholeness. Health, therefore, should be found in such islands.

It is very early. The sun is just peeking its head over the horizon and the fluffy clouds are glowing a pale pink. The birds are stirring overhead, stretching their wings and cooing softly to their nestlings. A sleepy rabbit hops slowly across the path and disappears into the tall grass. In the middle of the field a solitary figure stands, drinking in the fresh morning air. He holds a scythe over his right shoulder, and in his left hand is a whetstone, resting in a yellow cone. He stands motionless, watching as the golden orb of the sun shoots up above the horizon, flooding the sleepy hills with light.

Want to groom sled trails, freeze skid trails, or set cross-country ski trails? Here is a relatively inexpensive device that has numerous advantages over the conventional chain link fence, bedspring, log, tractor tire, etc. It is easy to construct, manhandle, and store. One of the major advantages over some other methods is that it allows the snow to stay on the trail rather than pushing it to the side. This action allows it to cover rough surfaces such as roots, rocks, and ruts.

Historically, wagons were sold with brakes as an extra or special ordered, like extra side boards, heavier wheels and running gear, or a CD player. In some regions of the country that were hilly, like the south, local manufacturers would put brakes on every wagon. But if you were to order a new wagon from the Sears or Wards catalogue, the brakes were a special order.

When the first cattle drive was organized in the late 1860’s, a common farm wagon was fitted with a large wooden box that was designed to serve as the cook’s mobile kitchen, pantry and storage. The difference between a ‘covered wagon’ and a ‘chuck wagon’ is the chuck box. From the earliest of time, any wagon could have, and usually was, fitted with wooden bows and a canvas cover. As time passed and more cattle were being driven, pushed, poked and otherwise moo-o-o-ved north, the chuck wagon was refined. This is how it became what we think of and see today. Chuck wagons are still in use on ranches and for recreation.

The decision to put in a cook stove was actually not made quite so lightly. We try to minimize our use of fossil fuels if alternative energy sources can be found. For many energy uses, alternatives are readily available, but cooking is a tough issue. However, we all need to cook, and many of our foods don’t have the same nutrition if they aren’t cooked. Many are certainly less palatable. Solar ovens work well under the right temperature and culinary conditions, but early morning is not the right time or place to make granola in one. Solar electricity may be an option, but resistance heating eats up precious solar-produced watts faster than anything.

Joseph, I agree with your twist on some of us farmers/homesteaders being ruled by the farm and its work. It’s a case of the “tail wagging the dog.” Maybe we should discuss our time management methods of deciding when to determine when “enough is enough.” We are not in it for the money and this is the lifestyle we choose. So…why is it so stressful? Is this the way it is supposed to be?

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.’

Chuck Baley of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, is a big, quiet man steeped in the best of the old western traditions. His skill with horses is the stuff of legends with stories coming to us from the northern plains on down into the four corners. I’m proud to call him a friend, just close enough to him to have taught a little workshop together and be privy to his personal photo albums. I snuck off with these recent photos of him, all showing his year round work training four 2 year old Suffolks to do everything willingly and quietly.