Everyone is familiar with the old parable – What comes first – the chicken or the egg? Well, when we moved to our current farm in 1981, the parable was – What will come first – the work horse or the family cow? For years we had been reading the works of Wendell Berry, subscribing to the Small Farmer’s Journal, and planning how we would incorporate all these thoughts when we had a larger farm. We had riding horses at the time and were trying to convert them into practical work horses with mixed success. But having a dairy cow and being able to produce milk and butter also captivated our interest.

Apparently the Kerry breed is descended from the extinct Celtic Shorthorn, which originated in the Mediterranean region. As the Celts migrated across Europe, they brought their cattle northward with them. There is close resemblance with the Heren, the small black breed surviving in the high Alps and with the fierce black bulls of Camargue. It is believed the Kerry Cattle have existed in Ireland since 2000 BC. The skull is very similar in formation to the ancient aurochs of the Stone Age, though smaller in size.

What can be more important to sustainable farming than training farmers to insure its continuation? If farm numbers are to increase, we must have a way to pass the necessary skills on to the next generation. In speaking with Paul Birdsall of Maine, who has had about 130 apprentices over 27 years on his horse powered farm, he said, “Molly and I always considered having apprentices to be the most important thing we did.” He now has a whole network of small farmer friends who were once his apprentices.

Before I get into placing the chain on the logs, there is an extremely important safety consideration that I feel must be emphasized. I implore you to always have your skid chain completely unhooked from the horse(s) when working to position and attach it around logs, or any other load. In other words, a chain that you are hooking to logs, poles, or anything else, should not be attached in any way to a single tree, double tree, or any other rigging which is hooked to a horse, horses, oxen, goat, etc. If a horse moves unexpectedly, and even the best of them do at times, I guarantee that you do not want your hands and fingers near the chain and the log that they are hitched to. “Stung by a yellow jacket” comes to mind here.

When I was a young dreamer of farms I had an unquenchable hunger for books on the subject, especially those which fed my poetic notions of the vocation. And amongst the books which started me off, I loved the picture books of the late Eric Sloane best. And from those I prized at the top my copy of his barn book.

Many seem to believe the process of making beer is so infernally complicated it can only be done by ancient European guild members or a team of guys in white lab coats – and so, what you’re serving them will doubtless render them blind and insane. Or it’s strictly illegal – and now they’re party to a federal crime. Or it’s so expensive you might as well be drinking Dom Perignon. None of these things is true. In fact, home brewed ale has been an English farmhouse tradition, which dates back centuries, if not millennia. It was the daily beverage of hard working, simple, thrifty people.

Colorful Poultry Plates • Wildlife Habitat • Bird Safety • Post Pullers

After the first ten years of cultivating the bio-extensive market garden, we began to see some real differences in the performance of each field. Field 6, in particular, was not a dependable producer. Part of the reason became clear after reviewing our fertility input records and soil test reports: this half-acre plot had not benefited from as much compost as the rest of the market garden, including a stretch of six years when it had not received any fertility inputs at all other than the fallow year cover crops. Needless to say, Field 6 tested low in several key nutrients.

If a change in customer demand shifted our crop mix toward the heat loving plants, we might be tempted to try out the biodegradable mulches on our no-till ridge system. We would simply stretch the solar absorbing biodegradable material over the dead cover crop mulch on the ridge, securing it with the heavy layer of wheat straw we normally use to hold moisture in the pathways. In this fantasy triple-mulch system, we imagine the ridges covered and winterkilled cover crop residues and biodegradable film would warm up even faster than black plastic laid on flat ground. At the same time, the straw mulch in the valleys should conserve enough moisture to minimize the need for drip irrigation.

Building ridges the last week of August with Buster and Ben. Note, we now use two sets of disc hillers on the cultivator to make a somewhat wider ridge. These “mini-raised beds” make no-till planting much easier than trying to mark a no-till planting furrow on a peaked ridge.

One of the benefits of being involved in the NEON research project was the opportunity to pursue some of our own research questions. We were particularly interested in getting some “professional help” to setup a trial comparing the difference in soil moisture and temperature between the reduced tillage systems we use for early planted aliums.

Why would anyone choose, today, to be a farmer when the life of a computer programmer, a college professor, a pharmacist, a law clerk, a venture capitalist, a government systems analyst, a bio-chemist, an advertising executive, a realtor, or a stock broker, could be theirs? I don’t like the question, whether it’s meant sarcastically or not. I like even less the inference. Heaviest for me though is my negative feeling about the human failing which generates such questions. Yet the question begs an answer.

The First Annual State of Ohio Plowing Contest was held on September 17, 2003 at the Ohio Farm Science Review in London, Ohio. The plowing contest hosted some of the best plowing competitors throughout the state of Ohio.

Don Luhning and his veteran team help teach the new guys how the horsepower works and how to make it perform most satisfactorily. The 8 horse horsepower was set up to drive a 22” Case Separator. This complete outfit has been run for 22 years by Don Luhning on his farm during Bonanza Days.

We would like to thank all those that came to our 6th Annual Fun Time Plowing Match! Mother Nature awarded us with a lot of rain again. The horses and mules proved their ability to plow in water. There has not been a tractor made yet that could work like these animals.

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.

Emily’s Sunflower • The BE Puzzle • How to Make a Wooden Toy • Nosey

While many of those old relics just sit there, some are actually used on the farm. Sam has assigned each to a special job, he told me with a proud grin, the kind you see on parents relating the exploits of precocious children. He pointed them out as he talked. “I use that John Deere M T to haul water to the cattle in the far pasture. This John Deere R is perfect for hauling loads of hay in from the field.” They were the same color and looked alike to me. “This L Case, now,” he went on indicating a ponderous machine painted Flambou Red, “pulls the manure spreader, and this Allis Chalmers W D is the one I use to tow the hay baler.”

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.

This poultry feeder is light, inexpensive, simple in construction, easily filled and cleaned, keeps feed dry, and serves somewhat as a shelter for the birds.

i have no degrees in horticulture, let alone plant breeding. But, i’m breeding up an ecological storm and having a great time in the process. Not only that, but i’m getting results. i believe some of these results are as good or better than those from the multi-million dollar corporate breeding section and they’re my creative vision, not GroupThought Inc. My budget is nil compared to theirs, wouldn’t even show up on their budgetary radar screens. You know what? i like it that way because no one’s looking over my shoulder, no one’s saying this is where i should be heading, no one’s saying “you’re over budget,” no one’s saying “it’s not commercial enough” or “you’re taking too long” or “it won’t ship well” or “it won’t store well” or “its taste is too intense for the mass market” or “it’s too tall” or it’s not this or that or “where are the results” or, or, or…

The word primitive is defined by Annandale’s Concise Dictionary as ‘characterized by the simplicity of the old times.’ The lexicographer, with this definition, hits off with happy ease an exact description of the primitive peoples of this chapter and of the two that follow it. ‘The simplicity of old times’ just fits, for the lexicographer informs us under the word ‘simple’ that it derives ‘from a root meaning one or unity.’ We can now paraphrase our heading of Primitive Farmers, as Farmers characterized by unity. We must do this quickly before going on to read other definitions of ‘simple,’ for we shall find that one of them is ‘easily intelligible,’ and farmers characterized by unity are not a bit easily understood by modern peoples. It is because they have so rarely been understood that so many troubles have come to them from the moderns.

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.

We were ready. We had spent five years apprenticing at farms and CSAs. We had worked a lot, read a lot, questioned a lot, even groused a little, and in the process, learned everything we needed to know about CSA farming, or so we thought. Why, we could even explain in twenty-five words (or more) to puzzled family, friends, and neighbors just what a CSA was:

In early 2001, after a year of scrimping and saving, I set out for Europe for three months. I had a variety of reasons for going, one of which was WWOOF – something I had learned about in the US, but had yet to experience, or meet anyone who had. WWOOF – Willing Workers on Organic Farms – is a way too well-kept secret here in the US. Now an international program, it began in 1972, in England. Then called Weekend Workers on Organic Farms, it gave people the chance to learn about organic growing by doing it, in exchange for room and board.

Anyone who lives in the country, or even at the edge of cities, has heard this wild, eerie, canine song of family, longing, hunting and joy. But Tillie, being only ten months old, hadn’t heard them before. She was frightened, yet intensely interested in what they had to say. We listened for a while and then I coaxed her out to the barn to check on the animals out there. The coyotes were silent then. They have the habit of stopping their chorus as completely and suddenly as they start. I started singing my own song, loudly, hoping not to meet any of them between the house and the barn. We didn’t and the rest of the night was silent.

There are three main classes of chemical sheep wormers used in Britain. Sheep worms are becoming resistant to all three of them. That’s not the way to go. Routine use of chemical wormers is the best way of building up drug resistance and, itself, is an indication of poor management. Drug addiction is no good for man nor beast. In this short article I propose to set out how I have kept farm horses clear of worms for many years without any drugs. Any system has a few rules. These are mine: