Hope this finds you well! It’s been about 21 years since I last wrote (Summer 1987). Our family has grown and grown up! We have two sons, Seth, 24 and Sam, 18. Seth graduated from college and decided to move home. He has his own tree business and helps on the family farm.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in the wilderness? Well in 1999, after years of homesteading in Northern Maine, we decided to find out. Our pursuit of a wilderness homesite led us to Northern Saskatchewan where we have established a remote homestead on a lake in the wilds of Canada. Because there are no roads in or out of our location, we are accessible only by float plane and are truly on our own. We fly to town twice a year for supplies. These bi-annual trips to town are our only chance to send and receive mail and see other people. When we are home, we may not see another soul for 6 months at a time.

For horses being part of a group and interacting with others in the group is very important for comfort and safety. It is natural and important for horses to both rely on a leader and to have trusted companionship. We can be a friend and companion to our horses, but only if we earn and keep their trust. One of the primary principles and goals of Natural Horsemanship is 100% trust (others are 100% respect and 0% fear). It’s relatively easy to gain a horse’s trust if we use their language and logic and play by horse rules rather than trying to communicate and behave in ways that are natural and seem logical to us as humans.

Typically I am bored stiff by academic books on agricultural history. It seems most of these books work hard to remove the human element from the narrative, if there is one. I say books rather than authors because I know a few agricultural academics and found them to be insightful and genuinely human. Must be something about the publishing/academic filter that squeezes the juice right out of the material. So when Mule South arrived at our office, I did not get around to look at it for a while. When I did, I was pulled right in to what I found to be an outstanding “narrative” laid right over the top of excellent scholarship. I was so impressed with the material and the presentation that I knew I wanted to do a review but felt challenged that anything I would do could not do justice to the full import of the book. So I contacted the publisher and received permission to republish an entire chapter in this issue.

On the farm, they are all there. Distracted, wearing straw hats while they lash a canoe to the back of the truck.
It is Sunday, the dogs announce to us while we caress their jowls,
and I wish that I could lie here,
in the dandelion pasture,
forever.

Being a city boy who yearned to live in the country, I signed up for agriculture class. This allowed me to join Future Farmers of America and sat me in Mr. Buck Tyler’s class. His was not a tenth grade curriculum but a cross-section of about ten rawboned boys from ninth to twelve grades. All reared in Allendale, some had taken “ag” several years. Farming which had only been my dream was their life.

Most often while driving around Wisconsin we see machinery and men ploughing the fields of the state powered by combustion engines. While sliding down the Cannon Valley of southwest Monroe County, we spotted machinery and a man ploughing the fields with two horses and a puppy. We would learn the horses were Percherons, a special breed originally from France, a majestic and powerful breed able to take on tough jobs such as ploughing, and memorable jobs such as drawing a marriage carriage. We met Jim Olson and Lady and Sandy, and Jim was kind enough to put his team through a routine for us to watch, photograph and enjoy.

Even before the planet’s aggravated weather cycles could finish whuppin’ our sorry butts with natural disaster after natural disaster, ‘our’ economy goes terminally ill. The planet is sick and we made her sick. The corporate dragons who promised to feed and care for us are imploding. The coupons we were told to treat as indicators of our ‘wealth’ have become worthless. The governments we needed to believe in have become hideously self-serving and stupid. And, irony of ironies, the very skills which have been mocked and denigrated for half a century now turn out to be the only things which can save most of us; skills such as food preservation and gardening, the craft of natural farming and the ability to heat and clothe ourselves.

The last few embers of the
rose are dying,
Homeward the drowsy bear
trudges through his wood;
Westward and sunward the wild
geese are flying,
Lemon-brown and rustling the
marsh reeds are sighing,
And the small grove lullabies
her brood.

How Wee Black Chicken Found a New Home • What’s Wrong With These Pictures • Make a Shaker • Puppy Pull Toy

Spring has finally arrived in the northwest. There was one day that the sun came out. The swallows returned and started building nests in the barn. Even the daffodils bloomed. After the coldest spring in memory, we thought that winter had finally receded. But a pall settled down on Small Blessings Farm for our great draft horse, Snip, died.

The onion in one or more of its several forms has been in use throughout all time of which we have authentic history. From available records it would appear that the original home of the onion was in southern Asia or in the countries surrounding or bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. During early times the onion was highly esteemed as an article of food, also as a preventive of thirst while on the march or traveling in the desert. In olden times the production of onions was confined to the alluvial river valleys, but the improvement and adaptation of varieties has made it possible to grow this crop under widely diverse conditions.

A subsidy can be used to support businesses that might otherwise fail or to encourage activities that might not otherwise take place. Subsidies can be regarded as a form of protectionism or trade barrier by making domestic goods and services artificially competitive against imports. Subsidies may distort markets, and can impose large economic costs.

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.

I remember, when I was a boy growing up on the farm, how my younger brother and I looked forward to Christmas Eve, and the arrival of Santa Claus. Each December 24th, after we had done all of our chores out in the barn: fed the calves, put out fresh bedding for all of the animals, and given our ponies their Christmas treats, we’d get cleaned up and ready for bed. Of course, like most kids, we always put out a snack for Santa – a mug of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies, or maybe a glass of milk and a piece of pie. But, in addition to Santa’s snack, we always left some nice, fresh hay out in the front yard for the reindeer, too.

It is rare that a team of oxen naturally have horns that match one another. Teamsters often use various methods to manage the growth of a horn. The most common method is to use horn weights to pull the horn downward.

The spector of delay hovers over any frequent traveler. Who doesn’t shudder at the thought of languishing in an airport – or worse, on a runway – for hours at a time, or of creeping along a highway through a construction zone in the boxy embrace of big rigs? On a recent two-week trip to points west and north of my home in south-central Indiana, I experienced several of the inevitable delays of long-distance travel – and I wouldn’t have missed any of them.

Many amateur fruit growers are concerned at times because their trees do not begin to bear as soon after being planted as they had expected or do not bear as abundantly as they wish. In some cases after bearing for a period of years the trees cease to produce, or bear irregularly. While sometimes the reason for a fruit tree not bearing may be obscure and not explainable on any known basis, in the majority of cases such failure is due to some one of several well recognized factors. The more common of these are here briefly discussed.

Pack River Yak Ranch is a pretty quiet place, even with a herd of 20 Registered Tibetan Yaks pastured near Christine and Sam Stoneham’s log home. That’s because yaks don’t moo… they make a low grunting sound. And they don’t even do that very often.