SFJ Spring 2016 Preview: Edward O. Wilson’s new book, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, offers a plan for the problem of species extinction: the dominant species, man, must hold itself back, must relinquish half the earth’s surface to those endangered. It is a challenging and on the face of it improbable thought, expressed in a terse style. But his phrases are packed because the hour is late.

The artisanal maple producer is passionate and thrills his associates by producing very tasty excellent quality syrup. He never stops innovating in the transformation of maple products and in the use of maple syrup in the kitchen to embellish various dishes. How many maple producers still today collect maple sap in a bucket or with horses or by gravity? Very few you say… well, think again, there are hundreds and hundreds.

Duck raising is conducted successfully both as a side issue on general farms and as a special business on a large scale. The Pekin is the best breed for duck farming. Many breeds are very ornamental as well as useful, making the breeding of real interest wherever there are natural facilities for keeping waterfowl. The rearing of ducks for market on a large scale requires extensive capital and experience. A location on a stream of running water is essential for the best results in duck farming.

When I can pull myself away from the farm and I’ve got a few dollars to burn I’m an avid auction-goer. To me, a good farm auction is a fun social occasion and an educational experience to boot. And if I can get a few good deals while I’m there, so much the better. So what follows are a set of tips and tricks I have observed and used in my own auction-going experiences. May they be of good use to you as well.

The foundation of the circular beater is a cold-rolled, steel shaft securely fastened at each end of the rear of the spreader box. This shaft does not revolve, but forms a sort of a curved axle on which the beater revolves. The great advantage of the circular beater is that it spreads more than twice its own width — away beyond the wheels on each side. The circular beater is imitated as closely as the patents allow but none of the imitations will give you the positive, uniform, wide, even spread of the Fearless.

Now, after a one lifetime span of almost free energy and resultant copious food, the entire world faces the imminent decline (and eventual demise) of finite, fossil-fuel capital. Without fossil fuels, food can no longer be produced in one area and shipped thousands of miles to market. To suggest that the world will be able to feed the UN projected population of nine billion by 2050 is totally incomprehensible in the face of declining oil.

After several years of thinking about and planning a concept design for a tool carrier that could handle our cultivation needs, we began to see the possibility of a horse drawn cultivating and implement tool carrier design based on a combination of several implements we either had on the farm or could use as inspiration for critical design functions for the tool to be successful.

The Mayor of Muttonville • Milky Moo

It seems odd to write about the end of last year’s tomato crop while sitting here on the cusp of a new planting season. But that’s what comes of diving into seed catalogs in late winter. One is reminded of crops past and future. There is nothing like that yearly ritual of ordering seeds to invigorate ones agricultural spirit, to renew excitement for the coming season.

We Millers were invited to attend the Fiftieth Anniversary Oregon Draft Horse and Mule Breeders plowing match at the Yamhill County Heritage Center in McMinnville. I was one of the judges (along with Michael Webster). Kristi took photos, some of which you see on these pages. It was a splendid day, perfect weather and a well organized event with lots of spectators.

Surely it was a banner Challenge. The eager SRO crowd was treated to some bovine beauties guided carefully with voice commands. All the teamsters used the traditional twisted Hickory stick made by a respected teamster of yore, Art Hine, and given to the Challenge by Art’s son Nathan. Ten teamsters took home their share of the rosette ribbons and generous premiums provided by the fair officials. It was a long afternoon filled with patience, surprises and good humor.

SFJ Spring 2016 Preview: We need to find simple, direct, rewarding solutions to human interaction with all other forms of biological life. We need to find ways that our time on earth is beneficial for all. People are the problem but they are also the solution, or they contain the stuff that would make things right. Strength and billions of small adventurous choices to protect where we live, that’s the stuff.

After about two weeks of labor spread over the summer and around $600, we had rehabilitated the hay loader to its former glory and it was time to put it to the test. We towed it out there, engaged the hubs, and off we went! It worked better than we ever imagined. We brought a 70 year old machine back to life, and with liberal applications of grease and oil, it should last at least another 70 years!

Picking apples is a specialized operation for which there is a special technique. Inexperienced pickers do not have this technique but can acquire it. How well they do so and how quickly they become smooth pickers depends largely upon how painstakingly the orchardist and foreman teach them in the beginning. To fail here may mean to fail completely.

It is in the rice fields, however, that the buffalo excels. Rice is not sown broadcast; it is first planted in nurseries, and when about 12 inches high is transplanted a spear at a time into the soft mud of the fields which has been prepared by ploughing. In preparing the ground for the rice, no animal is equal to the buffalo, for in the mud and water of the field it is in its element. Its great weight causes it to sink deep in the mud and its enormous strength enables it to plough deeper than can be done in any other manner.

The importance of poultry-house ventilation is generally conceded, but just what is meant by ventilation and how it may be accomplished is not so well known. It is becoming increasingly evident that adequate ventilation cannot be accomplished merely by throwing doors and windows wide open to let the wind blow into the house; the air conditions within the pen must be so controlled that weather has only a secondary effect.

A couple of years back I spent a couple of days logging with Donnie Middaugh. Since the log job was closer to my house than his, we used my horses to skid the job. Roy and Libby was the team. This team had skidded more timber than most Timberjack 230’s will ever hook onto, but at this point in their lives, they hadn’t skidded logs in a couple of years. I was pulling the team at horse pulls and kept them hard with occasional farm work, but mostly pulling an exercise sled to keep in shape for the pulls.

There are well over five hundred Pioneer and Heritage Museums across the US, some big, some small, some targeted to a single domain (i.e. homesteading, logging, farming or mining) some like the Yamhill Heritage Center more broadly organized. Most of them have been around a long time and, tragically, many are challenged by lack of volunteer interest and funding. It is very unusual for a region, or town, or county to find the volunteer enthusiasms and the funding to build up a new museum center in these days of baggy pants and plastic wallets.

This grand, old, operating steam tractor is one of the center pieces of the new and exciting Yamhill Heritage Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, home of the Oregon Draft Horse Breeders’ Plow Match. As my grandsons, Reuben, Ben and Jean Pierre would say “Wow, Grampa!” And that is the essence of a cultural and historical handoff that each and every community should be proud to say they valued.

When I first got involved with working horses in the late 1980s, I was lucky enough to work for the late Geoff Morton who used horses for nearly everything on the farm. With the enthusiasm of the novice I was constantly asking questions. What I often thought was a straightforward question would often elicit a pause, and as often as not the answer was preceded by, ‘Well, there’s more about it than you might think.’