The 2nd Annual Cedar Creek Plow Day took place on October 10-12, 2024. Event attendees enjoyed various booths displaying different skills such as cheesemaking, making butter, canning meat, rendering animal fat, sourdough, raising and dispatching rabbits, butchering chickens, cloth production in the 1800s, broom making, caring for a family milk cow, and natural remedies and tinctures. Several craft vendors were also on site. Local volunteer fire departments provided food and drinks for sale. Teamsters used horses and mules to plow and demonstrate horse-drawn farm implements. A pony treadmill was used to make ice cream daily, but was usually full of children walking to make ice cream instead of a pony.

There are numerous options for farrowing sows ranging from free-range to pens to crates – each has its own distinct advantages and disadvantages. Your choice will be based on your weather and unique farm situation but the primary consideration must be the safety of the people caring for the sow and her piglets.

What would drive a crusty old farmer to go, on a brisk February day, into the desert woods with a rusty folding chair and a paint box to ‘understand’ an old tree? The day in question, three years ago, was my 75th birthday and I had promised myself I would, weather permitting, go to the woods to paint. As farmer and as an artist, I have been fortunate that for fifty years, without the words to describe it, I have known the connection between the two disciplines to be powerful, not perhaps in the outcomes or products but most certainly in how it arms me and charges my observational batteries and my gratitudes.

James “Tim” Hendrix of Arkansas contacted me many months ago looking for help to find people who might be interested in his farm equipment collection. We spoke on the phone and when he said the magic words Allis-Chalmers All Crop my ears perked up. This particular make and model of small, pull-type, motorized combine is highly sought after for its suitability to be pulled by small tractor or by draft horses and mules. Along with that, many believe this unit had the widest and the most superior range of cleaning adjustments and settings. I personally looked for 30 years to try to find a working or restorable All Crop for our own use, but to no avail. Now, here I was talking to a Journal reader who said he had two of them in his barn he wanted to sell!

We moved to this farm a year ago. I had sworn I would never move again, but we moved anyway. Our sheep had outgrown our original place five minutes down the road. When this place popped up for sale, with 4 times as much space, it seemed like an opportunity, and the price was right. One of the many difficulties would be that the new place didn’t have a barn or adequate fencing. We got to work on the fencing immediately. We only made our neighbors angry a handful of times as the sheep did their work of showing us the spots in the fence that still needed attention. Before long, we were moved. Still no barn. Which brings us back to our job tonight. We were going to be “Catchin’ Sheeps.”

At Colonial Homestead it is common to see people engaged in building or repairing furniture, such as Windsor chairs with hand tools, or cutting joints for a timber frame house, or carving spoons, building flintlock rifles, sharpening saws, making work benches, or quite often sitting comfortably with a book and coffee.

Having reached the fabled three score and ten (plus two) I have been looking back on my time with draft horses and farming to see where I have been and where I think we should be going. Please indulge me. I had graduated from college and had bought an unbroke 800-pound mule who was named “Elizabeth Jane” from a local horse trader. I paid $125 for her and later learned she had jumped over a 3-foot gate with a rider on her back. So, I had grossly overpaid for her. Luckily, we were well matched – neither knew enough to pour water out of a boot and both were equally stubborn about our lack of knowledge.

Dogs are companion animals and on a farm they can be a vital partner that helps make a farm successful. They guard vulnerable livestock and crops. They can alert their human companions to undetected threats. They can also save a lot of legwork when moving livestock.

Like many organic vegetable growers getting started in the 80s, we judged the health of the soil by its look, smell, and feel, and by counting the number of earthworms. We also measured soil quality by the performance of the crops and by using standard soil tests that included soil organic matter analysis and cation base saturation percentages. Most importantly, we judged the health of the soil by how well we realized the specific soil management objectives for our farm. Right from the start, we decided we wanted to grow field vegetables without irrigation, reduce weed pressure using cover crops and bare fallow periods, and rely on the composted manure from our work horses as the only organic matter input for the market garden. By this criteria, we have achieved decent soil health on our farm.

It is fair to say that the harrow is one of the oldest and most versatile tools in all the long history of agriculture. It has been essential in shaping the landscape of farming, serving as a tool for soil cultivation, management of grassland and for various tasks related to crop production. Over centuries, it evolved from a simple wooden structure to more complex mechanized devices, and yet while the harrow once played a central role in agricultural practices worldwide, it’s importance has declined in recent decades due to technological advancements and the rise of more specialized machinery and farming practices.

The Tale of Nimble Deer Part 9

A week or so after moving the birds out of the brooder and onto pasture, I noticed one chick that was not growing as quickly as the others. Despite his size, he was extremely nimble and active, especially when considering the general lethargy of the breed. He fell so far behind in his growth that when butchering day arrived we left him until the very end. There he was, this little fellow, barely one third the size of the others, standing in the middle of the pen looking terribly sad and vulnerable. I hesitated, I just couldn’t do him in. So we named him Walter and took him down to live at the barn with the other chickens.

So, why do I call Windsor chairs a farm product? A lot of the wood used comes from the woodlot on this farm. Smooth-skinned grayish-white barked beech trees abound in these woods. Beech is the bark most often used for carving initials and other graffiti in the woods. What is needed for chair legs is dense, tight-grained wood. For this beech or the various maples are perfect. Maple is a valuable tree, for both maple syrup and lumber. Beech is not. In fact, recently at a farm meeting, a timber manager from Ohio tells us one of the first things he does with managing a wood lot is to first kill the wild grapevines – very prevalent here in the east – then cut all of the beech. Some can be marketed for pallet lumber or firewood – and good firewood it is. Sometimes I wonder – is it really necessary to be this ruthless in pursuit of mammon? Don’t the birds and small animals count at all?

The old Déjà cabin owned by the King brothers in the Porcupine Hills had a beautiful bridge as an entrance. I was always so busy surviving there that I don’t have any pictures of it. At that point I had two children and was living there alone most of the time with my cat and dog. I often went to visit Raul and Morris King and took them honey from my beehives that I had taken up to the Porcupine lookout.

One Horse Seed Drill • Barrel Pump

In the end, we are all wolves to someone. We shake up each other’s ecosystems and establish our own boundaries and pathways within them. I help throw out hay, I shape the remainder of my dad’s morning. I get a text from my friend, I make additions to this article. I find a black widow spider in my coatsleeve, I alter my habits around getting ready to put on my coat. But the changes we make are, by and large, neutral – it is how we think of those changes and how we respond to them that shapes the desire paths of our own lives.

It seems I had a lot to learn about food and the nature and necessity of being a farmer before I could realize what a brilliantly useful animal a rabbit is. (Or more specifically, two rabbits.) Rabbits in our age have become house pets because they are docile and adorable, but they are much more valuable than this. They have more to offer than fluffy ears and a sweet temperament. Still, I had some general growing up to do before I could bring myself to eat one.

Work now becomes a purpose,
effort turns to flow,
the sound of clods to symphony,
and exhaustion leads to fun.

At the age of six his life changed – his father died, this happened at the beginning of the Depression. His mother was left with four small children and she moved to the Mission Valley in western Montana, a plan that was in the works before his father died. At one time his mother managed to have some of the ponies brought from the eastern Montana ranch to Ronan. Pat was always drawn to ponies, horses, and wagons. While growing up he built a stagecoach out of packing boxes, and pulled by ponies, he used it to deliver groceries in the small town of Ronan.

Americans, Paul the grandson or perhaps the great grandson of the McNulty who had emigrated, and Julie, his young wife. They had two bicycles and rode all the way from Shannon Airport. They set up home in the house, where other than an open fire there were no facilities. They carried water from the well, and got jobs in the fish factory in Kilkeel. And cycled there! Nothing was any bother to them. They brought the energy back to Knockbarragh that Knockbarragh had brought to America two centuries before.

Starting with the most obvious beneficial stinging thing on the farm, honeybees are extremely valuable as a pollinator and for the honey that they produce. They are often (but not always!) docile, and many small farms have a couple hives. As a child, when we played hide-and-seek after dark, my favorite place to hide was right behind one of Dad’s big hives. It was not a place quickly discovered, and sometimes others were not bold enough to pursue me through the apiary.

Amish friends in Holmes County, Ohio, strive to preserve century old equipment with a shingle sawmill powered by a steam engine. Abe Mast and his brothers purchased the saw out of an uncle’s collection. “The hundred-year-old saw had not been used for years. We saw a chance to preserve history by demonstrating how shingles were once sawed,” Mast stated.