There are many benefits that come from rotational grazing. Having a high concentration of animals on a small paddock eats down the vegetation evenly. It can help get rid of pasture weeds and seedling trees, and it builds your soil quickly. The herd moving over a small paddock is a manure spreader on hoof, fertilizing as they go. This helps regenerate the grass as it regrows post-grazing. Another benefit is that you can raise more livestock on less acreage: as your soil builds up it will be able to sustain more animals.

In my opinion, cattle are the most underrated working animals we have. We must not forget the amazing things they do for us, whether in milk production, as a source of leather and meat, or as a supplier of fertilizer. In addition, draft cattle provide one of the main pillars for securing the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people on this planet with their labor. They are our co-workers and sometimes even our therapists.

At the county rodeo and fair I happened to be hazing a steer for Perry Roamer, a big husky young hand on the Arrowhead place. Perry had a hankering to try bulldogging, for the money and fun and a fancy belt buckle about like my old one. As hazer I’d keep the steer running straight and Perry calm, and he’d lean over, hook on, drop down and wrestle the steer’s nose around till it had all four feet in the air. We’d practiced a couple afternoons a week for the past month, and Painted Bull had loaned me his best horse for the run, a nice roan quarter horse with no quirks to speak of, named Spuds.

Veterinarians praise this machine because it exercises the horse straight in line with more load on the rear legs rather than like a round pen which mainly strengthens the inside legs. However, until the horse becomes acquainted with the machine, it is important for the operator to make sure the horse does not get hurt or over exert itself.

One afternoon in early June, I drove a few miles over to see Sam Yoder and ask if he objected to me chronicling the process in an article. I knew there would be concern about how to photograph it, as conservative Amish and Mennonite do not wish to have their people photographed. I told Sam that I was confident that I could find ways to photograph the process without people in the pictures. With this consideration he had no objection to documenting the event. Sam said it had been 9 years since they’d had a barn raising in their local Amish settlement. He had considered just putting up a simpler pole barn. It would have cost less but not met their needs nearly as well. It is nice to have a bank barn where you can stall the animals in the warm, sheltered lower level.

Upper respiratory problems in cattle include diphtheria — infection/inflammation of the vocal folds of the larynx (voice box) at the back of the throat. This infection (necrotic laryngitis) and swelling from inflammation can be serious and even fatal if it restricts the airways and makes breathing difficult. Air must travel through the larynx to go into the windpipe and down to the lungs. Swelling or trauma to this area makes it difficult for the animal to breathe.

We live in a beautiful and sparsely populated area of England. North Devon as a whole, and Exmoor in particular, is the least populated administrative area in the whole of England. It’s a wild, hilly and open area which has not changed much throughout history, being renowned for it’s beauty, it’s banditry, and it’s breed of sheep. While the banditry might have waned a little, it’s still a wonderful place to call home, and the Exmoor breed of sheep is still going strong.

You can recognize an Exmoor pony at a glance. They are compact and sturdy, standing roughly 11 to 12 hands high, with dense bone and big, kind eyes partially sheltered by fleshy lids that shed rain and wind, often nicknamed “toad eyes.” Their coats are shades of brown, bay, or dark dun, with lighter “mealy” patches around the muzzle, eyes, and flanks, and black points on the mane, tail, and legs. White markings are rare. Their double winter coat is famously weatherproof, the top layer shedding rain so effectively that droplets bead and roll off like water from a Barbour waxed jacket. Even the tail is practical: a broad, lowset “snow-chute” shape that channels runoff away from the hindquarters.

By reading these few lines and looking at the first pictures, it should quickly become clear what this is about. On the one hand, a draft horse, whose work is often portrayed as archaic, and on the other hand, robotic technology, which is supposed to shape modern agriculture. The second choice feels futuristic, more like part of science-fiction. However, a field demonstration on a vegetable and fruit growing farm in Luxembourg at the end of June 2025 provided not only proof that this technology already exists but also an insight into how agricultural technology manufacturers and politicians envision the future of agriculture.

The first event of what became Antique Week happened in 1971, with about 19 Exhibitors, and in the 54 years since it has become a potent force in Madison County’s Economy. Motels are booked up in areas surrounding, all the way to Syracuse. It’s hard to determine numbers of people due to no entry fees and no single entrance. Estimates are of 50,000 people in the week’s time.

I want to tell your readers how I saw some men and machines make a plow – a common, ordinary plow, as I am a common, ordinary man, so you see I could not tell you if it had been an extraordinary plow. The man was an oldish-looking man, with a big black apron kind of a thing tied on him. I supposed it was to grab things with to keep from burning his hands. This oldish man told a younger looking man, with about half of an old sack – a common sack – tied onto him, to answer the same purpose, I guess.

A Tragedy • The Little Dog Next Door • Cheese

One of the beautiful things about Pike Place Market is that back in 1907 it was started by actual farmers in direct response to the unfavorable stranglehold that early Seattle wholesalers had on the local produce trade. The city granted permission to open a market, and it was an instant success. The first market was an absolute traffic jam of local farmers with their heavily laden wagons all jammed in and around the wharf on Western Avenue.

For ten years now the Mohawk Valley people have been coming together for the event they call Community Days. Elmer Stoltzfus owns the businesses 7M Supply & Double O Builders, which are on his farm, where he also raises Percheron and Standard Bred horses, along with some beef cows. 7M Supply is a hardware and building supply store and are also dealers for some horse drawn farm equipment. At one time they were dealers for Pioneer Equipment. Pioneer required their dealers to have a yearly event to showcase their lineup of products, thus was born Community Days. Starting as mainly a horse drawn equipment show, it has morphed into a multi-featured two day event for the whole family.

Nevada is one of the very youngest and wildest of the States; nevertheless it is already strewn with ruins that seem as gray and silent and time-worn as if the civilization to which they belonged had perished centuries ago. Yet strange to say, all these ruins are results of mining efforts made within the last few years. Wander where you may throughout the length and breadth of this mountain-barred wilderness, you everywhere come upon these dead mining towns, with their tall chimney stacks, standing forlorn amid broken walls and furnaces, and machinery half buried in sand, the very names of many of them already forgotten amid the excitements of later discoveries, and now known only through tradition – tradition ten years old.

During the late 19th century, hundreds and hundreds of small manufacuring enterprises were trying to get an inroad for their farm implements which resulted in a time of target advertising which was rich in design, approach and temerity.

Operating Instructions for Oliver No. 44 and 44T Corn Planter

I step out of my truck and into a world that smells like smoke and I try (and fail) not to think about how we left. In my head I can hear my own voice in the hysterical rush of then and I push down a rising sympathy-pang of panic in the now and take a deep breath. The fire which had threatened our family farm had burned neatly around the buildings and the fields and livestock, thanks to the tireless work of firefighters and family members, sparing all but trees and fences. As the fire crested the rim-rock and plunged down the hill behind our home three days prior, my husband and I made the choice to evacuate while my parents stayed behind in a home more protected but no-less-close to the fire than our own.

The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It furnishes fuel, charcoal, and timber for the mines, and, together with the enduring juniper, so generally associated with it, supplies the ranches with abundance of firewood and rough fencing. Many a square mile has already been denuded in supplying these demands, but, so great is the area covered by it, no appreciable loss has as yet been sustained. It is pretty generally known that this tree yields edible nuts, but their importance and excellence as human food is infinitely greater than is supposed.

My father went stalking out to the barn. He was not stalking when he came back half an hour later. His own love of horses gave him a complete understanding of Sim’s affection for Daisy. He did not need Sim. He much preferred to have us do the work – but he did not send Sim away. Instead he had a coachman’s room finished off in a corner of the carriage barn. There was a stove to keep the place warm in winter, and there was a comfortable bed – though I was never sure whether Sim slept in it or not. But in any event that is where he lived out his span. Daisy survived him. She was well along in the twenties when my father pensioned her for life and sent her out to a farm where there were green pastures, plenty of shade trees, and a brook of running water.

Remote is relative; but Jemmie McAlinden’s abode was remote. Four miles up the valley and a further mile along a loanin at the foot of Slieve Roosley, a mountain of black heather and cropping rock. Jemmie was known as ‘Haybag,’ I gather to distinguish him from his namesake widely known as ‘Jemmie Stout.’ Haybag was a cobbler and it fascinated me then and it fascinates me still how he ever came by the trade. Not to mention the name. ‘Haybag’. A lifetime ago I took boots to be mended by him. He was an eccentric on the fringe of our community, marked out by his failing to go to Mass.

You know how to work? `Cuz if you don’t you will have no relationship with these animals. How would you know how much to expect if you don’t know that about yourself? Meanwhile, what makes you the judge of your neighbor’s boys with work animals? You remind me of a man standing out on a diving board over an empty pool arguing about needing to get his lawn mowed.

Then came Ferrell’s fulsome book which did not ask to be published, which made no demands and yet those maligned instincts of mine said people need to know about his book, Leavings. It is worthy. It illumines. Even in its occasional discomforture, it is welcome, worthy and needed.

Round barns built by American farmers are historic designs that could be polygonal, or circular in structure. Although not as popular as some other designs, their unique shape made them a rural icon. Round barns built from 1880 to the 1930s represent the height of construction in North America. However, their construction can be divided by two overlapping eras. The first phase was the octagonal or multi-sided style from 1850 to 1900. And the second period was the true circular version built from 1889 to 1936. Numerous round barns that have been preserved in the United States are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In these final weeks before the frost, the last tomatoes will be cooked down into glorious sauce. Herbs will be clipped and hung from the ceiling. The popcorn, husked now, sits waiting in a basket on the stairs. Cabbages will be buried in deep rows of dirt, upside down with their roots sticking out, just like the farmers of old did it. I read about this trick in the book Gap Creek years ago, and last fall I finally tried it. We had crisp, sweet cabbage fresh from the ground in February. I can find nothing about this method on the internet; it must be a rusty jewel of wisdom too old for that, passed down only by the ones who still remembered doing it themselves.