Ox Whispers

On the Shoulders of Giants: Conversations with Oxen Teamsters
by Rob Collins

book review by L.R. Miller

I only came across Rob Collin’s good and important book recently. I know that a review appeared in Rural Heritage and that those good folks carry this book for sale. But I wanted to chime in, no matter it be late, to congratulate Rob.

The discipline of working draft cattle, while powerful in its applied utility, remains frail within this culturally ‘poisoned and draining’ age. Is it because it remains invisible to modern people? Is it because it is utterly and completely ‘out of fashion?’ Or is it because it requires a brand of diligent patience and focus, think one deliberate step at a time, that is so maddening to the anxious hordes? Or is the frailty of the discipline because the nature of successful mastery does not translate easily, does not lend itself to ‘how-to’ lingo? It is all these and more. The audience is as thin as the knowledge in collected form is spare.

In each and every successful arena of humankind’s applied success in concert with nature, no matter how far back in history you look, there are and were entire masterful lifetimes of magical effectiveness working with and alongside of animals. A relatively few of those ‘living working dialogues’ were ever passed down to this day. The dangerous cultural assumption was that these earned formulas, recipes and ‘maps to understanding’ were protected because they were saved for all of mankind through the direct inheritance of interns, followers, students and peers. Safe because the oral traditions were so strong – a thousand years ago – five hundred years ago – two hundred… But not so much today in this curiously impatient and water-thin age of internet videos and snapchats. Not so much today because the applied necessity of working cattle in so-called developed countries is all but nonexistent. Working traditions and knowledge survive ‘with us’ when there is an ongoing need for their application. In the ‘third world’ there are young people today who are growing up knowing instinctively how and where to stand around cattle, be those cattle feral or domesticated. Young people who understand that the utterances their grandparents whispered into their infant ears must only ever be used for specific understood consequence, ‘haw,’ ‘easy,’ ‘stand,’ ‘gee.’ Some of the youngest will never have a need or wish to call upon this inherited way and means. I need to believe that in much of the less developed world – Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, South America – these ways and means are just waiting to be picked up again. Calves will be born. Calves will be born and hand-raised and accustomed to yoking and following; accustomed to pulling. We are fortunate as a species that tucked in corners of the world those ways forward are there in the memories, stories and postures of exceptional peoples.

But what about we less fortunate westerners who’ve allowed ourselves to be wire brushed free of ‘old ways?’ Our only way to rekindle the knowledge and refire the skillsets is assured by individuals of heart, courage, curiosity, humility and doggedness as they find ways to capture the flickering lights of unique skills and knowledge; capture it all in physical forms, such as print, that they might extend the shelf life for all of us.

For nigh on 20 years Rob Collins has been an ox teamster. He has also been a high school social studies teacher and a farming instructor at Tillers International. In his capacities with the Midwest Ox Drovers Association he began recording conversations with Ox Teamsters. He then bravely and intelligently compiled these, verbatim, into an album of tremendous effectiveness and value. I say album because, though in printed book form, it has not been ‘academized nor homogenized’ for market. It’s kind of like grandma’s scrapbook of recipes. It is a string of transcriptions which makes it all the more valuable – as it offers a superbly authentic and useful ‘jump start’ to any who might be inclined. This is raw, unprocessed food for thought, certain to further excite anyone with the slightest notion of becoming an ox teamster. I have heard from Rob that there may be another such book in the works.

Rob’s work with this book and with MODA is sacred good stuff for those of us devoted to a fertile right livelihood with and within nature and, even more important, sacred to yet unborn seekers.

excerpt from Chapter 7

Richard Roosenberg: Teamsters and Teamstering

In 1999, when I was in Madagascar, the school manager of the Norwegian school was a Malagache (the most numerous ethnic group in Madagascar) and he invited Justin to come and do a demonstration. The Norwegians asked me to come to the school and help them establish an animal-powered line of instruction within their school. Up to that point they had been using tractors and silo fillers. They had a 200 head herd with pretty modern technology and it didn’t sit well with some of their – especially Madagascar’s – staff. They said, “90 percent of our graduates are going home and will never be able to use this level of technology. We should have a secondary track of advanced / improved animal power.”

One of the Norwegians came to Tillers when we were over at the Abbey Farm. He was a great student; he learned a bunch of stuff in about a week. We provided him with all kinds of technology, plans, whatever. He took it back, implemented a lot of it: I mean, they had a baler. They had several Tillers-style yokes. They had ox carts with some of our design features in them. But he still said, “Dick, will you come over and help? You’d be able to explain it much better than I can.” So, I went over for a couple of weeks.

I think the farm manager was a little put off that an American would be coming to show them how to work oxen, so he found Justin, whom he considered to be one of the best Malagache ox drivers to show me what they knew. To me it was fabulous because I got to see the state of the art.

And this is in plateau country, about 6000 feet of elevation where they get rain a fair bit of the year. They have all kinds of terracing and water control and they can grow rice 9 months of the year and that other 3 months they might grow tomatoes in the rice paddy with residual moisture, so they’ve got all kinds of plowing opportunities.

Justin had a nine year old team and he could, literally, ask that team to plow the back furrow while he stood behind the plow. He had a long bullwhip over his shoulder, but he wasn’t using it and he talked to those animals while they plowed this perfectly straight furrow back and forth to start the middle of the field. I joke that you could true a laser to that furrow. It was straight. Then Justin just kept working out from there.

excerpt from Chapter 17

John Scarlett: A Life Lived with Oxen… Intentionally

John Scarlett: When we moved here, I wanted to live as green a life as possible, or at least reduce the negative effects of my life on the planet. I thought: I won’t use any combustion engines. Well, that didn’t work out. We had a car and chainsaw, but when it came to … well, instead of a tractor, how about draft animals? There were mules and ponies, horses, and oxen. Which animal is least likely to kill me? I decided it was oxen, so I got on the phone. I had heard there were a lot of oxen in New England, especially in Maine. So I got on the phone and called the sheriff’s department in the town in Maine closest to us, right on the border with New Hampshire and spoke with the sheriff and said, “Have you got anybody in your neighborhood, in your town, that has oxen?” He says, “Oh yeah, come on out. I’ll show you.” So, my brother and I took off in our 1966 International Harvester three-quarter ton pickup and headed to Maine. Well, we got as far as Tunbridge, Vermont when we learned about the Tunbridge World’s Fair, Jerry Mullen. And that’s as far as we got. We ended up, that was in the summer of ‘72. By late September, 1972 we were bringing a team home. That first team.

Rob Collins: So what you’re saying is: there is still a county sheriff in Maine who is looking for you?

JS: (laughs) Yeah, that’s right. I never called him back.

I brought the team home and used them for getting out firewood. We burn nothing but firewood, even now. We use a wood-burning cookstove in the fall and spring, and a big box stove in the winter. We had a wind generator for a while, seven years, until we couldn’t afford to fix it. We had adopted our fourth child, and going to the laundromat was getting old, so we hooked up to the grid.

Haying was another big thing. For 12 years, we put up our own loose hay. We had summer apprentices every year for many years, people we are still in touch with. We traded room and board for helping out on the farm. We did a little bit of plowing, not very much. We did some logging, that was great fun, several small logging projects. I thought nothing of walking the oxen 5 miles to harvest some trees.

RC: What was your favorite job with the oxen?

JS: Probably, on a coolish July evening, raking the hay that had been cut the day before, although late in the season it might’ve been the hay that was cut that morning, and raking it with the team. It was so quiet, and the loose hay coming off the back of the side delivery rake. It was the sound of surf. It was just a wonderful thing.

I got into making my own ox yokes, and bending the bows, forging, because I was a blacksmith. I could forge the ironwork on a yoke.

I built our own log home, from the trees up. I felled the trees and brought them out by ox team. I had one other fellow helping me. It was going to be a family workshop, or craft shop, but it turns out that because of our last fire… We could live with neighbors for a while, but if we were going to stay here, we needed some place to live. At that point, the two-story log house with a one-story wing on it was close to having a roof on it, so in the dead of winter we got that closed in so we could move in. It was 18’ x 15’. We lived in that for several years. We took in a boy from a broken home, to boot. The boys were in a bunk bed in the corner.

It seems as though from the time we moved there, in June 1971, until about 1983, I was doing nothing but recovering from fires and building. That’s when I got into blacksmithing. I had done enough to make a comfortable home. I went to a blacksmithing workshop at John C. Campbell Folk School in Southwest North Carolina, right on the Tennessee-Georgia border. The class was taught by Tom Joyce, one of the premier smiths in the world, who lives in Santa Fe. I’ve gone there and spent some time with him. That really jacked me up: the quality of his work and the dedication. I never made a lot of money blacksmithing, but it did contribute to the family income. Liz went back to teaching instead of being a waitress, because we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. She has won a local award for teaching, special ed reading. She’s the finest person I know, my wife. I don’t know how I lucked out. She didn’t run away, so that was a good thing.

RC: Tell me about maple sugaring with the oxen.

JS: The last year we made syrup, which was three years ago, we made 140 gallons, all of it table grade. In the year 2000, I built a sugarhouse and hired a man to help me. The sap flowed into a tank behind the sugarhouse by gravity, so the oxen came in our driveway and up onto a little higher hill where we dumped the sap. If there was enough snow on the ground, we would put a 200 gallon tank on a cross-chain bobsled. If there wasn’t enough snow we put the tank on a wagon. We didn’t have a very big Sugarbush. We started out making maple syrup in the 70’s. For five years, we made it at my brother’s place a mile away. We had a thousand buckets out. When we stopped doing it there and started doing it here, I had a four-wheel-drive pickup with another tank on it, so we would go and tap another hillside at Mark and Louise’s, as well as our place, so we got up to maybe 750 buckets.

Sugaring was great. Well, the whole rural living: just when you’re sick and tired of doing something, it’s time to do something else. It seems like everything falls in 30-day stints. Sugaring usually went from about the 21st of February to the second week of April, so that was more than a month. You were really ready to quit by the time that was over. We’d invite all the local kids in and have a bucket washing party. They got all the sodas and spaghetti they could eat. I also hired kids to help me collect sap during the season. I think I got up to five dollars an hour for them at the end. For all the hard work it involved: keeping the Sugarbush trails clear, I think the best we ever did was $3,000 for, what, seven weeks work? But that was okay. We weren’t out here to make money, we were out here to make a fulfilled life and to be kinder to the planet.

RC: I have not done maple sugaring with oxen, but would your team stand well in the woods?

JS: Oh, excellent. In fact, when we were at Mark and Louise’s collecting, we would have two teams to keep up with the sap. Once one team got tired, you’d give them a break and use the other team. You could stop them on the trail, go up ahead of them for 50 yards, and then call them to you. On their own, they would start up again and come. I remember doing, for firewood, having one wagon behind the other – with two teams. I was driving the front team, and the team behind was just following. It’s like any draft animal. They are creatures of habit. The more you use them, especially at a particular task, the more responsive they are and the more muscled they are.

What the Old Ox Taught

by John Scarlett

If it is too freakin’ hot
to bring out one more wagon load
of cut split and stacked green Red Oak,
let your tongue hang out
until the man you work for
tells you to stop and takes off your yoke.
Run to the nearest beaver pond
walk in belly deep
and lie down.

Or should you take
six steps after “Gid up!”
only to stop with an awful groan
after feeling the stick you stepped on
rise up and slide into your pizzle,
stand there quietly
as the teamster pushes that branch
(which lucky for you was forked)
back down into the mud
followed by a few drops of blood
and a quarter mile slog to where
you wait until the vet comes
to give you a shot, listen to his stethoscope
and say, “Never heard a cow’s heart beat like that.”

When “Whoa!” stops you
and it seems like a good time
to take a leak
count yourself lucky
if your young whippersnapper
has learned to wait patiently
and maybe add the light amber
from his little pecker
to the large puddle
growing under you.

Rob sent me this ordering information:

“Rural Heritage” carries the paperback, as well as the bookstore at “Old World Wisconsin.”

Thanks much for helping to get the word out. Oh, and $5 from each copy goes to Tillers to support our work!