Ploughing with a Single Horse
Ploughing with a Single Horse
by William Castle of Shropshire, UK
If you look at most old photos of horses ploughing, certainly from the British Isles, most of them feature a pair of horses. If photographs had been invented before the 1860s there would have been a greater variety of hitches, with three abreast, three in line walking down the furrow, three yoked bodkin fashion (with 2 in the furrow and one on the land), and fours hitched in line or in two pairs. With the strung out teams there would often have been a driver to drive the horses and another man to steer the plough. In the middle of the 19th century there was a big movement to improve the function and decrease the draught of ploughs, so that on farms where four horse hitches were used, they might then manage with three or a pair. By the time photographs came more common in the early twentieth century, on all but the heaviest land two horses could pull the plough and this became the most common hitch. By comparison, images of a single horse pulling a plough are relatively rare; perhaps those who could only afford one horse could not afford to have their photograph taken either, but the big plough manufacturers in Britain all produced light ploughs for the single horse, or even for a pony, and there were many small holdings which only supported a single horse.
Even though ploughing with a single horse is possible, using a pair has many advantages. Once the furrow horse knows that he has to stay in the furrow and the land horse is the right distance away from him, guiding the horses almost becomes unnecessary. With the horses the right distance apart, the line of draught through the doubletree is pretty much in line with the centre of resistance of the plough, so the plough requires the minimum amount of force to pull it and it is also stable in the ground, making it is easy to steer and adjust. With a pair of horses, you can see between them to make a straight furrow or even out any irregularities. Added to that, the power available from two horses is well matched to the size of furrow.
This does not necessarily mean that ploughing is easy. I still remember the first time I ploughed, my simple instructions being to take a particular experienced pair of horses that I had worked frequently to a piece of ground which they had been ploughing in the morning, and the plough ‘was set just about right.’ Still, in the first hour or so, I had the plough come out of the ground, the furrow horse came out of the furrow, the plough knocked me over, I dropped the lines and once managed to plough one of the lines into the ground! But with those horses it didn’t matter as they would stop on a word, and I did not have to worry about adjusting the plough. The lack of instruction I received might seem surprising, but at the beginning it was enough to get used to the feel of the plough, when to bear down on the handles, and when to lean to the right or left. Even with that very steady pair, it seemed that we were going at ninety miles an hour. My instruction came later, a couple of bits of information at a time. This was probably the ideal introduction to ploughing; my relative success was underpinned by a well adjusted plough and experienced horses which I had already used for other farm work.
Compared with ploughing with a pair of horses, ploughing with a single horse presents some additional challenges. Depending on the plough used, the nature of the land and the crop, the pull required is substantial. Indeed some people say that ploughing with a single horse is too difficult, though the existence of the old single horse ploughs contradicts that opinion. Nevertheless there are some conditions, such as heavy soil or established grass which could be beyond a single horse’s capabilities, and I have always understood that ploughing with a single horse was really a job for light land which was already under cultivation. With a single horse, there is also the issue of where the horse walks, either on the unploughed land directly in front of the plough, or in the furrow. Theoretically, having the horse on the land means his efforts are better put to use as the line of draught is correct, but with the horse in this position, you can’t see where you are going.
In comparison with my first experience of ploughing with a pair, when I started with my own horse and plough, the circumstances were quite different. Whereas I now had some experience of ploughing both with two and three horses, my horse had never ploughed before, though she had done plenty of other work, including pulling significant loads at a slow speed; and she will stop and stand while I attend to an implement. The single horse plough I have is a Ransomes, Simms and Jefferies RHA, a light general purpose plough, though I had neither skim coulter nor disc coulter when I got it. Although it is quite different from the Ransomes LCP ploughs I had used previously, which are much more heavily built semi diggers, the adjustments are all the same and I made sure the metal was bright and all the adjustments worked.
To give myself an easier start I first got my wife to drive a tractor dragging the horse plough to make the first furrows, before using the horse. It was then I made my first error by putting the horse on the land in front of the plough, and although this might seem like a good idea, I discovered why in the old pictures the horse is in the furrow. What happened was that when my mare’s feet came down just next to the furrow, the furrow wall collapsed under her foot, which not only left a lump for the furrow wheel to climb over on the next round, but because she didn’t like the ground giving way, she tended to wander away from the furrow edge. This made it impossible to keep the plough going straight, and sometimes it came right out of the ground. Once I had changed my mind on where she should walk, I then drove her a few rounds in the furrow without pulling anything, then pulled the plough down the furrow without cutting any soil so that she was happy staying in the furrow, before we went back to ploughing. Once she was in the furrow, the plough did not wander and I could see where I was going. However, when the horse is in the furrow there is a significant amount of side draught. To reduce the angle of the draught chain, I add an extra foot of chain, which is a trick used by match ploughmen when they do high cut work. [oat seed furrow] They do it so that both horses walk way off on the land, so the furrows are not despoiled by feet marks. In their case they use a much longer chain, again to minimise the angle of draught.
On land already under cultivation my big horse and little plough worked pretty well. In comparison with a semi digger plough pulled by two horses, it ploughs a small furrow, but on the small scale that I work, that is just fine. The bigger challenge was to tackle established grassland, a job which might prove too much for my horse. To give her a better chance, I thought I would first rip up the top couple of inches before ploughing. If I had had a set of discs suitable for a single horse, I would have used them, but discs suitable for one or two horses are a rare commodity. Instead I tried repeated passes with my spring tine cultivator, but although it probably pulled harder than a plough, and even with repeated passes it made little impression on the grass. Then after re- reading one of Anne and Eric Nordell’s articles, I decided to experiment with skimming off the top two or three inches with my RHA plough. At first I tried using a disc coulter thinking that it would decrease the draught compared with a knife coulter. But at only two inches depth the plough has less soil above the mouldboard to keep it in the ground and the upwards pressure created by the disc coulter, which is probably an advantage in other situations, pushed the plough out of the ground. So I reverted to the knife coulter, which, due to the angle it makes with the soil surface, helps keep the plough down. Being a general purpose plough, the RHA has no shin on the front of the mouldboard, otherwise I might have done without a knife coulter and used a skim coulter instead to bury the trash. Even with the knife coulter the plough does not hold the ground as well as when ploughing more deeply, so if you don’t pay attention you can end up with it on the top of the soil. To prevent this from happening requires a good feel for the plough, but the biggest assistance is having a plough with wheels.
In Britain most walking ploughs were made with two wheels, though in rutted ground ploughmen would remove the land wheel, sometimes replacing it with a skid to bridge the ruts, and in sticky conditions both wheels would be taken off. The wheels do help in controlling the plough both in width and depth, and if adjusted correctly they do reduce draught, a fact demonstrated in one of the first tests with a dynanometer in 1839, done on two identical Ransome ploughs, one with wheels and one without. This is mostly because the plough stays more constant in its width and depth.
Unlike a swing [wheel-less] plough where all the vertical and horizontal adjustment is done with the hake [clevis], on a wheeled plough both the wheels and the hake require adjustment. To make the furrow narrower, the furrow wheel is moved in a little to the left, nearer the plough point, the wheel running in the corner of the furrow preventing the plough from cutting any wider. [This presupposes it is a right hand plough. In Britain, no left hand ploughs were made] However, unless the hake is also adjusted, the ploughman now has to push the handles towards the land all the time to stop the wheel crowding the furrow wall. To avoid this, and to correct the line of draught, the draught chain is moved to the left. To widen the furrow, the wheel is moved out and the hake adjusted to the right. Without adjusting the hake the furrow would run away from the furrow wall, and the ploughman would have to waste his energy pushing the handles to the right in order for the plough to cut the full width. To make the plough run more shallowly the land wheel is lowered, and to make it run more deeply the wheel is raised. To some extent the plough will run without adjusting the hake, but really the draught chain should also be raised or lowered to minimise the draught. No matter at what height the wheel is set, if the draught chain is set too low the plough will rise in the ground and perhaps come out of the ground altogether, unless the ploughman lifts the handles which is hard work and unnecessary, increasing the work for all concerned. If the draught chain is set too high, the plough will try and run further into the ground, but will be unable to do so because of the wheels. The unconcerned ploughman could run the plough like this because the wheels, rather than the ploughman’s arm take the pressure, but the plough will tend to run unevenly and there will be extra draught. To overcome this, when I have the plough working at the right depth, I like to lower the hake one notch at a time, until the plough starts to run higher than I want it, so I then know there is no pressure on the wheels, and then I drop the hake one notch.
When skim ploughing the top couple of inches of soil, all these adjustments are more crucial than when ploughing at a normal depth, but despite cutting through a lot of root, skim ploughing is relatively easy work for the horse. Working at this depth, shallower than the plough was designed to work, and without a skim coulter, the furrows are completely turned upside down and the mouldboard doesn’t really push the furrow slice down. Nonetheless, having the sod inverted means that regrowth is minimal, especially if the grass has been grazed down before ploughing. Although inverting sod to a normal plough depth is not necessarily the best thing for getting it to decompose quickly, at two inches down there is plenty of biological activity. However, ploughing at two inches is not really deep enough for a seed bed, so another couple of stages are necessary.
The next thing I do is to roll the ground soon after ploughing, which pushes down the furrows tight down next to each other, and then broadcast mustard seed. Because it is very quick growing the mustard can smother any grass which comes up between the furrow seams, whilst using up the nutrients from the decaying grass. To cover the seed I use a spring tine cultivator set very shallow, though a disc would be better. The reason for using the spring tine rather than a harrow is that it does not grab hold of any loose furrow slices, the tines springing out of the way if they meet this resistance. The tines also explode bits of soil from the upturned sod, throwing them in the air which covers the seed, even when the ground is a bit dry. Admittedly this is a rough way of making an imperfect seed bed, and if it is very dry the germination can be poor, but in average conditions the mustard soon produces a thick, weed suppressing stand of foliage, severely curtailing any regrowth of grass. Again using a Nordell idea, when the mustard is in flower, I mow it with my McCormick Deering no. 9 mower, first with the bar in its raised position, and then again with it on the ground. Then I plough the ground again to about five inches in depth. This time I use the disc coulter to cut through the mustard stalks and a skim coulter to bury the trash. This deeper ploughing is also well within the horse’s capabilities, the grass roots which hold the soil together have mostly rotted.
Admittedly doing the ploughing in two stages is twice the work of ploughing once, but I like ploughing and only have small patches to work, so in some ways having to do the job twice is a benefit. If I was using my horse more, was ploughing more, both on cultivated ground and grassland, and therefore had a very fit rather than moderately fit horse, I expect I could plough grassland where the soil is relatively light all in one operation.
The most difficult part of ploughing with a single horse is to get the first furrow straight. Whereas you can see between a pair of horses and steer the plough, with a single horse the easiest way to drive straight is to see right over the top between the horse’s ears, which is obviously not an option when ploughing. Looking between the horse’s legs is perhaps another option, and is what I do when following a scratch mark when making potato ridges with a ridging plough, but often you can only see as far as the front feet. So what I do is to look down the side of the horse driving as straight as I can, walking beside the plough with just one hand on one of the handles. Although I can feel whether the plough is wobbling about, I can’t do much to change it. Instead I rely on having the draught chain in the line of draught to keep the plough running straight and set the wheels wide apart to keep the plough stable. Although this works OK, the results are still not as good as when setting out with a pair.
For anyone used to ploughing with a team, all this effort might seem a bit excessive, but in practise as long as the horse is in the furrow, ploughing with a single horse is relatively straightforward, certainly easier to do than to describe. Although the dominant culture today would have us believe that working with horses at all is hopelessly slow, inefficient and outdated, [and that any physical effort is to be avoided unless it is recreational], those who work horses know this not to be the case, and that given good horse skills, understanding and appropriate equipment, you can achieve much more than is generally thought possible. And the same is true with the single horse, the weakest link still being the equipment. But I can imagine a time when a plough will be available with a plastic mouldboard, maybe a plastic landside or a rolling landside which would require a third less draught than my plough, and the question as to whether you can or should plough with a single horse would be answered once and for all. I may be jumping the gun, but I have already reached my own conclusion!
