Why Work Horses

It Isn’t What You Make That Counts – It’s What You Save!

by Les Wilson
Manager, Boulder Bridge Farm, Excelsior, Minn.
Horse and Mule Association of America, 1941

When I was in the neighborhood of twelve or thirteen years of age, I was sent out by the Uncle with whom I was living on an Iowa farm to rake some hay with a two horse dump rake. After finishing one field, it was our custom to loosen the wires between two fields and staple them securely to the bottom of the posts, driving over the wire into the adjoining field. In my haste, I was careless in properly fastening the wires on the bottom of the posts and one of the horses struck the wires causing them to fly up and before I was finished, the pole of the rake, which had cost in the neighborhood of $2.50, had been broken squarely in two. I think I would just as soon have reported to the sheriff that I had robbed a local bank as to be faced with the responsibility of reporting this difficulty to my Uncle. His only remarks were: “Kid, it isn’t what you make that counts, it’s what you save.”

Since that time, I have continually had in mind the reasons for his success as a farmer through lean years and those that insured heavier income. I distinctly remember that a mower sold at his auction when over twenty-five years of age brought more money than he paid for it new. It was at the time of the sale in ideal condition. The harness we used, rarely, if ever, was broken and as a result of careful oiling and cleaning each spring, went on year after year doing its duty. The post hole digger was always cleaned off, washed and stuck in the oats bin following use. The claw hammer always hung on the same spot on the side of the corn crib. If I were to go to that farm today, if the tools and the horses were to be in the same location and stalls, I could be blind folded at the main gate and find every tool, harness a team and hitch them up to the wagon.

That Iowa farm rode through difficulties in 1892 to 1894, in 1907 and refused to be stampeded in the boom days of 1918 to 1924. The only bills that were accrued when I was a boy there seemed to be paid for through the sale of poultry, eggs and cream, leaving the sale of pork and beef and what was realized as a result of the sale on the average of two mares or geldings each year for the savings account. “Following the sale of the farm, I have had occasion to witness the type of operation. Today the farm, under new ownership since 1924, has a big gas bill. Instead of up to fifty head of cattle which it supported in 1915, one will find from seven to eight, a few hogs and one old team, so old and weak they are practically useless. It takes all the cream check, that received from eggs and poultry and still part of the hog money to pay the gas bill.

When I ask the question of many of my friends why they adopted the policy of more expensive mechanized farm operation, the inevitable answer is: ‘It is impossible to get men who know anything about driving horses.’ I feel like asking them if they feel they are qualified to handle horses and if not, why not. I also find that when I ask a farmer who is a good horseman the same question he seems to invariably be of the opinion that it is possible to hire men who can drive horses. My deduction is that knowing how to handle them and being interested in them himself, he has the ability to train his hired men.

At the farm where I am employed, we have worked as many as thirty-four horses in one day all in harness at the same time. Naturally this requires some half a dozen to ten teamsters. We have in charge of the teams two men who have learned their business from the ground up and we have been able and have made it a point to make use of their ability to instruct others as to how to handle the horses as they would handle them themselves. I am firm in the conviction that if the owner is sufficiently interested and will apply himself that he can make a good teamster out of any willing employee.

Some of my very best friends are in the agricultural magazine business. At our get togethers, there is a great deal of good natured discussion as to the relative merits of horse power versus motor power on the farms. I find one very effective method of curtailing the joshing to which I am subjected when I state that we have done all the work on our farm from the time it totaled ninety acres until now when it totals over eight hundred acres, with horses, that one third of the fertilizer which is so all important to us is contributed by the horse department, that we have sold one hundred and thirty-five head of horses and that the department is considerably in the black.

Nearby farms largely operated with motorized power are gradually becoming reduced in fertility, many of them to the point of finding it difficult to obtain a good catch of alsike or medium red clover. After we had had success, many of our neighbors asked us the reason for the same and our opinion. We have been firm in the conviction that the phosphorous necessary for clover growing was supplied through the application of fertilizer from the horse barns. As a result, we have repeated demands from neighbors for truck loads of horse manure.

We are also firm in the conviction that other things being equal, some of the land we obtained in 1935, which was badly depleted in soil fertility, has increased in productivity at the rate of ten per cent per year as a result of the supply of fertilizer we have been able to provide. It has been unnecessary for us to take land out of cultivation.

We feel that the best market for the product of our soil is through the livestock it supports. Two of our Belgian mares will do a lot of work on a bushel of oats. Two gallons of gasoline doesn’t last very long. We feel that our methods insure a saving in outlay of cash and check depletion of soil fertility.

I can’t help but remember every time a discussion of the relative merits of motor power versus horse power comes to my attention the remark the Uncle of mine made that day: “Kid, it isn’t what you make that counts, it’s what you save.”