Discipline is a habit which has to be taught, to children as well as to horses. To sit quiet in a school desk is sometimes a challenge for a young child; standing still is the same for a young horse. Discipline is a basic element, but this has to count for everyone. Our way is not by rude manners but by being fair and consistent. This attitude not only helps us while working with the horses, but also in their daily care.

Sickle bar mowers are no high performance machinery and need a lot of maintenance, compared to disc and drum mowers, but are definitely the better mowers in my opinion. This is not only due to their low impact to the nature, but also due to the quality of their work. The knives cut the grass instead of knocking it off like fast rotating drum and disc mowers. A sharp cut lets the grass grow better again, thus optimizing the next harvest. In Luxembourg you can even get financial support by the Ministry of Environment when participating in a wide-ranging program called “maintaining the biodiversity,” as this mowing technology is recognized as environmentally friendly.

Even as a low-input and low-impact agriculture, mainly following the farming practices of the bygone time, smallholders relying on animal traction must adapt their farming methods. This article is the first in a series of essays dealing with thoughts and new developments relating to future-oriented agriculture. This requires repeated field testing within a trial-and-error approach over several years, which means that the methods described here below are not the end of the story. At best, they represent the current state of the author’s empirical knowledge. These essays are intended to provide inspirations. Let’s move forward questioningly, together!

Since the beginning, the equipment development process of the European non-profit association Schaff mat Päerd has been based on retro-innovation. This approach consists of reviving and reintroducing old or outdated ideas, technologies, or designs in a modern context. It involves taking inspiration from the past and combining it with current advancements to create something new and innovative. It is a dynamic approach to innovation that celebrates the past while embracing the future.

Within the EU-funded Leader project “Horsepower – Innovation in small-scale agriculture and gardening” an online symposium took place on November 5 and 6. Hosted by Jeanette Junge, business manager of the Swedish Leader LAG PH, a total of 63 participants from 17 countries followed 14 presentations with current reports from research all-around the world, background knowledge and best-practice examples from European smallholdings.

An example of such a hotly debated item in Central Europe is the so-called “trace harness”, also referred as “long gears”. In the bygone time, this type of harness was not only used for agricultural or forestry work, when extra power was required to pull a heavy load, but also in vineyards and in vegetable production. In the first-mentioned operation, two or more horses were hitched “in-line”, one behind the other, and the fact that there was no singletree dragging on the ground prevented the extra lead horse(s) from stepping over the traces. In row crops, the reasons for use were to avoid damage to the crops, by a low singletree, and to be able to turn more easily and very sharply at the headlands.

Regular readers of this journal will be well familiar with the amazing work of Paul Schmit and Albano Moscardo of Schaff mat Päerd in Europe. Their in-depth articles on new continental innovations in animal-drawn technologies have set a very high bar for future inquiries into the discipline. This handsome and eminently practical addition to their Guidebook series covers hitches and hitching of both European and North American types. In addition to the directly practical nature of the information, there is here a subtle and intelligent comparison of two different cultural approaches to the working of horses.

The fact that electric or hybrid passenger cars, and even electric powered agricultural implements like GPS-guided precision seeders and planters, are promoted by the media and politics now, could tempt us to jump on this bandwagon and further develop other hybrid technologies for animal traction. However, taking into consideration the current discussions about the sustainability of battery production, their life cycle and recycling, as well as the environmental impact of electricity generation in general, we would partly give up some of the main arguments for the use of work horses, which are their 100% renewability on a local level, and their eco-friendliness, compared to any other source of motive power currently available in our high-tech world.