Let’s talk plowing

Hi Lane,

I enjoyed the pictures on your web site.
I don’t have an answer for your question, but a couple more questions to think about.

How young is your team? Are your horses developed(old) enough and conditioned enough to pull a plow? The plow is one of the harder loads of the implements we use, and we like them to be able to do it for a full day. Along the way, using a smaller plow for fewer hours is a good idea.

Will they follow the furrow with minimal guidance from the teamster? Do you use a second person to steer the plow? That second person is handy in the beginning, but at some point you’ll want to wean yourself off that.

Do they stop well, if something goes wrong?

I’m sure interested to hear your story of bringing your young horses along, as we only use older horses at our place. We have had few horses under 8 years old in the 20 years I’ve been at this.

Rob Flory

Plow adjustments:
Different plow makes and models have some variations, of course. The general points of adjustment are the hitch point and the land wheel. Generally you can adjust both the vertical and horizontal hitching points – verticle adjusts for plowing depth, relative to angle of draft (affected by how tall your animals are), and horizontal adjusts furrow width (or if using three allows an off-center hitch point. The land wheel, if you’ve got one, ought to be adjustable as well. This also controls depth of furrow. A “well adjusted” plow ought to have the wheel and hitch setting in agreement, rather than disagreeing with eachother. Thing to check: when plowing, is a)the depth what you want, b) the land wheel rolling along, lightly pressing in, but not digging into the soil, and c) the heel of the landslide in contact with the bottom of the furrow (plow running level, not nose down or up). If all three are yes, then that’s about right. Similarly, are you having to fight the plow to keep it plowing a decent furrow width? If so, try adjusting the horizontal hitch location. A well adjusted good walking plow running in good soil, not hitting stones, behind a team who are where they ought to be, ought to run upright cutting an appropriate furrow without you holding on to it. The handles are to allow you to compensate for uneven terrain, not to hold the plow in the ground with.
I tried a new Pioneer plow several years ago at a HPD, and must say I wasn’t terribly impressed. It seemed like at anything less than eight inches deep, the plow just wanted to pop out of the soil and fall over. You could keep it in, but that’s what you were doing – holding the plow up and in the ground the whole time. I think the problem is that they are (were?) using tractor/sulky bottoms, which don’t have to be as exactly balanced as a walking plow and so aren’t. Alternatively, with three big belgians you can just plow deep and then it would run fine (and from what I’ve seen the Amish are always happy to throw another horse or two on).
The coulter, if you’ve got one, is also obviously adjustable for depth.
Rob may chime in with more; he taught me what I know.

-Tevis

Having tried to pass myself off as knowledgable, you called my bluff. I’ve never worked three abreast, so I’m going out on a limb here. The problem I see is that the three horse evener puts the hitch point behind the middle horse, whereas walking plows are normally designed to be hitched halfway between the furrow horse and the adjacent horse. Is there a way to create a horizontal hitchpoint adjustment on your plow? Alternatively, now that you’ve trained your furrow horse to walk in the furrow, you can teach them the bad habit of walking up on the plowed ground.
Hopefully someone with more experience will give you better advice.
-Tevis

Lane, In the Work Horse Handbook on page 120 there is a 3-horse evener for a wagon hitch. As I wrote before, i have never made, nor used one, but I studied it hard a few years ago with the thought to use 3 on a bobsled. Hope that helps. Carl