[Gabe Ayers]

Wow, Barb, brings new meaning to the word snow plow! Seems you all are getting it done though, good job.

[Gabe Ayers]

I still haven’t figured out how to post a photo on the page here. I can put them in the photo section, but haven’t got this down yet. We have a photo of our winter shoe and thought it may have some benefit to others shoeing for hard work and pulling.

So since I am so computer challenged I will just put a photo on the photo gallery page of our shoes. The toe plate is made of truck spring and the heal caulks are just common metal. You will notice the toe plate is tilted forward to allow for it to be more straight into the ground when the horses are up on their toes. The heal caulks are placed in the middle and not on the outside edge to lessen the likelihood of them caulking themselves in the course of working in the debris of the woods, or while hauling, or when pulling.

So let me if you find this shoe photo on the photo gallery page. It would be nice if we had a new post alert or icon for new photos. So we would all know when a member puts up a new photo. I just go to the new post icon when I visit the site to see what is up currently.

If anyone has a simple way of helping this old man understand how to post a photo on the actual message let me know how to do it.

Thanks,

[Gabe Ayers]

I agree with Plowboy, this mare needs a job or some work to bring her back to being a work horse first and all those other activities next. Maybe taking her to the point of actually being a work horse for the first time.

Sometimes open unbreed mares can be somewhat moody and cyclical. This may be much stronger when she isn’t broke or trained well to start with.

By that I mean that she has been worked long and hard enough that whoa will be a reward. Of course starting this reward system on the ground is the beginning, but if she is allowed to just get away with little things along the way she will take it all the way to running the entire exchange herself if allowed.

I suspect the horse is just being a horse and now you have to step up to being a serious horseman. Make her mind you and spend time working her as Plowboy suggests. When she is doing everything just right….stop her, rest her and allow her to stand quietly. That is positive reinforcement. If she fidgets, say whoa give her a little signal with the bit and once she stands still, you start her or contact command and release simultaneously to start moving again on your command, not hers.

You have to be the boss hoss or she will take that job from you and then it will just get worse from there on. Don’t be afraid to increase your signaling device on the ground, like using a chain lead under the chin for a couple of sessions, reasserting your dominance and then go back to a regular lead once she becomes responsive to you subtle signals. Always use as little signal as possible to gain the response you want and keep it calm and confident on your part. Don’t get mad, just get confident and back it up with your actions and signals toward the mare. Make her respect you and your space at all times. Don’t pet on her or be affectionate unless she responds to your signals. Then reward her with no signals and affection.

Good luck, let us know how it goes with her after a little serious work, meaning moving against resistance and some sweat under the collar at least…

[Gabe Ayers]

Most of the nutrients available to replenish the soil from forestry operations is in the portion of the tree closer to where the photosynthesis occurs. The amount of calcium and phosphorus is higher in the portions of the tree that are four inches of less inside the bark. So leaving this material on site helps replenish the soil.

Woody debris also provides other services, such as providing a mechanical resistance to heavy deer browse. Having worked at this restorative forestry practice for over twenty years and having harvested the same site for several times now, I observed that the regeneration of young healthy trees occurs better in areas where lots of laps are left. Deer are prey animals and don’t want to eat where they can’t escape.

Woody debris holds leaf litter in place which protects the forest soil.

Our approach is the same as Carl’s on the cost of piling or lopping and scattering. It is additional labor and if you come back on a 7-10 year harvest rotation the debris is gone anyway. Why spend human, and fossil fuel on something that will take care of itself? If it is a visual thing based on short term considerations and desires, someone will have to pay for that skilled labor or lopping and scattering.

Good luck,

[Gabe Ayers]

Joel is correct. A good service provider always has the clients objectives in mind and uses their knowledge and experience to help the landowner achieve their objectives.

There are lots of options for logging slash and I take it you are asking about that and not slabs, edger strips and sawdust from the mill.

I also think the environmental conditions are so different from east to west that each may have their own results.

In the east the humidity and rapid decomposition of woody debris from the laps and slash will quickly disappear without any extra effort from the woodsman. In other words do nothing with the slash, leave it where it lays is the best plan in many cases.

Any further investment of human energy or fossil fuels will have to paid for somehow and that is not usually possible from the proceeds of a restorative forestry harvest.

I will write more about this later, have to move on this cold morning in the east.

[Gabe Ayers]

JL,

I have a portable band sawmill, but don’t use it much lately. This is not because it doesn’t make me money, but because I chose to invest my time into other aspects of restorative forestry work and have a great portable band saw man that works reasonable and lives up to his logo of “Your Logs, Your Location”.

This is mostly my selfish attitude about working. I had rather watch a cat gnaw on a marble than stand beside a band mill all day long. The work of actually managing the forest is just so much more diverse and suits the personality of some, more than others. There are folks that love “cracking the diamond” to reveal or optimize yield from a log, but I just like to leave beautiful trees growing for the future and bring out what needs to come….

But in order to see some of the relationship we have with our community portable band sawmill man I would invite the DAP readers to go to a new blog started about our current project in Appalachia.

http://www.crookedriver.wordpress.com/

There are lots of photos and some interesting stuff about this site. One recent piece of history includes evidence that this physical location could be the scene of the last casualties of the Civil War….

Enjoy the site, let us know what you think….off to take advantage of the frozen ground of the morning conditions.

Regards,

[Gabe Ayers]

I will defer the questions to Ian Snider that is heading this effort. My understanding is that this is lunch for the days the students come to the job site with the mentors and that this is a day class in addition to their normal
class schedule. Contact Mr. Snider (email on poster) with those questions and encourage his participation on this board.

Thanks,

[Gabe Ayers]

We have been contacted by some folks from down there and we are working on developing our:

Southern Draft Animal Days event.

We will keep all posted on DAP about what is planned for 6-9 November 2009.

This will be a first annual event and are looking forward to making new friends and growing the community of interest in modern animal powered culture in the Southeast.

[Gabe Ayers]

D. Todd,

You can do all of that with a single horse but you need to have the right sized equipment and some experience with using it with your horse.

I’ve heard old timers say that years ago people worked 50 acres of open land a year with a single horse. I think 5 would be all a person could or would want to do, but that figure is what was called for as one horse farm. Team was needed for a hundred acres. Of course all of it isn’t in open tillage all the time.
There are allot of things the old timers did that I can’t do or won’t do.

I would suggest you get in touch with Jimmy Brown and ask him about the proper sized single horse plow (maybe 8 inch) and maybe get him from help with the draft setting and the tract (landside/furrow) the horse will travel to do the best job.

I suspect he can help you find the other tillage tools like a spring tooth, small disc or whatever you need. Single horse planters are common in the south. The Cole Planter company made ones that would last a long time. The seed plates are probably still around.

He has a web site at [url]http://www.farmerbrownsplowshop.net./[/url]

Then again ~ I also support plow boy’s suggestion that you get another horse.

Having a useful life for a horse by them being with someone that wants to work them is an even better situation. People are giving good horses away everywhere or selling them for less than it takes to keep them a year.

If you enjoy working one single you will enjoy it twice as much working a pair.
The equipment is easier to find and you will get it all done quicker with less effort by you.

Most team equipment is riding…which since I have worked horses all my life is a good thing. The wheel is a wonderful invention maybe appreciated proportionally by those with old legs and hips that are determined to continue working horses.

Glad you are going to work an animal at any level. Maybe more will add to this thread. Glad you are here on DAP.

[Gabe Ayers]

Jean,

Thank you for looking that up. Their web site looks a little stale, the latest meeting mentioned was in June of this year.

I had tried it last week before posting. Tried it again today. There has also been no response from the email address in over a week too. I was just hoping someone else from East Tennessee would know someone active in that group.

Maybe the Greenhorn knows someone, since they are in East Tennessee. Hopefully everybody in East Tennessee isn’t pissed off at me now….???

Maybe we will get to meet some of them there and we can enjoy working our animals together, in the woods and in the fields.

Thanks again. We’ll keep looking.

[Gabe Ayers]

There was a cover story about this in the Draft Horse Journal some time back.

The gist of the story was that it was a fading sport in Japan and there was only a couple of tracks still going.

It reminded me of the two pound of stone five minutes contest in the northeast.

I guess the Japan event involved some gambling, but can’t remember if that is the case.

[Gabe Ayers]

Still looking for folks that are in the East Tennessee Draft Horse and Mule Association. Any contact information is appreciated.

[Gabe Ayers]

We have decided on a name for this event:

Southern Draft Animals Days

The new site will be http://www.southerndraftanimaldays.com (it is not up yet – promised for next week)

This event will be a fund raiser for Healing Harvest Forest Foundation. There will be an admission charged with advanced ticket sales used to pay for advertising. If turn out is good compensation will be made for demonstration teamsters.

We have decided on dates: November 7-8 2009 (demonstrators and vendors arrive on the 6th) We have the site rented for four days 6-9th (inclusive).

We have many details yet to work out but the plan, so far is to have:

Field demonstrations of new and old equipment (separately), plowing, seedbed preparation, cover crop planting, corn picking, every vendor of related equipment and merchandise we can get to come, lectures, round pen seminars, music, local food, animal powered restorative/sustainable forestry demonstration, invitational horse pulling contest on Saturday evening and maybe an invitational mule pull on Sunday evening.

The event will be about small scale (teams and single) animal powered use and limited multiple hitch sized equipment. The goal is to attract, educate and inspire more start up and small scale people in this culture of modern animal powered techniques.

All participating animals will be by invitation only – negative coggins required.

Camping is available with electric and water connections.

We have a few more site specific details to work out before announcing the location. It is south of Virginia.

Stay tuned to DAP and mark the dates on your 2009 Mischka Draft Animal calendars to come on down south for a late fall early winter event.

[Gabe Ayers]

We negotiated with Discovery for six weeks about this show. In the end they decided that our work was more about the environment than the “excitement and danger” that they were looking for in a show. It was intended to be a counter to History Channels Ax men. They said they would refer our story to the Discovery Planet Green Channel – Hollywood?

Meanwhile we are still trying to get our local editor to help us complete the next segment in the series on RH on RFD. He and his elderly mother have been very ill. We have the rough film of horses, mules and oxen in the woods and want to get it out before the new year.

I will watch this show too. I suspect it is going to be something like the Dirty Jobs mule logging deal, but who knows. I also suspect the object is to sensationalize the experience for entertainments sake. Maybe that is the formula for selling more exercise machines or who ever buys commercials from Discovery.

I just hope this show doesn’t put our work in a bad light with the public. Dangerous operation is not appealing to many private landowners and that is our client base.

We will keep doing what we do and educate the public about that work any way we can.

Our goal is to make the work controlled, safe, ecologically restorative and environmentally sensitive, maybe not the best way to attract couch potatoes that are looking for a thrill from watching TV.

Those that do the work know it is thrilling enough in the everyday setting of actually doing the work.

[Gabe Ayers]

We use nylon D-ring harness with leather on the parts that benefit from having a memory (Saddle/back band and brichen) and nylon where it needs strength. It has been called a combo harness or integrated harness.

We use pulling logging hames that have the welded trace attachment, thicker metal tubing, deeper curved shape and double hame strap rings on the bottoms. We use the heavy duty hame fasteners that have never failed, except when the c-shaped metal breaks (only a couple of times in 30 years).
I think the newer ones have an improved top hame adjustment with holes and bolts instead of the adjustable motels of my older set of pulling/logging hames.

We get this hame equipment from Chupp’s Blacksmith Shop in Fredericksburg, Ohio or any good harness shop. Another source is Hillside Harness Hardware in Millersburg, Ohio, that is also where we get all our elbow bits.

We use Sugar Valley Collar shop Lagotee no choke, Logging/Pulling collars that feature full grain leather on all faces. I prefer leather lines, but usually work with the two collar beta lines that give more information to the handler as to which horse they have in which hand. We buy two sets and put a brown with a black to make two team sets of what we call logger’s lines. A good harness shop can make those for you if you ask.

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