[Gabe Ayers]

Well it would have something to do with what you will be pulling it with. A full sized pair of draft horses or mules can mow about 5 acres a day with a five foot cutter bar, when they are in shape.

The McD number 7 & 9 are the classic around here, but the JD 4-5 are their counterparts. David Bradley made a great mower also.

Give us some more information.

Otherwise the one that looked turn key or hitch to – ready to go, maybe even see it mow would be my general choice. Especially if you have hay to mow with it now…

Good luck, hope you get one and use it plenty.

[Gabe Ayers]

Heck Yea,

A picture of me, yea that’s the ticket….Some old wrinkly grouch with a perplexed look on his face….Maybe a photo of one of the good horses looking attentive and alert, that would actually be nicer to look at.

Walmart, brilliant, just the place to sell to folks that are interested in working animals and sustainability. Now we just have to figure out how to get it manufacturered in China, for real cheap and of course the quality control that all the wonderful products coming out of the great wall nation to the world. I’ll be sure to have my attorney send you a contract for your share immediately. How many million gallons should we reserve for the DAP members?

Seriously, these extremes do call for any edge we can give the animals as we continue to work through them. I will try something like this on our main pair and see what their interest and response is. It can’t hurt them and may give them some tolerance to these heat extremes.

It has cooled here this morning too and we are also in the woods. We are working on the place in some of the worst topography we have, but it is great. Time to bring some young horses to the woods for the first time, that is always fun and encouraging and promising.

Thanks for sharing folks, have a good time with your work friends.

I probably won’t make it to NEAPFD this year, just simply don’t have the funds to make the ride. I suspect it will be a great event just as Carl and Lisa put it together regardless. You folks are lucky to have a cultural community of interest in the region. We have nothing in the south like that and pretty much have to relate and grow among the practitioners we have trained and the interested few that come along as the result of our public educational work.

We are still not sure we will make it to HPD. We hitched a ride with a fellow coming out of Ga. but now the Amish are balking on paying any expenses for our participation at the logging demonstration. I think they are fearful of a low turnout by the public and don’t want to promise money they are not sure they will make from ticket sales. We are awaiting the results of the latest meeting of the organizers to see if we can get a little travel money to be there and announce the logging demonstration part of the two day event.

An interesting perspective is that we are not “selling” anything so we are not “vendors”. We would participate to promote and perpetuate culture, which just like this formula for Equiade is most useful when given freely for the improvement of all. Hopefully we will be there. The point is that the more anyone uses animals to work in the fields and forests, the more stuff they will need from the vendors of the goods and services of the cultural community.

Thanks to everyone who is working their animals in the natural world. We are all better off from that truly superior method of addressing human needs.

[Gabe Ayers]

Nice photos Neil, beautiful mares and foals.

Is that some tillage in the foreground or were or did you run some hogs in that field at some point?

[Gabe Ayers]

Neal,

Never tried any particular formulas other than good old mountain water, usually not letting them drink more than seven swallows at a time if they are wet between the front legs.

But that sounds like a great idea. If they drank it then they must have wanted it, because as the old saying goes you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. Sounds like good common sense to me.

What is the formula exactly, if you are willing to share – maybe you can develop a product that could be called Equiade and sell it and make millions. It would have to be sold to hobby or sport horse people because there are not enough working horse people to constitute such a market of millions. You can put HHFF in for a cut for the fancy name…. we can use any pennies to keep our efforts going.

Do you give it to them air temperature or cold as it comes out of the ground?

If I could do such a thing, (make millions) I wouldn’t change one thing about how I live or what I do, I would just be doing it with new equipment in the future. Of course we have small salt blocks in each manger in the barn and when we bring the horses in for lunch they have access to that and a small amount of hay, after they drink a bit. Some times we pour water on the horses while they work just to cool them quickly and supplement their natural sweating cooling mechanism.

I have a video from England that suggest giving molasses and salt to horses mixed in their feed, but not necessarily after or during the active working time.

Interesting approach man, my horses are usually much better at anything they are doing after lunch, but not necessarily faster, just pay better attention and don’t waste any energy wondering about what is going to happen next.

Thanks for sharing Neal.

[Gabe Ayers]

Carl,

I think the other hands on here have addressed and defined the tongue truck addition to the number 7 mower or any mower. We use the same ones that are on the front of the disk, which are steel and we still use the stock doubletree attachment with the spring to take some of the vibration out of the machine. These mowers will adapt to different guards that will make them more efficient. Mowing while turning is not as effective as in a straight line. These mowers are great for clipping pasture and can mow nice tall hay also.

I can’t imagine wanting to have a hot internal combustion machine on the mower with me. Not only is it noisy, hot, it is a cost I wouldn’t want to pay for in the cost of purchase, installation and fuel. Ground driven is the way to go. Often modern approaches use more power than needed. Ground driven is appropriate technology. It is quiet, cooler and keeps things within a balance of only being able to get down an amount of hay that you can get up.

As hot as it is at the moment and seems to be getting more hot, keeping things cool makes the work more fun. Is anyone else experiencing the intense heat of early June……?

[Gabe Ayers]

A number 7 will need tongue trucks, it is very heavy on the pole. I think the ponies can pull it fine, just rest them plenty and keep it sharp and well tuned.
It is essentially the same as a number 9 but the gearbox is further forward on the axle and that makes it much heavier on the tongue. This was the first mower I every used and it will mow well, but had to have a tongue truck eventually to keep their necks from getting sore.

[Gabe Ayers]

maybe they did work in the garden of Eden, but then a mistake occurred and we had to earn our place though the bow of our backs and sweat of our brow. The training probably falls under the brow sweat part, maybe….

It is also said that the earth is ours to have dominion over……and stewards of…

[Gabe Ayers]

Well, Plowboy, you are right Sabre would have been better if handled when younger and maybe turned out with mares as a two year old or even a yearling.

This is what I have done with my stallions for years. They learn yes from no and how to read the mares from a distance, so they don’t tend to rush them when they are restrained in a breeding stanchion. This horse is rank around the mares for sure, although I don’t get nervous, I do get mad and want to skin his head to keep some level of control about the experience. We have tried about every restraint I can think of to keep him from rearing prematurely and rushing the mare. We are using two handlers (my son and me), one with a chain over the nose and one under the chin and it is still an absolute struggle to keep his feet on the ground until he is beside the mare and not rearing twenty feet away from her. The last effort included a gum chain as well as the chain over the nose and that helped some. It is just a spoiled brat thing because once the mounts her once he becomes much easier to control. The sad part is that he doesn’t enter the mare without assistance. Maybe this is why it is called hand breeding? He seems to be a bit to long to get that done without help. I have no idea how he ever got a mare bred in the field. I had heard from a previous owner or keeper of this horse that he was impossible around mares and I know what they are talking about now. I have only bred two mares with him so far and don’t look forward to all the others yet to be bred to him.

Now the sad part is that the first mare (Ruby) we bred him with three times is now back in heat. She is our alpha mare and not strong heated anyway and only came to the fence across from him twice and then went out again. Of course the 90 degree weather may not be helping. I was tempted to turn her in with him this morning but she didn’t show signs when teasing her with Rudy on the way to Sabre’s paddock. So we will wait 15 more days and try her again.

I promised my partner on this horse that we would do the best we could to get some offspring from him, but there are never any guarantees with livestock. This horse is a mild mannered soft mouth horse in harness and at work single, so I was thinking I might try to put the lever bit on him and drive and lead him to the mare simultaneously. Any ideas on this or any other way to have effective control on this horse would be appreciated.

I am certainly not hand breeding for entertainment. I just think it is the safest way to get mares in foal without injury to either horse. The challenge here is to not have injury to the handlers too. Unless you have a big field I have seen horses get run through fences when field breeding. We live in the mountains and have all small fields.

I may just turn the boss mare in with him next time and let them work it out or not, we will see. I have about 4-6 more mares that would best be bred to him as they are sisters or daughters to/of our senior stallion old Rudy, who isn’t that old, being a 94 model.

Rock and Roll, well sure, but that is an after work experience and I am lucky to keep myself on the arch and not a radio or my 8 track. Those arches do turn over occasionally so I wouldn’t want to tear up my sound system…. I actually love the sounds of the forest better than any music I have ever heard or played anyway…. Music is a dynamic meditation though – when I play, I only think of playing…and on the contrary when I work I try to only think of working.

Keep looking you can find an old work type Perch stallion, just be sure it is one from two work type parents and not just a reject from a hitch horse breeding program so you have a chance to reproduce that type of horse and not get a high knee action tall horse from breeding him. Neil knows what he has and probably can help you find what you are looking for.

Good luck to all, let me know if you have any ideas. I was considering trying a war bridle on the stud to see if that got some strong signal on his head when approaching a mare. What do you all think?

[Gabe Ayers]

All horses should be trained single in order to understand the signals and learn to move against the resistance of the load. It is the perfect opportunity for the working animal to be in a herded situation of you and the animal. This allows the work animal to have the best chance to understand what is being asked of it and how to use itself in response to the signals from the handler. All the best horses are started alone, in a round pen, in harness without resistance and in a working situation involving resistance to movement or pulling a load, which of course is actually pushing a load by walking into the collar. This is the best way to understand how to drive the horse and for the horse to understand the signals from the handler. This is exactly what Carl and the other horsemen are suggesting.

On the contrary we often encounter horses are “Amish broke”, which often means put in a multiple hitch situation and sort of herded along in a field which doesn’t allow them to understand the subtle signals of being driven by themselves, single. Horses that are broke single know the signals from their training and are not as likely to be just imitating the behavior of their team mates. These trained single horses are more trustworthy than a horse that is just responding to the other horses. Sure, horses are influenced by their mates, through gaits, how to start the load and their ability to move a heavy load, when to relax, when to be excite, etc. But the best horses are always started alone and know the signals on their own.

In the country, (rural areas) a one horse farm has been know to be fifty acres of open land. A two horse farm was a hundred acres. So as Carl suggest, one horse can do as much as most folks would ever want to do and do it well. There are all sorts of equipment designed for one horse and that is an appropriate amount of power to accomplish many task, just about everything a family would need to do to be self sufficient and sustainable.

Don’t fall for the two is easier than one idea and the notion that one horse will learn from another, particularly if you don’t know how to handle one horse to start with. Maybe it could be explained as you have to be a horseman before you can be a teamster.

If your one horse is a mare you can raise replacements and have her produce a marketable product along the way as well as working for you throughout the year at anything needed to be a successful farmer. But to get started a broke experienced gelding is the best way to go.

Yea, I am not sure what the Cajun fellow is saying half the time either. It would probably be even harder if we were actually hearing his voice. I suppose that is a price we pay for this great site that is free to those interested in modern animal powered culture. I am southern also and understand the anecdotal euphemistic speak of the south, particularly country people of the south. But for the sake of being part of a national forum, some courtesy to keep communication clear would be appreciated by all, Louisiana man. Be sure to bring out your southern hospitality through your keyboard too, brother bubba man.

[Gabe Ayers]

That is a great price for the horses and well worth every cent, I’m sure. We simply don’t have the customers in the east. People seem to balk at a fraction of that for any work horse these days. That market could help them pay for themselves and your time.

We don’t pasture breed because we don’t have enough paddocks or well fenced areas to put outside mares in with the stallion. We have tried just turning them all in together and it is a dangerous war among the mares in the home herd and they are likely to run somebody through a fence or get injured in the pecking order scuffle. So we just keep the mares in a dry lot, tease them by allowing them to run along side the stallions fence line about 6 feet apart and breed them in a stanchion or breeding stock and send them home as quick as we can get them settled.

Pasture breeding definitely increases the social skills of the stallions. Our resident home grown stallion ran with mares as a yearling and two year old so he developed a clear understanding of yes and no. The new horse is a fool that thinks any mare is something to rush at without having any regard for her body language or serious restraint from the handlers. Once we get a few foals from the horse he will be looking for a home. Unless his get is great he is to much trouble to deal with otherwise. We have worked him in the woods a bit, but he is a pain to keep his mind on the work for the first hour or so and then comes along pretty well. He is of rare imported blood and a good genetic cross on all our domestic mares here at Ridgewind Farm. With the Suffolk horses it is not easy to mate them in an unrelated way. One would think that A.I. is the way to go with so few animals but the expense is great and there is no demand. It only took about ten years to get the Assn. to put an A.I. program in place and it is under utilized in my experience.

Now, that brings up another question. What is a good price for a breeding fee for a DNA blood typed registered draft horses. I am charging the same thing I did twenty years ago ($300.00). For us it is a matter of if we charge more, people just simply won’t breed the mares. Unfortunately many of the mare owners are hobby folks and don’t put a high value on having more horses.

Maybe the key is to simply charge more since it seems when a customer does come along the price is not the issue as much as the breeding being one of a good cross of genetics and type.

What percentage of your Percheron’s are registered and how do you feel that influences their value/sale price? We do breed lots of grade mares because the people that have them actually work them and their economics don’t allow any extra cost, since they don’t usually sell the offspring but keep them to work.

Glad you are here Neil. I enjoy your work with the horses and have seen your video of working in the bush with them, no doubt you can do anything you want with them.

Let me know what you all think about a good breeding fee.

PS –
An upcoming story will be what happens when we pick a young big black molly mule donated to the foundation and try to make it useful. It is a pet that was “green broke” and now is a backyard pet that thinks the only thing people are for is to feed them licorice by hand. Going to be interesting. She will be for sale once we get some kind of handle on her and at least started or restarted to drive and ride. Stay tuned to DAP, it may be a good story.

[Gabe Ayers]

Great Idea man, fixing stuff is a part of using stuff….

Something is always broken if you are doing anything at all.

[Gabe Ayers]

We have added several new layers of anti-spam protection and hopefully will see the end to the majority of spamming on the board. If you run across a spam post please report the post by clicking the image above the post – this will let Carl and I know about the problem post so we can look into it. Thanks for your patience everyone – spam is the biggest problem with public discussion boards just as it is for email.

[Gabe Ayers]

First, I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting anyone invest in a portable band sawmill. I have one and don’t use it enough to pay for it, particularly if it were new and costly. I got mine from the long list of folks that buy them with great expectations, run it for a while and burn out on the work or become discouraged from the lack of work. I simply don’t like saw mill work, never have. It is boring. I would rather watch a tom cat gnaw on a marble than stand beside a sawmill all day.

So, when we do have a sure market for lumber we hire or sharecrop that work out with folks that do like running a band sawmill. We have a fellow down here that will saw for .25 cents a board foot or $250.00 per thousand board feet and wait until I sell the material to be paid. That is what I am suggesting a horse logger do if he has a market for wet lumber. Some of the products I mention usually are sold wet or green.

Sometimes we have orders through our DRAFTWOOD Forest Products program and we process to the finished product to be installed by the builder or homeowner. This is usually done through collaboration with an architect. That requires kiln drying and processing that is costly, but again available locally without our owning the infastructure. So we just require 1/2 down with the order and that sometimes will cover the up front cost of processing and I get the landowner to wait for their share for the logs or stumpage. It is also appropriate that one have plenty of lead time to produce the goods. I always love that phrase “just in time”. Just in time for what? I suggest “just in time” for the forest to be protected during the sourcing of the goods. I don’t think any horse logger can own the inventory and absorb the harvesting, stumpage and processing cost while waiting for a market.
Does this make sense?

Another thing I wanted to mention that we have done lately is Poplar Bark Siding. Google “poplar bark siding“. For those of you in the NE you may be surprised at this product. It is easily done with a chainsaw and a spud or even an ax or shovel. We just rip it down the skid or dirty side and then cut in around the log in 24 inch increments and peel it off, carefully uncurl it and stack it flat, with opposing fissure wise and haul it to the market. The market in our case is in North Carolina which is a bit of a drive (125 miles), but for the price and the ability to haul considerable square footage in a pickup truck, it is worth. It sells for around 1.50-2.00 per square foot wholesale. This means the bark is sometimes worth more than the prime number one log in many cases. Of course we still sell the slimy logs if we can get them loaded without them slipping off the forks, grapples or truck. It is only good stuff if the bark is clear of defects that create a hole when it is removed. It is graded based upon thickness, cleanliness and uniformity. The price varies according to demand and supply….surprise surprise….

Just thought I would share that in case there were horse loggers out there that had a market reasonably close and weren’t aware of this value adding approach to tulip poplar. Do a search in your region and hurry up because the bark is getting tighter every day here in the central Appalachians. It is a springtime only thing.

Hope this helps someone out there….

Note: when you skid with a log arch there is usually only one face that gets dirty. Band mill operators like that, as well as bark siding buyers.

For the forests,

[Gabe Ayers]

Many of the marginally successful folks that log with horses as the extractive power do other things that are forestry related. I say marginally because I don’t know anyone getting rich out here working with animals in the woods. I do know a few that are actually making a modest living at it. All of them are doing more than just logging or selling raw logs or contract logging. They are value adding, wildcrafting, consulting, teaching and just about anything to make a buck without destroying their environment. This is why we called the folks we train Biological Woodsmen. They are not competing with machines to extract logs from the forest. That would lead to the John Henry syndrome. They are practicing a whole forest management, that includes identifying and collecting edible mushrooms, botanicals, and selling them. Most have some sort of relationship with primary processing or sawmilling which adds considerable value to the material. Our approach is that if we just sell raw logs we get a raw deal. Yet we all sell plenty of raw logs because it is not possible (so far) to value add every piece we bring out in the course of practicing restorative forestry. Of course we all sell firewood when the market is there. Some folks collect special forest products such as, Ginseng, witch hazel, black cohosh, wild sweet potatoes, nursery stock, pine cones. We process some fencing boards from low grade oak and sell them locally. We sell black locust for fence post locally. Many use their horses in other applications such as wagon rides, carriage rides, weddings, parades and such that pay a little extra on the side. They are diversified by necessity.

I think there is more potential to teach the skills of working with animals in the woods everywhere. People will pay for that educational opportunity on a regional community based method. Charge accordingly. It would seem that the development of special forest products will be a growing part of making a living as a natural forestry practitioner. This is not easy in any aspect of generating income from sustainable practices.

The reason the unsustainable practices are prevalent is because they are short term profit oriented and don’t include the whole cost of doing the work.
Whole cost would include the overall impact on the ecosystem and environmental quality of every site. Not just the minimum BMP’s but the preservation and protection of the forest as an intact ecosystem that provides services that are free to the public and not paid for in the conventional sense from the services of harvesting timber.

The time is quickly coming when this whole forest management approach will be better rewarded. The time is now for some that are working with landowner’s that have a vision of the future forested conditions to be improved economically and protected ecologically. It may not be quick enough for some of us, but change is sure. The value of the natural appearance of the forest is much greater for smaller landowners with nice woodlots than ever in history. We can develop the value of our services to be what we need to make a living for providing superior active management. It doesn’t matter if it is an innovative hourly rate, sliding scale sharecrop split, value adding approach or sustainable forest management services of any type.

It is also important to recognize that many households include multiple income generation by the family members. Just like many small farmers, the wife often has a job that includes a benefits package, insurance, retirement and the normal safety net provided in this modern society.

There is no doubt that the work of being sustainable is marginal at best. That is not our fault, but a problem inherent to the modern economic system that hides cost of doing business veiled in the ecological ignorance of the general public. Global warming and increased energy cost will help us demand the increased cost and value of our services.

Interestingly enough as I type this -the national news presents a segment on “Extreme Solutions” to the increased energy cost that included a fellow making hay with his mules and claiming he saved $70.00 a day. It didn’t mention the collateral benefits of less pollution, independence and human dignity, etc., ….but they are there…..

There are developments that give hope. The CSA in an example from farming.
We use the same approach in CSF (consumer supported forestry) where the end user is connected with the source of their forest products by being brought into the woods to see the sourcing of their goods. This will have to be developed individually on a community basis, because the big green certification programs (FSC) are laden with middle management cost that makes the entire approach an even more extractive force on the natural resources. There is only one source and that is the natural world and it becomes a re-source when it is removed from that natural world and moved toward the re-tail market.

So hold on to and continue to enhance your cultural skills of modern animal power and vision for the improved forest that results from good management. Your culture is valuable although not justly rewarded in most cases. It makes sense that it is the hard way, because it is hard to be sensitive.

Carl is right. The landowner that benefits most from good management needs to understand that there is no free lunch or cheap services to provide – sustainable practices. Those practices have a cost attached that will yield a greater reward as time goes on and we learn more about the value of our ecological systems.

This may be understood by the joke about how to tell who the real leaders are in life? They are the ones with arrows sticking out of them from all directions. I am sure there are readers of this that know what it means.

So keep setting the economics up to pay what you think your services are worth. This is forging new views of man’s place in the natural world and our skills are priceless given that no body else is offering anything near the quality of services we can provide for a forest landowner. Get publicity based on the novelty, the environment, the curiosity, whatever reasons and use it to establish a network of opportunities to work and then refine your client base to the ones that go along with your approach. That is what we are calling a new value system of “Ecological Capitalism”. This is were the value of services is based upon a whole costing view of what is actually happening in the natural world. Work with landowner’s willing to invest in their own forested assets, the response to the one’s that don’t may be “next”. That may seem arrogant and not an option to everyone, particularly those just starting up. There is more work out there to do than we can get done.

We are blessed in the new world to have a great resource base. That resource is under constant attack, with human presence leading the way and we have to provide a low impact alternative. One would think that the old world that Simon works in would understand the value of sensitive services and pay whatever it takes to get those services from the people that actually provide them. Apparently even the old world power structure takes the natural world for granted and continues to be extractive without regard to ecology or the people that provide superior services.

There is no excuse for the depletion of our ability to feed, cloth and shelter ourselves. Every one on this forum is far more important than they realize. It is shameful that this work is not better supported by the government or the economy itself. So we have to redefine ourselves to increase the value assigned to superior services. It is economically marginal at the moment for sure. But that doesn’t dismiss or diminish the true worth that we should earn through our efforts.

It leads us to flying under the radar and operating as cheaply as possible in many ways. It encourages our inclusion of sharing within our community of interest and demonstrating to the community at large.

This is a great thread and hopefully will be a continuing part of this forum. These are just some thoughts on the subject. I know I am still learning from and inspired by all of you.

Keep up the good work folks. Make the landowner’s pay for quality services, the forest is already doing it’s part when given a chance.

[Gabe Ayers]

I have added a couple new features that should aid in reducing spammers hitting the forum and make it easier to remove spam when it does show up.

[Author]

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