[goodcompanion]

I’m surprised no-one replied to this.

Any ground-driven spreader can be pulled by horsepower. You just need a forecart to hitch it up to, and a good match between the size of the spreader and the strength of your team. It seems they make ground-driven spreaders designed for atvs and such now.

[goodcompanion]

When living in England I walked a footpaths from Sussex to Wales, a little of it on old sections of Roman road. Fascinating that those roads went from point to point exactly as the crow flies without regard to landscape. Terrain, after all, could be re-engineered, but those few minutes it would cost a courier to gallop around a hill instead of over it were indispensable to the empire. Some little arched bridges are still intact and used by present-day farmers for their stock and haywagons.

A chain of couriers could carry a message from Segontium (northern welsh garrison city) to Rome itself in three days at full gallop. A chain of trumpet blasts would assure that a rider would be on the road with a fresh horse to take up the message from the previous leg without the message itself ever decreasing in speed. Today you can barely drive that distance in three days! Of course they rode all through the night, too.

These roads are still around not because they are still used but because they aren’t. The high speed internet of its day, this network collapsed with the empire because the local populace had no particular need of instant messaging, as it were, and cut their roads along the path of easiest travel, as they had done before.

All of which is an elaborate aside.

Totally agreed with Tevis and Carl that skills are the real critical resource. And I think that we take the stewardship of those skills, and their dissemination to the willing, seriously. Of course we have to balance that effort with taking care of our own endeavors. Right now the prospect of the hungry at our doorstep is theoretical to us (though not so theoretical in Haiti, Cameroon, Somalia where food prices have already broken down the social order). I think it’s very hard to say for sure what role any of us can or will play in events to come.

In social upheavals, everyone’s assumptions are often turned on their heads, even those that saw it all coming. This is hard for us because we do what we do and are where we are out of a desire to craft our own life and live by our own terms.

I try to remind myself of the wisdom in Frank Zappa’s two-word commencement address: “Stay loose.”

[goodcompanion]

I think however the age of oil ends and the new solar era comes, the ethical implications will weigh heavily on those that saw the writing on the wall early on. Carl, you and I live in a state with the natural and social resources to do all right or even better than all right should people here merely re-adjust their priorities. We can advocate for animal power, eating more locally, and so on, with the knowledge that it can work—here.

I’ve lived in six countries, earlier in life, and I can’t help but think in broader terms even though these days I almost never leave the farm. We can look at people already contemplating hoarding and arming, and say, “Well, how small-minded, merely thinking on an individual level when positive action can easily be taken to see that things will never come down to a gunfight over a case of rice-a-roni.” At least I have that response to such people. But by extension, couldn’t then a town, a county, a state, be faulted for considering only itself, rather than what role it might play as a part of a whole?

What are the ethical implications of advocating a type of power and traction that may work for those that have animals, water, land, functional social structures, but which offers little in the way of hope or help to perhaps 90% of the u.s. population where and how they are currently living?

[goodcompanion]

Carl, right on, I am with you one hundred percent.

Things look pretty positive seen through our lens. The sun will continue to shine, grass to grow, work to get done, regardless. But I am sure you must consider that beyond our sphere things don’t look so promising, and people are reaching for answers. If an oil collapse occurs as some authorities on the subject predict, i.e., in an ugly way, then answers might not be all they are reaching for.

The questions that I ask myself are, can we thrive using skills as our antecedents did? At what level will we thrive? Farm, village, county, state, region, nation? How do we plan to interact with people from the next farm, village, county, state, nation over who are, possibly putting it mildly, not thriving? Your optimistic skills-centered world-view, and mine, may be overrun. How do we best use our skills and our optimism and exhibit leadership, if I may use so big a word, at this moment in time to make for a better transition?

Not to put it too bleakly, but I want to take as many of my family members and neighbors as possible into the new solar era. That’s hard when many still deny that such an era is coming.

[goodcompanion]

Hey, I was totally wrong about the function of my evener that I built back when I was even less knowledgeable about this kind of lore than I am now. It is that one Carl mentioned that bolts onto a wagon tongue. Useless for plowing.

However I have located a nice metal one for plowing but it’s not offset. My apologies for sowing confusion.

[goodcompanion]

http://www.prommata.org/portfiche.php?p=1

Nice pictures on the site and you can basically figure out what the things are. Promatta has a staffed office and is easy to get in touch with. If you want to e-mail them and need it translated, Rod, just let me know. I specialize in french teamster-lingo vocabulary!

[goodcompanion]

Regarding practical application of donkey traction–there is this group based in France called promatta (acronym for promotion of modern agriculture with animal traction) that has developed a neat system of attachments for use with donkeys. It was designed for application in the third world (simplicity, repairability) but they have adherents in europe as well. Probably with the dollar going down the sewer we couldn’t likely afford to import anything from them, but I think they are free with information. If anyone is inclined to pursue this, let me know.

What they are doing there certainly hits the “very very small farming” nail right on the head.

[goodcompanion]

I have an offset 3-abreast evener that I built from plans in lynn miller’s book. Going to try it out next week. I’ll let you know how it works out.

I also have had a hell of a time trying to erase last year’s efforts at plowing with 3 abreast at the fall gmdha meeting. Suffice it to say that things didn’t work as they should have then. The plowed land is a total moonscape.

[goodcompanion]

Wasn’t 1939 the last time they tried using horses to protect the Polish countryside, and it didn’t work out all that well?

No, seriously, I certainly will check that out.

[goodcompanion]

I am with Carl in that my priorities are on the rural landscape, not the urban one. Still, this is a topic well worth visiting. Even if we are not going to see yard-maintenance ponies on every five acre homestead, there may be some benefits. For one thing, as mentioned by others, practical horsepower may become a cost-effective substitute for major rototilling, cultivating, hauling, and as such may provide full-time committed teamsters and farmers a way to earn money on the side. It’s not realistic that everyone under the sun needs their own team, plow and wagon. But we can become interdependent in this as in other things.

This kind of work also gives people who might otherwise not think of draft power in serious terms a close up view of it in action. Repeated exposure is necessary to change rejection to acceptance, acceptance to enthusiasm.

I have seen a team of minis with a 5-gang reel mower produce a hell of a golf-course finish, easily as nice as any of those idiotic wheelchair mowers. While ownership of such a mini-mower rig is not a priority for me, it’s kinda neat nonetheless.

[goodcompanion]

For some reason this reminds me of an 18th century English sport called owl ducking. An owl and a duck were tied together and placed in a cage with only deep water beneath and no perches. The owl would try to keep the duck aloft and kill it with beak, talons, but would be working with the disadvantage of having no place to perch. The duck would try to dive, and once in the water, stay submerged, thus drowning the owl. Bets were placed on either the duck or the owl at odds depending on respective sizes, previous victories, etc.

Horse pigging? Pig horsing?

[goodcompanion]

Too bad you don’t have a video to post on youtube. Animal violence always seems to be a big hit.

[goodcompanion]

@416Jonny 1238 wrote:

I almost forgot, Jean, there are some opportunities in Vermont.

Erik Andrus and I plowed out part of a soccer field for a local school back in October. That might be an option. Schools alway leap for more chances to teach kids anything. More so if they don’t have to pay anything for it.

The community garden on the Intervale in Burlington used to be plowed with horses. They use a tractor now, but I think it may have had to do more with being able to have somebody come out to do it with horses more than needing to do it some how cheaper. Of course, there are logistical issues, since you can’t keep horses in Burlington. Which I think is stupid, what’s wrong with having a livery and stable in the city? You can’t drive a car in Burlington hardly any faster than you can drive a wagon….

Jonny B.

Hi Jon,

Good to see you on board. Stay out of trouble in the big city now.

[goodcompanion]

@Jean 1234 wrote:

I would like to find a town in Vermont that would welcome a group of teamsters to come and plow their garden space, make a day of it and open the eyes to a few more people about how great life can be with draft horses.

Anybody here have any thoughts on this idea?

Jean

Middlebury College has a pretty big student garden in a field with excellent tilth so I’m told. I bet they would be on fire to have this happen. If you want to investigate this possiblity, I’d be curious to hear from you whether they bite or not.

[goodcompanion]

@Rick Alger 1221 wrote:

If you have a forecart, you can pull that walking plow with it. You’ll still need someone guiding the plow, but once you’ve got things adjusted, you’ll be able to plow straight.

That is a great idea. I wish I had thought of that.

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