[goodcompanion]

@Does’ Leap 600 wrote:

Our submisive horse has done wonderfully while the dominant horse, who is completely well behaved and calm in harness, has challanged us directly by trying to kick and even charging. Despite this, he is making great progress and is slowly and grudgingly accepting us directing some basic movements in the round pen.

I have a horse that used to be the dominant one of his team and wanted to be the boss of people too. Sometimes this was a problem, sometimes not. For instance he would kind of half be led, half drag you. He would not tolerate his feet being handled at all–his previous owner just used stocks.

I don’t have stocks, so I decided to try an old-timey trick of tying up his foot. Boy did that not work how I intended. We had him in cross ties and tied up the front foot with a rope looped up over the shoulder and around the opposite leg. The horse threw a fit, rearing and hopping on the front leg (while we stayed the hell out of the way) , and finally fell/rolled over when he couldn’t hop any more. Cross ties wrapped around his windpipe somehow. It was nip and tuck to get him out, a few more seconds and we would have had dead horse, I think. But we got a knot undone and he revived.

I really don’t recommend the above method but now he lifts his feet, leads properly, and generally attends to humans (particularly me) and is never aggressive. I have heard that making a horse fall down (safer way, just tie his feet together) is a good way to show who’s in charge.

[goodcompanion]

@Kristin 548 wrote:

We’d love to provide our members with rolled oats, but again we have been stumped by the machinery.

I am going to attempt scotch oats this year. People use to eat oatmeal all the time without a lot of machinery. That’s how they did it. Rolled oats are a 20th century thing. Use your mill widely spaced to shear off the hulls, repass through a fan mill, and then crack your groats with the mill somewhat less widely spaced. I think the old-time analogy would be the miller’s stone and the winnowing basket.

Of course scotch oats demand more prep from the consumer (old time solution–put the pot on the coals the night before, hence the word “porridge,” previously spelled “pottage”–contemporary solution, the slow-cooker). I have noticed that scotch/irish oats are a premium item and sell for several dollars a pound, packaged. That gets me kind of interested.

As for the lack of visibility of staples, I’m banking that changing. But I have to say that I think my bread is as sexy as any dumb vegetable. Except maybe some of those those striped eggplants.

[goodcompanion]

I do need hops! But you won’t get many the first year, you probably know that. We tried to plant hops upon moving here but they got overgrown. I love hops–such a neat plant.

[goodcompanion]

It’s to your credit that this life is what intrigues and engages you most. If it makes you a “romantic dreamer” to care about producing something real with soil, sun, and muscle in your “retirement,” instead of playing on a golf course outside Tampa, then we need more dreamers.

It’s nice that you have that pension. But don’t buy into the “farm until you run out of money” mentality. Make great cheese and soap charge what it’s worth for it, keeping in mind that by matching the supermarket price, you might well be underselling other hardworking artisan producers.

I agree with Carl that the type of animal doesn’t matter too much. Down in your country you ought to be able to buy a nice pair of grade animals for small money. Wish I could do that as easily! I would tend to think a pair would be more useful than a single on that acreage. You’d probably want to mow, maybe bale hay at some point, and you’d probably want two for those devices in most cases. Plowing too–much easier with two, in my experience.

My helper right now is also a former marine with an interest in these things.

Good luck with everything.

[goodcompanion]

It’s to your credit that this life is what intrigues and engages you most. If it makes you a “romantic dreamer” to care about producing something real with soil, sun, and muscle in your “retirement,” instead of playing on a golf course outside Tampa, then we need more dreamers.

It’s nice that you have that pension. But don’t buy into the “farm until you run out of money” mentality. Make great cheese and soap charge what it’s worth for it, keeping in mind that by matching the supermarket price, you might well be underselling other hardworking artisan producers.

I agree with Carl that the type of animal doesn’t matter too much. Down in your country you ought to be able to buy a nice pair of grade animals for small money. Wish I could do that as easily! I would tend to think a pair would be more useful than a single on that acreage. You’d probably want to mow, maybe bale hay at some point, and you’d probably want two for those devices in most cases. Plowing too–much easier with two, in my experience.

My helper right now is also a former marine with an interest in these things.

Good luck with everything.

[goodcompanion]

Hi Donn,

Great to have you here! This is a super day–two nearby animal powered farmers posting for the first time here on the same day. I for one want to talk farming, nothing against logging of course, mind you. Hope we can do that.

Erik

[goodcompanion]

Welcome Kristin.

I’ve read the write-up on you guys in SFJ. Very impressed. I’m pretty close by and would like to see for myself sometime.

So I take it you harvest grains with your horses? With a reaper-binder or with a powered combine? And where can I get an English shepherd? Many other questions besides.

Erik

[goodcompanion]

I have used them and have a couple pairs still around. They worked pretty good but I was trying to use them while plowing and the suction when the horse stepped in moist earth tended to make them come off. I was trying to use them to help rehab a horse with serious lameness. Didn’t succeed, but this wasn’t the fault of the boots.

I think the boa boots are the best because of an easier-to-operate closure. If your horse is tender you can insert a padding material (my boots still have this).

For work on roads and whatnot they would probably work great. If the size was right (somewhere online boa has sizing guidelines) you could try mine. They’re just sitting around. You could pay me for postage and for the boots, say, $50 a pair (cost $125 new if I remember right), but only if you wanted to keep them.

[goodcompanion]

Cool! I’m curious about your silo fill. I have two silos but haven’t been able to imagine a use for them–most of the grain I raise is for human consumption. How much (corn silage I assume?) do you put up? How does the silage aspect fit into your whole-farm system?

[goodcompanion]

Carl and Jason have made some great observations. But in my experience, it is extremely difficult to develop the level of sense and communication described in a vacuum, without experienced teamsters to help you and without a horse with a considerable level of trust. Mistakes made in handling reinforce this lack of trust. I’m not entirely clear on your depth of experience, burbfarm, but it seems that you might (like me at times) have just enough to really get you into trouble, so I feel obliged to add my school-of-hard-knocks voice (literal knocks) to the above.

Add in any kind of urgency to actually accomplish anything work-related (which divides your attention between the animal and the work) and you have even greater risk. If you have a lot of patience and time you and the horse may figure it all out and eventually develop a trusting working relationship as described above. But the odds against this happening are much higher than if you could work instead with a horse that’s already attuned to basic commands and is trusting.

You say you might get a teammate for your horse? Get a well-broke, older horse and work him/her singly to develop your senses and skills. Then apply what you’ve learned to the other.

I’m reminded of a joke I learned in Australia, where an outsider comes looking for a job at a cattle station, swearing he can ride and rope. Showing up for his first day at work, he admits that he stretched the truth–never been near a horse in his life. “S’all right mate,” says the station owner. “See that stallion over there in the paddock by himself? He’s never been ridden. Two of you can learn together.”

None of which is intended to be discouraging. But getting a start in this field is not easy–there is a lot to learn and much of it is very subtle. You need as many things in your favor as you can get.

[goodcompanion]

White Horse Machine in Gap, PA makes such a thing. At least they sell the accumulator forecart–don’t know about just parts or plans.

[goodcompanion]

My two cents would be to reaffirm Jason’s suggestion, get yourself an already broke horse. The difference in purchase cost between a well-broke animal and one like yours is less than what it would cost you to train it and/or yourself, most likely by a lot.

If you already know how to drive you can accomplish a lot around the farm with a patient, willing horse and the right equipment, and your future training skills can naturally arise from that working relationship.

At our place we are “transitional animal power” and I decided early on that it was biting off too much to learn to train green horses while also attempting to learn to get work done with them. Some people can do both at once. I’m not one of them.

If you’re looking for instruction with a focus on farming, fair winds farm outside brattleboro, vt offers that to teamsters. I got my start from them and feel that the time and money was well spent.

[goodcompanion]

Carl, I’ve long held the same values with regard to manual work. It’s mighty hard to find reinforcement.

Most of my background is in carpentry. I’ve read these two books on timber framing, for instance, written by the same author. The first was written in the late 70s, full of do-it-yourself gumption, all about hand tools and the dignity of good work, basic, time-tested structures that can fulfill basic human needs with elegant simplicity. The second written just a few years ago, the revised edition, is about all the wonderful things your professional timberframe contractor can do for you. Many of the building examples in the book, by the way, are also grandiose and not in any way harmonious to their surroundings. Buying and reading the second edition really depressed me. A genuine revival of interest in hand skills and community effort morphed into an autocad-designed, german-engineered, high-overhead professional clique within a few decades. I could give other examples too.

Personally, I think the rediscovery and revalorization of work is the greatest challenge facing our culture today.

I read my toddler some old Peter Rabbit books. One of them has in it a hedgehog washerwoman, who in the course of her work, chatters on about all these snippets of washing wisdom, such as how to remove certain kinds of stains out using chalk or whatever else. It struck me that just a few generations ago, washing could be a job, a trade with more stored-up lore than you could ever fit on the back of a tide bottle, that gave some people dignity and value and place.

Granted, for some people that kind of work was drudgery, but others would have looked you right in the eye in a public place and said that they washed clothes for a living. Nowadays that’s unimaginable, not just because of the economics, but because of the shame associated with manual work (and perhaps what was historically women’s manual work bears an even greater burden of this?) But why does it have to be?

[goodcompanion]

@J-L 324 wrote:

I put up anywhere from 300 to 800 tons of hay every year. There is no way I can get it all done without some tractor work, given my labor situation.

That’s a lot of hay.

@J-L 324 wrote:

The side delivery rake is the foremost. Just about any team can run one for a day and not be spent too badly.

I must get one of these. I hope to bring in some hay with mixed traction this year. Do you think loose hay would be practical, then, for a herd of 25-30 brood cows (plus calves, yearlings, finish steers) for a total of about 75 cattle or so?

[goodcompanion]

Carl, I don’t think there’s any real disagreement here.

It seems to me that the question is what motivates us to do what we do when bottom line and community response do not. I have seen operations survive and lead by example without loudly proposing to save the world, fueled through the years by quiet satisfaction with a pleasant, balanced life.

And I’ve seen the converse–those who farm primarily as activists (striving to create an agriculture that will prove a point, or feed the masses, if you will), and burn out. I find the former course more to my liking. I do what I do because it pleases me. So, I think we’re on the same page.

However if we are going to be out there as advocates of animal power, this question of feeding the general public is likely to keep coming up. All the more value to a diversity of approaches and end products. My point is mainly that staple crops are currently under-represented in the movement and the region vis-a-vis their importance in the common diet, and by extension, the sustainability of the communities we live in and depend upon.

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