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Well, if you are ground-driving them as a team and they fidget enough to where you have to be concerned that they are going to turn inside-out on you, they will feel that concern. If you take away that risk, you remove some of the worry and thus some of the energy. If they fidget and swing their butts out, you are forced to respond to keep the situation safe and it is not an option to just relax and let them fuss around. You have to get on their case and straighten them up or things get unsafe. A butt rope will help keep them in line without you having to worry at them.

It is a little trickier to rig up a butt rope if you don’t have collars and hames on them, but I bet you can cobble something up.

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I have had a few adjustable collars over the years and I always end up selling them at some point, or trading them away. Having said that, however, I somehow keep ending up with one now and again.

I don’t like that the hame bed kind of peters out up at the top of the collar, where the adjustable cap rides. I also don’t like the fact that there is only one optimal setting with an adjustable collar. The draft of the collar – the widest point of the collar, where you want the traces to press – is situated relative to the overall length of the collar. It is proportionate. A longer/larger collar will have the draft placed more centimeters from the throat of the collar than a smaller collar. So while you can make your adjustable collar longer or shorter, the location of the draft remains static.

It is the same with hames, however, and we all generally manage to get by with that. Most people in the U.S. are using tubular steel farm hames with an adjustable rachet at the top and non-adjustable draft. There *are* hames that have adjustable draft, but most people manage without that feature.

But the truth remains that there is an optimal setting with both the hames and the adjustable collar. There is optimal and then there is a wider swath of “functional”. Drawing the line between the two will depend entirely on the individual and the situation. I’ve got a mare that is on the bottom rachet of her hames. 90% of the time this is just fine, but after a round of plowing a little earlier this spring, she came up with a sore spot because the draft was too high on her shoulder. I find that spring plowing and our mid-summer wagon train is where collar and hame fit is proven for me. So it’s time to swap her hames out for a smaller set.

An adjustable collar can be a rather handy thing to have around, especially if you have a horse that is just getting into work. Their neck can change size/shape dramatically. My own preference, however, is to have a few sizes of collar to chose from, rather than adjustables.

I have recently come to accept that not all adjustables are created equal. I have primarily used Broadhead adjustables but I did have an adjustable Badger that was pretty darn nice. I do kind of regret letting that one go. As adjustables went, it was nice. But then, Badger collars are just a cut above.

As for standing patiently after the whoa, I completely agree with what Donn offered. Trying to coerce them into standing still by nagging at them will just increase their nervous energy. There are many ways to come at it, but keep in mind that if you feed energy into the situation (whether by line movement, voice, or just your thoughts) it will degenerate. See if you can bleed that energy off. You can work it off, divert it, or avoid getting the energy into the horses in the first place. If you can find a way to leave your baggage at the gate, that can help tremendously.

Edited to add: are you using a butt rope to keep them from turning inside-out on you?

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Oh, okay, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, if the point of hitch deviates significantly from the natural line of draft it could present a significant amount of torque on that cup. I’ll have to do some figuring before I cut my beam down to length.

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I think that when I’m up on the seat of the disk, very little weight will ride on the trucks. I think I will use that strap iron that’s on there also. Can’t hurt, I don’t think.

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Kevin, could you elaborate on your chicken/grazing livestock rotation? The time frames involved for each type on the pasture would be great.

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Hm, just had an interesting conversation with a friend that I had emailed photos of the trucks to… he believes there was a top plate for the cup that interlocked with those slots on the sides in some fashion. There would have been holes that were mates to some of the holes in the bottom of the cup. I think I am going to fashion a plate out of 1/4″ steel for the top of the beam and sandwich it in there. Any more thoughts on the subject, please don’t hesitate to jump in. I’ll post photos of the finished product.

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I believe the clevis would only be used if you were hitching multiple teams deep. You’d run a chain back to the clevis, I think, from the lead team. The evener attaches to that sort of pinch-looking bracket above the clevis. There is a sleeve and a set screw at the very top of the trucks. The set screw allows you to slide your tongue bar over for hooking three. I have considered putting the beam below the cup. Cut a notch to allow that diagonal brace under the cup to be recessed into the beam. But I will probably use a plate on top of the beam and set it in the cup. Haven’t committed, though. Still hemming and hawing.

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Chickens are most economical if you can let them free-range in an area that is protected from predators and have them safely cooped at night with an automatic coop door. Feeding chickens attracts rodents. We love our little mixed flock but since they must be confined (we live in the middle of the woods with lots of hawks, eagles, raccoons and coyotes), they cost a pretty penny to feed in a healthy manner. We had a boom in the rodent population and got three more barn cats to compensate.

When we get more mesh perimeter fence put up around the central farm “compound”, we might start letting the hens out into the closer paddocks and pastures during the day. But for now it is too easy for a coyote to dart out of the woods and make off with a chicken before anyone sees it coming.

If you have a good supply of leavings/scraps, you might be able to feed chickens more economically. We don’t generate much kitchen waste so we have to purchase all of their feedstuffs. Since we have these guys primarily for eggs, I see no reason to feed them the cheap stuff. We feed them the spendy, high-quality stuff so the nutrition is transferred to the eggs. I could feed them more cheaply but it would result in lower-quality eggs. If I wanted eggs that are nutritionally bland, I’d buy commercial eggs and it would be much less hassle.

The chickens themselves are wonderful critters. So full of character and personality. We got chickens to enjoy watching them as much as we did for the eggs. The plan is to put the chickens in tractors on the “latrine” portions of the pastures but we aren’t there yet.

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Yeah, but it’s a good white oak stick! It was left over from making a plow beam. Overkill but it’s what I had.

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If someone has a copy of Lynn’s Tillage Tools, I’d be much obliged if you could see if there is an example of that kind of cup shown somewhere.

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Looks like the tree might be inclined to rock forward and dig at the shoulders. Maybe change your straps so the load presses down in the center of the pack saddle to distribute the weight along the full length of the saddle bars.

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Here are some photos that show the entirety of the trucks. Still need a bar for the tongue.

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If the tires are the same size on the back and the front, then add blocking under the box. Between the suspension and the box, rather than between the axle and the suspension.

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What you’ve got there is a nice little 4WD mud-boggin’ backroads farm wagon. No need to go trying to make it into a Caddy. A hitch wagon (the “Bud-type” wagon), IMHO, looks funny on rubber tires. A hitch wagon should be 5th wheel on wood spoke wheels. That wagon gear you have looks like a good base to build a nice multipurpose wagon on top of. But not a hitch wagon. Keep your eyes and ears open and some day you’ll run across a good deal on a wood-wheeled running gear in good shape that you can build a hitch wagon on top of. I think grampa’s wagon should stay more of a mid-70’s Ford Bronco (or International Scout, if you prefer) type of vehicle.

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Much of the 3rd-world equine equipment is not optimized to gain the most efficient labor from the animals. The use of a pivoting tree can greatly increase the animal’s performance. I might be biased but I can’t believe anyone would choose to still use a treeless roller-bolt arrangement in a country that has Internet. And yet they do.

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