[mitchmaine]

hey ethan, we have farm family too. great bunch if you like insurance. the dept. of agriculture has a generic sign here (maine) warning visitors about the dangers of horses and stating that anyone who reads the sign is taking their own risks. it protects the farmer. its a funny read and is embarrassing to post but I guess it covers you well. in the end anyone can sue anyone regardless of insurance, its the world we live in that we all seem to be trying to bail out of. give belle a hug for me. mitch

[mitchmaine]

I used to have a setup similar to eds. a pair of tie stalls in under a shed roof. I could tie them in to harness but most of the time they came and went at their leisure. the only time I blanketed them was if I had swetted them up, didn’t have time to walk them out and the sun was disappearing, and it was well below freezing. pull the blankets after an hour and brush them out and they were nice and dry
I have to say my horses were never as healthy as that situation. the only draw back was they entered under a shed roof and the runoff made an awful mess in the spring, and like Erika said hard to capture manure. I like to make sure they have lots of water in winter.
my fences are gone. gone. under the snow and the horses have bulled their way through and ripped up fencing. its a mess. so I have them tied in, and hook them every day for exercise. a couple times I just let them go. I think there is really no place for them to go but two nights ago a couple horses north of here were gone a day or two and ended up five miles from home. gotta go push some more snow and make room for tonights mess. keep the faith, spring is on its way.

[mitchmaine]

I agree brad. evreytime I break a trail here, the wind fills it in smooth in an hour or so. and the snow just doesn’t pack. no moisture in it. I tried running on a snowmobile track across a corner of our field thinking it might hold but we blew it to pieces in one trip. the top of the snowfield is smooth as can be and hides the dips and holes so one minute you are in two feet of snow going pretty good and the next minute as a friend says the horses are swimming. good luck there bud and stay safe. mitch

[mitchmaine]

donn, I still think its about the animals. without them there is no us (teamster).
and mark, I don’t think the teamster makes the team either. for me, its always about the animals and how I can adapt to create or change what needs. for me, its all about them.

[mitchmaine]

Boom, the horses feet kick the side of their stalls, wake up call. Look at the clock, its quarter of seven. “how do those horses know what time it is?” they are such a creature of habit.
When I start thinking like that, a few more thoughts bring me around to people are or might be the real creatures of habit. Its our routine that animals get used to. Fed at the same time. Hooked the same way. Same horse steps over the pole. Try making one more hitch at the end of the day and it’s a fuss. During sugaring, we always stop at certain spots in the bush where collecting is easier. So the horses stop instantly and wait forever in that spot until you are ready to move on. “what well trained horses” I don’t think so. They just like the routine. Same with mowing, I had a team once that stopped exactly at the end of the swath. The knife mad its last click on the last bits of hay and the horses stopped right there. I was even amazed at it. Made me look like a genius but it had nothing to do with me. They figured that’s where we stop and that’s where they stopped.
So I start doing everything in patterns because the horses feel safe in routine. Great. But just like most of you mentioned, if you have to break out of the mold all else fails. Swapping sides, turning gee, stopping at different intervals are all good tools. And should be used often. I may be the lazy one here stuck in my rut.

[mitchmaine]

There is a pen at the sale barn in Mt. Hope, Ohio full of horses with no halters. Those are the horses that, for no other reason, didn’t fit the bill that day. they go for around $150. off to the killers. After the fact, you can always walk down to the pen and pair up odd horses and wonder if they would have made a team for three hundred bucks but it’s the pen of last resort. You’d have to be quick, but any of us could sneak in another fifty dollar bid and take home an inexpensive horse or two. Donnie webb bought five or six yearling colts for less than $1000 one time out there. Brought them home and worked with them, but pairing them up with each other and then pairing them up with people proved a hard battle. Maybe times have changed and there is a stronger market up here. Certainly with all the new teamsters as well as two relatively new amish communities here in central maine, the critical mass is strong enough to support another “hoss trader”. Great challenge, rewarding and fun time bringing along a new horse. I had an older mare that did it for me. Hook a zebra in beside that horses and at the end of the day you had a stripped draft.

[mitchmaine]

back in ’06, I bought a team of two/three year olds in mt. hope at the fall auction and trucked them home thru a buffalo blizzard, wow!
anyway, they were going to be my “last” team. they are tenish now and right at the top of their game, getting stronger by the moment. I, on the other hand get older, slower and weaker by the same clock. this troubles me at times seeing them sorta wasted on an old guy, but they behave well and do whatever is expected of them.
they didn’t always, but I broke them slowly one on one with this old mare who would or could not run. and she beat them up when they misbehaved. she was a blessing, still alive and out breaking other colts for other teamsters.
just some odd thoughts passing through my mind on the subject.

[mitchmaine]

hi woodsman,
i remember hearing that the wallingford hames were infact an alloy. i also remember hearing magnezium and nickel but that might be from someone who knew little or less than i knew about the subject. regardless, good luck with your project and here is to success. i think you are doing something very usefull for the greater draft community. can’t wait to see and hear about your results. you got me thinking with your posts, so i made a few calls, and own a set of wallingford hames myself now, not that i actually have them in my possesion, but it looks like they can still be found around.

[mitchmaine]

i only met les once at a dapnet event in tunbridge. his wisdom and knowledge were clearly apparent, but i was taken mostly by his kindness and humility. we started talking about harness but ended talking about farming and weather and just having a good chat. i am so sorry i never got another chance to see him. my sincere condolences to all of you that knew him better and his friends and family. there is a guy who will be greatly missed.

[mitchmaine]

it happens with belly backer too. the breast strap snap loves to capture a bit ring. I use only buckled lines for that same reason. snaps on lines love to capture anything they can find including halter rings on other horses. which leads me to this next thought.
I wonder if any of you ever considered using heavy buckles for breast and side straps? I thought about it now and then, but some of my horses have been pretty good at understanding whoa and I have always seemed to manage to get out of my messes ok so far. but who knows what horse is coming down the road.
it would be a little bit of work buckling in every time. I have never done it. just wondering.
glad it worked out for you George, it can be a pretty hectic couple of minutes

[mitchmaine]

hey mark,
haven’t shopped in a while but I think hames and pads are sized a couple inches larger than the collar, right?

mitch

[mitchmaine]

it took some doing (google), I found nothing about Wallingford hames, but I did find that there was in fact an aluminum hame made in 1928, so I was mistaken when I said Richard came up with the idea.

[mitchmaine]

Hi bud, sounds like you know as much about those hames as I do. I always wanted a set but they were pretty pricey as I remember.
About dick, he’s gone. Passed away 8-10 years ago. I tried buying horses from him back in the 70’s, but the timing was never right. He was a successful logger, and puller, and had a business selling logging equipment like chains and chokers and sliders and such. He made and sold those hames at his shop in the forks. Said he started melting down sleeves and heads and pouring it into sand casts, but he got better at it. The weak link was the throat so he doubled up the hame straps and his guarantee was “if you break those hames, I’ll buy the horse”. You could pick him out of a crowd of a hundred men. He had this perpetual smile on his face. Like he was outside all his life and was squinting so long, the look just stuck to his face, and when he saw you and really started to smile, there was even more teeth. Great guy. I do not think they make or sell those hames anywhere around here anymore, but I will bet there are a hundred set in barns and shops within fifty miles of here. He had a son richard jr. who lives somewhere around mooshead, Greenville or somewhere, he might be a good place to start your search. But your search will be more successful if you start in north western maine. Good luck with that.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

hi carl, I tried cutting after the ice storm in ’98. we had a week or ten days of ice before it really started to disappear. a couple things, one, as the sun came up and started warming the trees, the tops would explode and send limbwood and shards of ice showereing down on you. with ear protection you couldn’t hear it happening and that was pretty scary, but also, the weight of the ice gave a new center of gravity to the trees. anything I thought I knew about dropping wood didn’t apply. I notched a double top pine that had about 12 feet of single bole, and it split from the top right down to the stump, pinned my saw, and finished my ice logging career. I spent the rest of the storm working for the town opening up roadways and left my first saw stuck in that pine for a week. the wood in the roadways we picked up on forks or with a log bucket and bucked it into short lengths. it was so heavy, you could hardly move it by hand. nope, don’t want to do that again.

[mitchmaine]

hey rich,
I run a 357 and a 359. good saws. but I drug a couple old 262’s out of the shop and rebuilt them. rings, bearings carbs, filters and so on. and the run like they did when I first bot them. screamers. if we cut some wood together this winter, you can try them out. they were running when I set them aside in there, or else I would have just junked them. did you try out that arch yet?

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