[mitchmaine]

this old fella sittin’ by side the road hears this noise. and he looks down the road to see this ball a’ dust comin’. by and by comes this man draggin’ a chain. the old fella says “how come yer draggin’ that chain down the road?”. the man says ” i tried pushin’ it but it didn’t work.”

[mitchmaine]

great card. happy birthday, carl. good health to you and yours.

[mitchmaine]

hey carl, let us know how you do with that oak. i have one (a blow down) just like it in our sugarbush. not as big, maybe 2.5 – 3 feet, but lots of wood. i cut it off and bucked two logs and worked up the top. sounds juts like your tree, but i’m either waiting for some courage or ignoring it or something, cause there it sits. i thought i might twitch it out with three cause its near a pretty good road, but i can only get at the small end. let us know how you do. i might change my strategy. thanks

[mitchmaine]

the skidder is an amazing tool. you can hook a chocker to a tree and literally rip it, stump and all, from the ground. how many horses does it take to produce that much power? who cares. i think the beauty of the horse is its range of motion. a horse can do things for you that no machine can match. a team of horses twitching wood can squeeze between two trees narrower than their evener and keep going. walk to a tree and spin in one spot heading out. when your machine is stuck, its stuck. a horse is never stuck. i used to hotn yard for a quy with a skidder on a loooong hitch. we were back a mile and a half in the woods across two farms, and three brooks. i’d hot yard for him treelength and have 10 or twelve trees ready headed out. he’d make a hitch an hour and we did ok. i couldn’t have made a living there, and he couldn’t either. both had a job. you can’t compare a horse to a machine. they ain’t the same.

[mitchmaine]

the sport is out in the woods with the old indian guide looking for deer sign, when a wedge of geese flew over heading south honkin away. the guide said “when you see the geese coming out of canada in the fall, you’ll notice one side of the v is always longer”. so the sport asked “why is that?” and the old indian scratched his chin, looked up into the sky and said “there ‘s more geese on that side”.

[mitchmaine]

at the risk of preachin’ to the choir here i have to add that over the years i’ve seen alot of hopes and dreams shattered because of health insurance. young farmers moving up, living in a tent, growing food, in love with their lives. then the house and the kids and something to lose. then they got ya. few can buy health insurance with tomatos so they go back and get a real job. by the time anyone gets to a position of power in government, you’ve sold your soul to the highest bidder and they own you. sad but true

[mitchmaine]

hi ixy, i don’t get it either. one fact is that 1 outof each seven dollars spent here in usa is spent on health care one way or another. no one disputes that so we know we are talking about one ripe juicy plum. millions are spent to protect the status quo. fear is the greatest weapon. the truth is no insurance company will cover you here if you have pre- existing conditions. or get old, or return from military service. so our government protects them with medicare, medicaid, and the v.a. no one on these programs would tank them either. insurance companies like to insure young, healthy people and when they need coverage, fight with them about coverage. do i sound synical enough yet? cause i’m just getting started. i better quit. our law makers get ellected because they get lots of corporate money to fund their elections, and now the supreme court has guaranteed that right because of freedom of speech. you can say what you want if you have enough money.

[mitchmaine]

hey carl, that reminds me. up here at the university, they worked at and bred a four legged chicken for more meat production. but in the trials, they discovered no one could catch it. it didn’t catch on.

[mitchmaine]

hello all, glad to report that my mare is back to her old self. her neck is as smooth as a babies butt, and her coat is quyite lusterous for her age. we twitched a little wood the other day and she moved well. thanks to all for advice, tips and worry. it was probably a double dose of ivermectine that did it, but i like to think that it was the human side. i resurected an old habit i had once of giving them a hot supper one night a week. usually weekend because they would be hoveled on a woodlot somewhere during the week. hot water with mollasses and a touch of apple (not white) cider vinegar poured on bran to swell it good and then mix in their grain. man, do they love it. don’t know if it ever did them any good. i use the cider vinegar to clean out their water buckets in summer when they get rank, and throw in a splash sometimes with their water and they seem to like that too. any old recipes out their to share?

[mitchmaine]

hey john, just thinking about your post here, and of course once machines were made for horses. and usually two or three horses pulled them. they were engineered to be totally efficient behind those horses or no one bought it. it had to be good. far from obsolete they are getting harder to find each day. so the genie is out of the bottle and we know the tractor. their tools don’t have to be efficient to the horse, just suit 100 h.p. tractor. nothing is wheel driven. so we have to provide power to suppliment the horses. i figure if you can’t make enough hay on your land to feed your horses you’ve got to many. i think they used to figure farm acreage per horse, but don’t know any numbers. great thread. thanks

[mitchmaine]

i thought you explained yourself pretty good.

[mitchmaine]

good one grey, i think “to get what we want” people bend, stretch, and change the truth with one another all the time. so much, that we don’t even know we are doing it half the time. horses are totally honest. thats all they know. it’s good or it’s bad. eat or run away. a little simplistic, but when we use the same methods to get what we need from our animals, they don’t get it. direct commands and lots of care. they get that

[mitchmaine]

hey mink, i have a set of felts too. its half the thickness of your full pads and allows another degree of collar adjustment. as they muscle up to their work their neck gets smaller and i use the pads as needed.

[mitchmaine]

reminds me of a saying. you’ve probably heard it. “ground hogs day, ground hogs day, half your wood, half your hay”. i can judge from here that even by then we will be in good shape. inspite of a poor summer, we must be having a mild winter. i should have hay for sale and firewood left over. sorry for whining. the sun came out and i feel much better. but it sounds like your comments that each of you are having a different winter than you expected. the maple people are telling us that in our lifetimes, maine may become the southern edge of the maple syrup world. maybe not my lifetime but a hard thing to imagine anyway. the adjustments for all of us may be very different.

[mitchmaine]

hey donn, i’d say that the folks who can’t relax always bring it out in their horses. for sure. but like you i’m sure, i’ve had horses that wouldn’t relax and those you couldn’t wake up and didn’t treat them any different. so you have to think then that it’s not just the teamster? what do you think?

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