[OldKat]

@matt wny 18419 wrote:

I recently read an article in farm show magazine about creating lime by building a pile layered with coal and blue limestone rocks with a wooden chimney in the center of it.you burn the pile the heat breaks down the rocks and adds minerals from the coal ash.Then you spread it on the field like regular lime.This amish guy from ohio claims that it has a lot better and longer lasting effect on the soil than regular ag lime. I have never heard of anything like this before.Was just wondering if anbody on this site has ever tried this or knew of this practice.

I have heard of it, but have never tried it. I do know of a guy in our county that bought crushed limestone rock and incorporated it into the soil where he was planting lavendar shrubs (bushes?) with the idea that it would break down slowly and keep the soil pH up over a longer period of time than ag lime would. Haven’t heard if he is checking the soil pH on an ongoing basis though. Interesting concept either way.

[OldKat]

A couple of things come to mind in reading your post and the balance of this thread. Not sure how expensive land is in your area, Monroe County, NY if I remember where Rochester is located, but you might look into leasing at least some of the land you will need first to help knock down the upfront costs associated with taking on something of this scale. It would also give you the opportunity to get your system down pat before being saddled (no pun intended) with long term debt; unless of course you are in the position to purchase your land outright, which, if so … never mind the debt issue.

Relative to using part of your land to stable animals for others; that could be an extra income stream for you, one which we have considered ourselves in the past. Your situation may be different in New York State, but in our state the liability was so horrendous that we couldn’t afford the incremental insurance. This is in a state where there is a specific law exempting “equine practitioners” from liability. That turns out to mean that the people who would board with us could not sue us if they or their animal was injured or killed on our property, but virtually anyone in the general public could if they were injured or killed while on our property and were impacted in any way by our or other peoples horses. That is why we don’t allow visitors on our property when we are doing anything besides just feeding the horses. Insurance agents looked at our business plans and proposals and said “no thanks” when asked to provide a quote on liability insurance. Investigate this carefully before committing to anything.

Finally, I am not trying to pour cold water on your plans by saying the following. That said I want to be honest with you. You are proposing something that is very doable, and it almost directly mirrors our dreams. Yet, I don’t get the sense that you have a real passion for the “horse drawn” aspect of your dream / vision. That in my mind is a real red flag. I think you will complicate things greatly by introducing another aspect of the production process that you will have to master in order to succeed in your endeavor. If you had a lifetime of experience and deep love of horses or cattle, but not draft horses (or oxen) … then I would say yes go for it. If you didn’t have much experience with animals, but had “always dreamed” about working with them; then by all means get the experience and proceed. In your case, I would be very cautious before investing in animals and equipment before determining if you would even like working with them. One thing about a small tractor is if you don’t like the farming deal after all, you can get out from under your equipment fairly quickly and easily … probably without taking a financial bath. If you pursue draft animals and decide to bail out you will be faced with deciding the fate of a living, breathing being that did nothing wrong other than not being the answer to your traction needs. To me that is a fairly significant issue. Proceed cautiously (but do proceed), and good luck.

[OldKat]

@jac 18409 wrote:

Hey OldKat I’ll watch the mail…now where did I leave that Pioneer catalogue ????:D..Youre right though.. it is a dinky little mower and a 6ft bar version would be good.. tho mabey with grippier tires.. BTW did you ever try out that recipie for the fly repelant with the walnut leaves or is it not fly season yet?..
John

When you posted that we were pretty well out of our fly season, and I had since forgotten about it. The flies are getting to be a bit of a nuisance, and the walnut trees are fully leaved out now so I think I will give it a shot. Do you remember what forum that was posted in?

[OldKat]

@reb 18189 wrote:

I don’t know anyting about it. Here is the link to the site minprom
Sorry if you all have see this already, but just in case you havn’t I thought I would share it.
Richard

I would think that having these shipped to the US and /or the UK would be far more cost effective than trying to replicate the IHC Mc Deering #9. Might take some modification to get the thing set up for shafts rather than that pole thing on the right side of the single horse, but I am sure it could be done. Wonder if they are going to make a two horse version of this? If this is produced by a German company I bet the engineering and workmanship are first rate.

[OldKat]

@jac 18406 wrote:

Thanks Mitch, thats perfect. Just the finishing touch. Im a bit pedantic over draft angles an stuff:rolleyes:..You guys are lucky to have so many good machines and spare parts still..One of those no9s with the rubber tyres and the high gear and a 6ft bar would be like a Rolls Royce for me…
John

Pedantic; that is a good word & only the second time in my life that I have actually seen someone use it in context. You get the prize for word of the day. (The check is in the mail 😉 )

[OldKat]

I can’t wait to see what you are building. I think this is just about the neatest thing I have ever heard anybody do. I am very hopeful that this will be an overwhelming success for you guys

[OldKat]

@dominiquer60 18354 wrote:

At school it was drilled into our heads that wilted red maple can kill a horse. live and dead don’t have the same effect supposedly. something about a wilted leaf and compounds breaking down is the key, coming from a university who knows if it is true, just something to consider I guess. Too bad about the horses that died, I hope that they are able to find and afford another team.

Erika

We don’t have red maple where I live, but a friend of mine had a situation a few years ago where the lawn guy at his mothers house trimmed a mulberry tree and threw the limbs over the fence into his pasture. He saw it, but didn’t give it any thought. Not the next day, but the day after that he turned about a dozen yearling heifers into that pasture and the next day about 6 ot 7 of them were dead. I think a day or so later one or two more died, and the others really never fully recovered. The vet told him it was because the heifers ate the wilted leaves off the mulberry limbs. I had never heard of this causing a problem before, but ever since then I don’t throw any tree trimmings where horses or cattle can get to them. I pile any limbs I cut in an unused pasture until the leaves are totally dry and brown, then burn them, chip them or whatever I it is that I plan on doing with them.

I don’t know what all species of trees that can cause a problem, but I don’t take any chances.

[OldKat]

Not exactly on track with this thread, but it got me thinking about community and the electric fence story conjured up an experience from about 30 years ago from a community where I lived at the time.

Here goes:
I think most of us have probably experienced getting zapped by an electric fence now and then. However when you pull a wire up off of the ground & it turns out that the charger is in fact NOT off, it doesn’t take long to realize that you have a monster in your hand. When I was much younger, and didn’t know better, I taught what was then called “Vocational Agriculture” for a few years. NOTE: We can’t use the term “vocational’ anymore, because that might imply that we would be training someone to actually work and we can’t have any of that going on in our public schools!

Anyway, one day I was taking a bus load of rural and small town kids to the city on a field trip to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo . As we passed one of the two school owned farms I saw cows out on the highway. We stopped and put them up and I found that the electric fence that reinforced the dilapidated barbed wire fence was down and well, the grazing is always better on the other side of the fence … so that is where the cows went.

We had a mega DC fence charger run off deep charge batteries that were charged by a solar charger. I unplugged the pulser, laid it on top of the unit and went out to pull the wire up while some of the kids put it back in the insulators. As it cleared the ground I had an experience somewhat like that guy in the story did. Fortunately I was able to drop it back down to the ground and get away from it real quick. Not one kid smirked or laughed, so I knew some little %!#*$^&!!! had done me in! I went up to the barn where the charger was and sure enough it was plugged in. Knowing that if I asked who did this dirty deed to me I would get no response; I said “Hmmm, I thought for sure that I had unplugged that pulser!” Several of the kids nearby were about to bust, but to their credit they did not rat out their fellow perpetrator, I mean student. We got the wire back up and hot and were on our way in just a few minutes.

Several days passed without anyone so much as breathing a word about who the guilty party may have been, but slowly the tide started to turn … I kept hearing “Travis W”. Travis was a good looking, fun loving and extremely likeable boy who was a Junior that year and who happened to be the oldest son of my horseshoer. I never acted like I believed this story and kept telling the kids; “Oh no, Travis wouldn’t do that. I just forgot to unplug the pulser, so it was my own fault that I got zapped”. Pretty soon the trickle of informants was a flood. I started watching Travis … real close. I noticed that he was doing everything he could to distance himself from me, so I knew I had my culprit. After a few weeks he would walk by my classroom door without watching my every move and I knew payback was gonna be sweet!

Every day just before lunch he came down the hall where my class was located, on his way to his next class. One day I was waiting with the biggest, baddest, most charged up cattle prod that HotShot made. It had a 36″ fiberglass wand on it and I had it charged up enough to knock bark off a pine tree. When Travis and his girlfriend passed my room he looked up and nodded, saying “Mr. Rogers”, to my nod and “Travis”. As he passed by I pulled my HotShot from behind the door, where I had it hid, slid it up under his right butt check and pressed the let ‘er rip button. Now some of you might think that this is just a little bit odd behavior from a high school teacher, and I know that today I would get fired and probably sued. Maybe because in 1980 I didn’t have anything worth protecting, but for whatever reason I didn’t care. Ol’ Travis did the oddest thing; rather than spinning around to confront his attacker, he just ran. Straight down the hall like Forest Gump on steroids. I was right on his butt, literally. Down past Home Economics (or whatever stupid PC name they use for that now), down past the Biology labs, past the Counselors office on and on he ran with an amped up HotShot arcing blue flames off his butt. As he was approaching the Main Office, I started thinking about those big windows they had so they could watch everything going on out it the hall and decided that his MIGHT be just a little difficult to explain. So I let up on him and came to a winded stop. Immediately he spun around and with the most bewildered look you have ever seen on a kids face asked … no screamed; “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” I calmly looked at him and said “For the same reason you plugged that fence pulser in on me, just for the Hell of it!” He didn’t say a word, but a big smile came across his face and he mumbled “Oh that …” He went his way and I went mine. I kept thinking I was going to get a call any day to come to the office so they could fill out my dismissal paperwork, but it never came.

A few weeks later his dad, Charles, who was built like an Angus bull … short and powerful, was over at the farm where we lived shoeing horses. He was up under one my mares when I asked; “Charlie, did Travis tell you I lit his butt up with a HotShot?” He dropped her foot and stood up to face me. This guy had arms like the trunks of some of those trees that Jason and Carl fell, and was armed with a big shoeing hammer no less. For a second I thought it was on for sure. Then he slowly said “Uhh, no …he didn’t. Why did you do that?” So I told him the whole thing. He laughed so hard that he had to go get a drink of water to stop the coughing that had started. His face was beet red with laughter. When he finally stopped laughing, he said; “Good by God, I’m proud you done it!” I never tried any stunt like that again. I can’t say for sure that I would have had the same response if someone had done that to one of my kids, but it made an impression on me that I will never forget. I never had so much as a minutes problem with Travis, or his younger brother Glenn after that. Charlie is now 100% disabled and living in an assisted living home in the final stages of Parkinson’s. God bless his soul.

[OldKat]

@Carl Russell 18165 wrote:

I don’t want to open a can of worms, but I just couldn’t let that go by.

I would not agree with this sentiment. I think it is a personal choice to decide what equipment to use, but products from animal powered operations have value added that have to do with all of the environmental impacts that are tempered by the choice not to use petroleum, not to mention all of the direct physical and intellectual investments that make these products artisanal in nature.

It is not cheating to use a tractor, but don’t try to pretend that it is the same thing as using animal power. Markets may not value the difference, but the two approaches are very different.

Carl

Carl, I read that completely different than you did. I took it that he meant that an organically raised crop of whatever is still the same organic crop whether it was produced with a tractor or a team. That part I agree with because the consumer can’t sit at the dinner table, eat a potato and determine that it was a nice, fresh potato produced by a horse farmer … anymore than he or she could eat that same potato and determine solely from the product that the guy down the road with the green and yellow tractor had produced it. Ain’t possible.

However, I see what you are saying about the artisanal value of one method versus the other. While you say that the market may not value the difference, and that is probably true, perhaps that is a key aspect of this whole horse powered deal. Perhaps the key is helping the market to grasp and appreciate that difference.

To that end, I think that it will be a tough sell ever getting the average consumer to “value” agricultural products produced by the HD community if the products produced are commodity products and not otherwise differentiated from those produced by the conventional farming community. However, if we are producing a specialty product, and thereby defining a niche market … well, now, that is a horse of a different color (pun intended). This concept lends itself well to that artisanal nature that you describe and therefore allows the consumer to justify that while they may be paying more for our products, there is something special about them that makes the extra expense justifiable. Just a tought …

Anyway, as always enjoy reading your perspective.

[OldKat]

@PhilG 18169 wrote:

Nice article,
Matt is 24 and his bank account is near empty, I am 45…my bank acount is near empty, the path I have been on has increased the bank accounts dramatically of insurance agencies, workmans comp extortionists, permiting goverment agencies, tax collecters, oil companys, John Deere,Caterpilller…. the list goes on and on. I am glad to see these young hardworking guys heading down this alternate road of horse farming and living cheap , it took the great depretion of 2009 to kick start me down that path and I have never been so content. It is great to see my kids on the draft horses or cleaning the chicken coop and colecting and cooking eggs.

Good post there, PhilG. Not the part about the economy being down, the OTHER part; about being so content in what you are doing. That is cool to hear, because so few people can honestly say that. I am happy for you.

I understand what you are saying about the accounts being depleted, I had planned on retiring last year, this year, next year … soon anyway & focusing on my cattle and horses. Nothing big time, maybe produce 20 or 30 grass finished beeves a year, maintain a large market garden with mixed horsepower … if you know what I mean.

Now I know it ain’t gonna happen that way, so now I have to figure out how I am going to do those things without retiring. I sure hope to find that contentment that you have PhilG, because I don’t think I can be truly content until I get where you are. Thanks for sharing.

Oh, BTW: the video thing looks cool, I think I’ll support his efforts with this.

Another plug for Howell Living History Farm, great place … go visit if you can and support them however you can.

[OldKat]

@mitchmaine 18162 wrote:

i think everyone knows when they are cheating, cause it’s yourself and your own ideas that you will be cheating. if you model your farm, based on someone else’s expectations, you are farming for someone else, it will never work and you will always be cheating someway. screw everybody else. figure out how you want to farm, do it that way, and life will be good. signed “old curmudgeon mitch”

TOUCHDOWN! for the gentleman from Maine. Well said, sir! 🙂

[OldKat]

@Scott G 18144 wrote:

Oil & water don’t mix…, that is one of the first experiments all of us had in science class during elementary school.

You’d think they would have learned that by now…

Regardless of the technology, some situations are just too risky when, not if something goes wrong.

Well…, maybe by destroying the Gulf Coast it will put some more fired up enthusiasm towards renewables and benign energy technology.

Just my random thoughts…

Don’t believe all the hype you see on the TV there Scott. Did you know that there is more NATURAL seepage of crude (and natural gas) into the Gulf every year than what has flowed from the fallen BP platform? Probably hadn’t heard that had you? It is true. This indicates that nature has a way of dealing with oil in the Gulf, or any other body of water. IF they get this thing contained fairly soon it will be a significant, but probably a fairly short term impact to the ecosystems along the coast. If it flows for months and months, that is obviously a different story. That would overwhelm nature’s ability to breakdown the product and dispose of it.

Fact is the oil industry in the Gulf has a very good long term environmental track record, in spite of this incident. Since 2005 there have been over 10,000 wells drilled in the Gulf, not all completed as producing wells, but a significant percentage has been. Has anyone heard of ANY of them having a significant leak? No, because they haven’t. IF they had you would have seen it on the 5 o’clock news, or more accurately the 24 hour / around the clock news. Lack of such stories is telling. Over the life of the production in the GOM there have literally been 100’s of THOUSANDS of oil and gas wells drilled. Ever heard of anything like this happening before? No, because it hasn’t. BTW: most of the production in the Gulf is natural gas and not crude.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is no big deal … because it is. However, IF it is contained anytime soon the damage will be manageable. If you will remember, after the first Gulf (as in Persian) War the media was saying that the oil wells that Saddam Hussein had his military set on fire might not be put out for 10 years or more. It took what? Maybe 100 days or so to put out all of the fires and cap the wells. This current situation is bad, but it is not the end of the world as it is being portrayed. There is a high likelihood that they will determine EXACTLY what caused this and go from there.

I am NOT saying we shouldn’t pursue alternative energy, because we should. I am saying that oil will be with us probably much longer than anybody posting on this board will be alive. I do not work for BP; I do not own any of their stock. I am not a spokesman for them or the industry, but I have been employed in it for nearly 30 years now and I can tell you the media gets more wrong than they ever get right when it comes to the oil and gas industries.

[OldKat]

You know; there is a lot of wisdom floating around this board. Looking at the two posts above reminds me of something I have noticed with my two children. Our daughter, our oldest, has been kind of the hard luck kid…everything she has ever tried to do has been fraught with difficulty, disappointment and heartache, yet she will persevere and reach her goal 99.9% of the time. The youngest, our son, was just the opposite; everything he touched turned to gold. No effort required, just open the package, pour out the ingredients and presto! Instant success. After a time he just came to expect that all he had to do to be a success at anything was just show up. That was all well and good until he got about halfway through college and then the wheels just about fell off. He had a rough year or two when everything he tried blew up in his face; whether it was school, his part time job or the National Guard unit that he was in.

Finally things began to turn for him and start getting better. I think now he appreciates success more and understands that it is not a given; it does require some effort. I know Jen and the rest of us on this board understand this and while no one expects a “gimme”, sometimes it takes hitting a few rough spots to appreciate the smooth sailing.

[OldKat]

@cowGirl87 18110 wrote:

Is a calf out of one polled parent and one horned parent going to have different horn texture than a calf out of two horned parents? Is horn strength hereditary or due to environmental factors, or simply not an issue? I am enthused about getting some oxen but very, very green with it all… Thanks for your help!

It has been my observation that “generally” such a calf would be polled, those that are not polled will usually have “scurs” or “buttons” and not actual horns. There may be exceptions to this, but I don’t know that I have ever seen such an exception; i.e. a full set of horns on the offspring of a polled x horned mating. They may be out there, I just don’t remember seeing any.

I know that there are some books or charts on genetics available that would indicate what the possibility is of getting a specific color calf by mating parents of different colors, and best I can recall there is also information available on the results of a polled x horned mating, but I don’t have any of that info handy. I have never seen anything published on what the nature of such a horn would be; wall thickness, color, etc.

[OldKat]

@jenjudkins 18077 wrote:

I meant to pull the walking plow with the tractor. At least I would get an idea of how the plow works without having to concentrate on Reno. As you said, maybe it is the plow.

A better idea would be to have someone come over and help…one person drive Reno and the other plow. I guess I’m feeling better this morning….ready to try again….at least mentally. My back is killing me!:rolleyes:

Amazing what a good nights sleep will do for you, isn’t it?

My bet is that you will figure it out. You’re one of those people that we have a saying about where I come from; “She ain’t got no quit in her”, meaning you don’t give up easily.

Let us know WHEN the patch is plowed, because I’m sure you WILL get it plowed!

[Author]

Posts