[Thecowboysgirl]

Me & technology….not so good.

Robert you have planted a seed! I have a dump cart that hooks to our lawn tractor and an old German Shepherd patrol harness with a padded breastplate and big D rings over the saddle part + one goat over 40#. See where I’m going with this?? (My doe is tiny and my buck isn’t grown yet) But Mad Mardigan, the one who flings himself tot he ground when I attempt to lead him, lol. He’s available! If the harness fits him I’ll send pics, it’ll be funny for sure.

The current joke is “JJ powered farming”. (I adopted my daughters as teenagers and they call me JJ). JJ powered farming is basically me dragging stuff across the farm by myself since we have no tractor & no horses (and no money!!)

Anyway, Robert, I will try the harness shops, too, that was a great idea. And that letter is in the mail finally to the Fla Draft Horse Assn. I know my coincidence will happen eventually, just like yours did. The last thing I wanted this bad was the farm itself, and that happened despite incredible odds. We were GIVEN the other 5 acre half of our farm for free by the bank when we purchased the first five acres with a decrepit house on it for about 1/4 of what it was worth. When does that happen? No way we should have been able to get a farm this year but someone had other plans for us. Here we are, goats, chickens, and all. (even if the damn chickens won’t lay!)

[Thecowboysgirl]

Well…I am going to wait and see if my other responses pop up somewhere before I re-type it all….

But suffice it to say, my experience with a stubborn goat made me question whether I could handle a mule…

And I did finally just shoot of a snail mail letter to the one contact address listed for the Florida Draft Horse, Pony and Mule Assn. page, whose website is never working…

And I got an email back from someone at Florida Whips for a contact person in my area so I have also emailed her, seeking driving lessons of any kind…

Wish me luck!

[Thecowboysgirl]

I was warned off of the Florida draft horse rescue by a local woman. She did not go into detail and I didn’t ask. But she didn’t seem like a drama-prone person, she just said to be very wary of them. I decided to email them anyway and they did not respond.

I have been to the Fla Draft Horse & Pony page but the link to their website seems to be chronically broken, so I have never seen the actual website. I have tried it tons of times, though! I have thought of snail mailing the address on there, haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I did contact the Georgia Draft horse association because their website is functional, but haven’t heard anything back. I thought perhaps doing a day or two on someone’s farm in GA might be achievable for me.

I contacted the single local carriage company that drives drafts asking if they would be willing to give me lessons and haven’t gotten a response…

I have even posted threads on several Florida horse discussion forums searching for anyone who drives or farms with drafts or mules and came up empty… I sure wish I would have gotten interested in this when I still lived in New England and ran with the hippies of Vermont!! (And before the husband, the kids, the farm animals that I can’t leave behind to go and do an apprenticeship somewhere)

But where there’s a will there’s a way! I’ll figure it out eventually. On the plus side, I have realized some of my homesteading dream since we now have a small flock of heritage chickens and a few dairy goats. I learned the milk this ornery goat.

[Thecowboysgirl]

I absolutely heed your advice on being ansty, but don’t worry. We are still about 6 mos out from being financially ready to buy drafts. So my hands are tied by my pocketbook lol!

I have seen teams for sale with their own harnesses, and that’s what I hope to find, but I’m also trying to get an idea of what I might do if I couldn’t find horses w/ their own gear. The pool I have to shop from is VERY shallow since there are practically no working drafts in my state, which leaves me facing taking a southeastern road trip and trying to get everything along the way…

Sorry to put you guys through more of my pondering, I am still just trying to figure out some way for this to make sense. If I still lived in New England I’d already be knocking on someone’s door asking to do farm chores in exchange for driving lessons 🙂

[Thecowboysgirl]

I did email the regional contact for my area off the FLA whips site, and asked if she knows of anyone nearer than Sarasota who might could teach me to drive…

If I had SOME driving exp. surely I could get a couple of light horses broke to drive and figure out how to get them to pull a manure spreader, right lol? My husband is very handy and understands machines so he has agreed to help me with the equipment end so long as I can work the horses 🙂

[Thecowboysgirl]

Okay, well, it’s nice to hear that it might help. I am going to have to drive to Sarasota to pick up my organic livestock feed anyway, so I might even be able to combine trips to take a driving lesson while I am doing a feed run.

I checked out that Florida Whips website and saw they have some horses for sale in the classifieds section who are broke to drive- that’s worth the link right there because I think our farm would be better off with light horses doing the pulling work than drafts since we have only 10 acres and the chores simply include pulling the manure spreader, mowing, and a little garden work.

I will keep looking into this…thanks for the input.

[Thecowboysgirl]

I have put ads out on the FlaHorse forum, the Horsetopia Fla forum and even on ft. Myers craigslist searching for anyone who might know how to drive or work horse-drawn farm machinery who could teach me. I’ve gotten ZIP 🙁

BTW someone joked about this awhile back and I’m hardly joking anymore- I’m gonna wind up offering one of you poor New Englanders a free plane ticket and a free Fla vacation next winter to come teach me how to do this lol.

I have also searched extensively to see what’s for sale around here and as far as harness trained I’m coming back with nearly ZIP for that as well. Since we started this thread I have been unable to find a QH who is trained to drive for sale (not that I’m ready to buy, I just wanted to know if they’re out there) I did see one Standardbred for adoption out of a rescue who drives.

Once in awhile I see a draft for sale who drives, although I’ve been emailing a woman in N. Florida who has drafts and it’s got me thinking I might be out of my league there.

Which brings me back to my original pondering…could I teach a QH to drive & do my farmwork even though I have no experience either? I do have a roundpen, surely that would help as far as a safe place to hook up to something strange.

[Thecowboysgirl]

OldKat you’re right, this area is loaded with little bulldog QH’s and they are surprisingly cheap. I was so surprised when I moved here, where I came from 14.2 is a “quarter pony”. Down here, they call 14hh and up quarter horses.

I guess it will boil down to whether I can find someone local to teach me about driving…I think if I can get no experience for myself I’ll likely buy any breed I can find that is dead broke to drive.

That type of QH is almost certainly what my husband will wind up with for his trail horse, so, like someone else suggested- maybe I can later teach that horse to drive once I’ve learned more on a veteran horse/mule.

As a side note my neighbor just got a donkey and it came to visit us at the fenceline (even was curious and not nasty to my dogs) he was so desperately cute. No point to that. He was just the cutest, friendliest most charismatic little bugger.

[Thecowboysgirl]

Hi guys,

I was just reading older posts and found a whole thread on to shoe or not to shoe. Didn’t mean to be redundant, but thanks for your thoughts anyway. I sort of had it in my head that they would almost certainly have to be shod and now I think there’s a good chance not, which is a relief (mostly financial)

We are doing everything here on an awfully tight budget, which I’m sure is the case with a lot of ppl here…

[Thecowboysgirl]

I guess I wasn’t sure if their weight caused enough stress on the hoof to require shoes most of the time, or if they are like most horses who could go barefoot on good footing with medium work level.

I don’t really know how the workload here compares to anyone else but I hardly imagine we’d be “hard users”. Even trail riding down here is easy on feet- most of the trails are soft sugar sand.

[Thecowboysgirl]

Gordon, I appreciate your input. Maybe I’m biased from growing up riding leggy dressage horses!

In any case, I know you have really valid points about versatility and feed costs. I will keep it in mind. Maybe I could compromise with a bigger Haf.

🙂
Juliana

[Thecowboysgirl]

Yeah I have been browsing for a few months now and not seen one for a single horse. I have seen t hat pic of the Australian guy before though. I’ll just keep looking.

I did find this guy who has quite a few mowers (all double) if anybody else is looking:

http://garyshorsedrawnmowersandrakes.com/index.htm

[Thecowboysgirl]

I have only personally known one mule in my life. I worked on a farm animal rescue that had a donkey stallion who had bred one of the pony mares. The mule was the only animal born there who hadn’t come from some terrible background. I loved all the other animals but she was a spoiled, pushy brat!

That aside, from the reading I’ve done i think I can understand why people like them so much- the draw for me is that from a resources standpoint- it seems they are likely to require less feed, shoes, and will fit in smaller trailers so it just makes sense. As for the personality thing, I am also a dog trainer and I think it’s safe to say that anything I haven’t encountered before (training mules) is a happy project. I love a good challenge as far as figuring out how to work with something I’m new to, I don’t get angry easily, and I’m not a pushover. (shrug)

As far as “off” season, there might be one month or maybe two where there’s a danger of frost. On a cold year. The biggest danger is the summer sun. It’s just brutal.

[Thecowboysgirl]

We have one great neighbor, it turns out, and he acutally already has disced (sp?)a section of our side pasture for us with his tractor. He’s the type of guy who will just do anything for you and doesn’t want money exchanged between neighbors. He’s just a nice guy who is happy to help. We are so happy to have such a great neighbor, I bring him fruit from our trees and cookies and things, and my husabnd buys him diesel for his tractor, and we’ve rpomised him anything he wants from our garden. So we have accesss to the tractor- I think he’s got most everything for it except a brush hog since he doesn’t have much grass. But he’s got a loader and a box blade, which we are planning to use to do our dirt work once the new pond is dug.

I regret all the fossil fuels but the work has got to get done and it would be a terribly long time to wait for me to get this all figured out, find the horse, find the equip, etc… My plan is to take over with horsepower as soon as I can get it together.

[Thecowboysgirl]

At this point I am counting out ponies of any type, though I considered Haflingers in the past, because whatever I use to work the farm has to double as a trail mount for my husband or myself. I know they say adults can ride haflingers but I would just feel stupid! I’m 5’8″ 150# or so and I know from experience that anything under 15 hands feels too small for me. My husband is over 6′ and I promise you I won’t get HIM on a pony lol.

Due to grazing load on the pasture and other financial constraints I can’t keep a horse to only work in harness and not be ridden as well. For that matter there won’t be enough of either type of work to keep a horse fit, but combined I think it would be perfect.

So….for a moment I thought mules were the answer to my problem but hubby says he won’t ride a mule either!! I don’t mind riding a mule, so if a single mule could do the draft work then I can trail ride the mule and hubby can have a quarterhorse who does no draft work (and I can ride the QH for fun to keep it in shape for him). Or if I get a great mule who can teach me to drive passably well then maybe I can train the QH to drive too. (big dreams!)

Is everybody’s general consensus that a single well built mule or well built larger riding horse) would be strong enough to do the work here? Assuming it knew how to drive? I keep coming back to the mules since they are much more often broke to drive than are QHs etc.

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