horse logging under attack!

[lancek]

Hey near horse your post were quite appropriate and yes I started this post, but there again I feel that the more we start listing on other sites the more we may be able too get people too see what we are really about!
And yes when folks start out with a certain mind set it is difficult to win them over too your view, but if by desc using your view and trying too persuade them into seeing your point of view you may win them over but at the very least you will hopefully enlighten others that are reading your information that there are two sides too a story and let them make up there minds on what they want too believe!
Jac we need to be laid back with the horses and sing our praises to the general public!:D

[mitchmaine]

@near horse 23979 wrote:

Hi John,

My other “name” is bunchgrass – name of our farm Bunchgrass Farm. I only was tipped off to the arborist site when Lance (I think) started this thread. Hopped on over, read the posts and spoke what I felt (of course, I had to register first) – glad you thought it didn’t stick out too much.

hey, bunchgrass. read your post over on arborist. interesting that they thought uncle pete, cutting his firewood, was really horselogging back in 1955. must have been the picture. somebody ought to post the photo of brad johnson in the other thread and see if they think he’s oldtimey. he can be our uncle brad.

[jac]

Sometimes I feel I gain more “kudos”.. {if thats the right word ?} if I just shut the hell up and get on with it.. it took a long time for the farmers on our road to accept the fact that I could get my hay done and done well using my team.. now they think its great.. I used to preach that horses were a truely viable option and got laughed at.. now I find a lot more folks are genuinely intersted and will come round to my idea… other point is.. do we want folk involved that only see horses as a tool ?..
John

[mitchmaine]

good morning, john.
i think working with horses (in the woods or whatever) is its own reward.
and sharing those experiences with “like minded folk” is fun. and can be rewarding in the sense we can build up each others courage, etc. blah, blah, blah.
trying to justify doing it with folks that don’t know what you are talking about, or don’t just get it, is a waste of good time that could be spent with the horses, which it’s what its all about anyways.
in the end, its just us and the animals, and the best stuff happens when you’re out there alone. thats how i feel.

[Carl Russell]

jac;23992 wrote:

Sometimes I feel I gain more “kudos”.. {if thats the right word ?} if I just shut the hell up and get on with it.. it took a long time for the farmers on our road to accept the fact that I could get my hay done and done well using my team.. now they think its great.. I used to preach that horses were a truely viable option and got laughed at.. now I find a lot more folks are genuinely intersted and will come round to my idea… other point is.. do we want folk involved that only see horses as a tool ?..
John

EXACTLY. In the mid 80’s I had all these enthusiastic insights that I felt compelled to share with people. I tried to convince people, and engage them, and eventually realized I was spending time, often frustrated by arguments, that I could otherwise use more effectively by setting the examples I felt were important….

I truly believe in sharing my opinions, but I find much more value in bolstering relationships with folks who are truly likely to share the perspective, and work to advance our community….. Thus NEAPFD, DAP.com, and DAPNet…..

The rest can go f….ishing, as far as I am concerned. I admire those who want to take up the argument, but it just feels futile for me.

Carl

[lancek]

But if we want to expanded and encourage are craft we also need to be teachers ! And to do that you cant hide your head in the sand you must engage in these conversations and no you wont be able to convince everybody but if you just convert a few then you have a better chance of keeping the craft alive!
Not only that but the real problem is that corporate America has done such a good job of desinforming everyone that draft power is out of date that people feel that this is true because so many of them have no idea of what we do!
Do we not owe it too our craft too despell these misconceptions and hopefuly get more usefull knowalge out there

[TaylorJohnson]

I have heard this argument before about the soil compaction … what a joke. There is no comparison to the two methods. If you look at the square footage that gets run over and packed down by machines. first you have a wheeled or tracked harvester that has to drive out to a group of trees and then cut them , this machine weighs many thousands of pounds. Then a forwarder that hauls almost as much as a log truck drives all over the wood to pick up the processed wood,, this machine while empty is still many thousands of pounds , well throw 7 or so cords of oak in there and see what it weighs . These tracks and wheels impact every inch of ground it travels . You can walk on about any job up here in the spring when the snow goes and see tracks all over the woods were water is standing where the machine has been. The the thing that will get you is just how much of the ground has been travels on . A horse making tracks is not continual and water gets down between the hoof prints and breaks the trail down.
I was at a log a load for kids one time and an equipment sales man and some foresters were talking to me and one of them said ” Well your horses actually tear up more for ground and are harder on it than this machine ” … well this machine had one tire almost as wide and my team it had six 2 in front and four in back lol. He then explained to me how the pounds per square inch theory of how my horse was harder because his machine was less in the pounds per squ in category. I told him well with that theory a white-tailed buck running though the woods is harder on it than all of us and tear way more up , wouldnt you say? He had no answers and the other guys laughed a bit . Then I said well let’s do this , I will drive my horses to the top of that hill and back and you go there and back when I am done and we will see who does more damage. The start of the hill had a steep bank and was sort and there were a lot of young hard woods there as well .. needless to say he did not take the challenge because we all knew what would cause the most damage. Taylor Johnson

[goodcompanion]

@lancek 24000 wrote:

But if we want to expanded and encourage are craft we also need to be teachers ! And to do that you cant hide your head in the sand you must engage in these conversations and no you wont be able to convince everybody but if you just convert a few then you have a better chance of keeping the craft alive!
Not only that but the real problem is that corporate America has done such a good job of desinforming everyone that draft power is out of date that people feel that this is true because so many of them have no idea of what we do!
Do we not owe it too our craft too despell these misconceptions and hopefuly get more usefull knowalge out there

I feel like this is a “both-and” thing. I don’t think anyone here is against teaching the craft to those who are truly motivated to learn it. Nor do I think anyone here would be against a practitioner devoting time to promoting the craft in the wider world. But the caution is that you can deplete a huge amount of time and energy trying to convince people who often have deep-seated reasons to need to believe that you are wrong. Such an audience is very difficult to teach and to reach out to. The best argument would be a critical mass of people leading by example.

[jac]

Thats a good point about the corporations Lancek… It has been that way over here since the 30s.. in fact if WW2 hadnt kicked off, horses would have been off the streets by 1939. A major newspaper.. Daily Express, mounted a campaigne to get rid of horses despite all the evidence that horses for delivery work was very profitable.. an interesting fact is that during the entire hostilities of WW2, the German army maintained a stable of around a million horses for supply lines and gun limbers.. Britains army on the other hand was completly mechanised by 1939..
John

[lancek]

I respectfully disagree I think with the mass of people such as the ones that are on this site can disprove the years of of mis information thats out there then maybe there wouldn’t be so many eager to prove you wrong! And thats the problem I for one was totally content with using horses after I left Sterling collage but when I returned too the mid west and tried fowling my craft I was laughed into submission and started thinking that big machinery and high volume were the only way to log! Now seeing that the damage that I done even though I was very careful when machine harvesting I know how wrong I was. So all these new people and those that want to join the ranks and are staying out there in the shadows because of the fear that if they expose there igneronce to us or the fact that they want to indulge in our culture but are afraid because of the fact that the modern world would think that they were fools to operate in such an old fashion way that they chose not to do it

[Carl Russell]

Originally Posted by lancek
But if we want to expanded and encourage are craft we also need to be teachers ! And to do that you cant hide your head in the sand you must engage in these conversations and no you wont be able to convince everybody but if you just convert a few then you have a better chance of keeping the craft alive!
Not only that but the real problem is that corporate America has done such a good job of desinforming everyone that draft power is out of date that people feel that this is true because so many of them have no idea of what we do!
Do we not owe it too our craft too despell these misconceptions and hopefuly get more usefull knowalge out there

goodcompanion;24003 wrote:

I feel like this is a “both-and” thing. I don’t think anyone here is against teaching the craft to those who are truly motivated to learn it. Nor do I think anyone here would be against a practitioner devoting time to promoting the craft in the wider world. But the caution is that you can deplete a huge amount of time and energy trying to convince people who often have deep-seated reasons to need to believe that you are wrong. Such an audience is very difficult to teach and to reach out to. The best argument would be a critical mass of people leading by example.

I admire those who want to take up the argument, but it just feels futile for me.

I have no problem with you or anyone else taking that approach Tim, I only meant to share my personal experience that I felt my time sharing with the uninformed was not nearly as effective in furthering my goals as doing it.

I understand how attractive it is to go after the uninitiated, and there are folks out there who enjoy that, and are good at it…. that is not me.

As far as the people who think machinery logging is satisfactory, and that animal-powered harvest is inadequate and potentially just as destructive….. I think they will eventually find the failure in their own ways.

Our craft is growing in capability, and the ranks are beginning to swell…. we don’t need to try to win an argument to know what we know. Let them continue to make their foolish mistakes… it can’t hurt us, and probably will actually help us in the long run.

Gotta go shoe some horses!!:D

Carl

[jac]

It can be a really fine line between puting forward you’re chosen way of working in a rational manner and appearing to “ram it down folks throat”..after all we dont want to end up as bad as some of the machine guys with the “ours is the best” mentality.. for what its worth I havnt seen one single job in Scotland done with big harvesters like the Timberjack that doesnt resemble a scene from the Somme…
John

[TaylorJohnson]

When you have Whearhouser , Ponssie, timber jack , ……. funding the studies then you are not going to get a straight answer on it . They are going to say silly things like a 70,000lb machine is lower impact than a 1600lb horse and that a 8′ wide machine is lower impact than a team of horses . Some common sence could go a long ways in this country. We have to get out of the thought pattern that the way to education is from school and a book… people are so disconnected that it is unreal….. there is no argument here . Taylor Johnson

[near horse]

@TaylorJohnson 24018 wrote:

When you have Whearhouser , Ponssie, timber jack , ……. funding the studies then you are not going to get a straight answer on it . They are going to say silly things like a 70,000lb machine is lower impact than a 1600lb horse and that a 8′ wide machine is lower impact than a team of horses . Some common sence could go a long ways in this country. We have to get out of the thought pattern that the way to education is from school and a book… people are so disconnected that it is unreal….. there is no argument here . Taylor Johnson

This “spread the load” idea is the same one being used by the Dept of Transportation engineers and Exxon Mobil in transporting loads in excess of 350,000 pounds over a mountain highway – if you put enough tires under it, then the impact is negligible. Our own governor (idiot) made the statement that each of these shipments would do less “damage” than your 3/4T pickup. Please.

I respect the choice each of you/us make in how to spend our time or how we respond to misinformation. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not trying to win the argument or change the mind of someone who’s decided horse logging is stupid. I’m trying to put an alternative response to the stupid rhetoric so the unknowing readers can see there’s more to contemplate than the narrrow-minded and untruthful rhetoric being posted.

People do read these posts and many,to gain information – and, in a lot of forums, the preponderance of readers are “guests” (nonmembers). So, I respond. I do understand that rebutting the stupid remarks demeaning what we do, isn’t for everybody and that’s fine. Like most things in life – it takes all kinds.

[Author]

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