Is mixing horse and machine cheating?

[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.

[near horse]

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.

I think that selling the consumer on “how” something is produced is exactly the avenue HD production should tout – hell, the organic folks as well. The health benefits, micronutrients and antioxidant stuff is easily argued both ways but supporting a “style” or “way” of production is harder to refute.

[Carl Russell]

Market aside, the idea that the processes of horse or machine are interchangeable is difficult for me to support. The original question had more to do with the choices that we make as practitioners about what we need to make our operations successful. I have no judgment against someone who uses machinery of any kind. What narrows the focus for me is when we start trying to determine if using a machine with horses still allows the user to say they are farming with horses.

Using horses on the farm is great, and many people farm or log at a scale where horses are not a sufficient answer. There are however underlying factors about the use of animal power that are philosophically different that those that support machinery, so the products of one are different than those from the other, at least philosophically.

We sell garlic raised on land that has been tilled by horse and hand only, for over twenty-five years. All manure has been hauled there with animals, and it has been loaded by hand. Every stick of dimension lumber in my home was hauled from the woods and brought to the site with animals. For twenty-five years I have skidded logs with horses and piled them by hand. I can honestly say that I farm and log with animal power.

As far as marketability, I cannot feed the world farming or logging like I do. My choices don’t make my products any more functionally valuable than any other. However to me they possess incalculable value, because this is how I want to do it. I am not trying to capture a niche market to recapture anything based on claims of purity. But at the same time when someone says “I can pay half that for the same thing, from that guy down the road”, I can honestly say “that is not the same as what I have here”.

At this rate I cannot produce enough or sell enough to make loads of money, but what extra I do have for sale is sold to the few who appreciate the way the food was grown, or lumber was harvested.

True I use chainsaw, computer, cell phone, F-250, wood splitter, Wood-Mizer, but the marks I make of the land are made using animal power, and for right now, that is where I can comfortably draw the line. My impact on the natural resources I depend on are limited by the fact that I use natural power.

I guess the point is that using draft horses is a priority I set a long time ago. It was not based on how much I could get done, or how much money I could make. I was committed to adjusting my lifestyle to accommodate the limitations that I found.

I don’t see anything wrong with other people using different parameters to base their decisions on. It is easy to justify the use of a machine in place of the horses because it is available, or it will help me do what I can’t do now, or it will help me to make more money. To me, it just doesn’t get to the same place.

Carl

[Gabe Ayers]

One isn’t cheating by using a fossil fueled fired machine unless they are playing by rules that define production as being animal powered only. I guess rules of nature or natural laws are the implied or applied purity guide here. I completely understand the conflict felt within this question. Having been an animal powered practitioner in the forest and fields for over forty years now I empathize with Matthews concerns.

This situation definitely provides an opportunity to differentiate the production based upon methods used in the processes from a source identity perspective.

This is what we have done with DRAFTWOOD “horse logged lumber from Restorative Forestry”. Yet we obviously use fossil fuel in the process at several points, i.e. chainsaw (ran on gasahol), loader (diesel), log lumber truck (diesel). One may use bio diesel to reduce the petroleum oil based energy consumption. Our point is that animal powered production uses less fossil fuel than conventional products and that specifically the animal powered component occurs where the environmental impact is the greatest from conventionally sourced forest products. That means from stump to landing, whereas the conventional methods require more road building and skid trail construction which are the greatest contributors to sedimentation into stream beds, alien botanical invasion, etc. So this source differentiated identify separates the products based upon the animal powered component where it is most important for the added value of environmental sensitivity.

I think the same can be said about food production that uses animal powered techniques as opposed to fossil fuel fired machines. Of course an organically grown potato is the same product in the simplest analysis
despite the use of a machine in the production, but the collateral damage or benefits may be defined in a whole way to allow the consumer to decide which technique and cultural approach they want to support. This is what we call “ecological capitalism”.

It is important to understand the beneficial values the animal powered techniques present. First, less fossil fuel is used. Second less compaction is created with animal power. Third and further are the factors of the biological powered systems that have many often under valued factors – many of which are about personal satisfaction derived from doing the very best one knows how to do, given their own understanding of all the factors.

It also is important that the value of the animal powered techniques be kept on the table and in the tool box of humanity to meet it’s needs from the natural world. Even though the DAP aspect is only a part of the process to produce goods or services, it is a valid one that won’t have a chance if folks take an animal powered purist position. There is middle ground and that may be the best most of us can do at this point. That in no way reduces the value animal power has in the whole picture of human needs from the natural world. In fact the animal powered aspect may be the most harmonizing aspect of our existence being within natural laws that we have available – beyond going back to being hunter gatherers of a primitive time.

Further differentiation is a key to marketing, but those things start from the leadership and example of others and this board and others are a great example of those considerations being inspirational and informing.
For those leaders it seems to be a very personal sense of satisfaction from actually doing the work. If we can bottle that sense of doing the right thing and label it as such, maybe it will help us get a few more pennies for our goods and services to mitigate the increased labor cost.

Great discussion Matthew, keep working your animals even if only you care about how it is done. As time goes on, others will appreciate it and pay more for it too.

~

[TaylorJohnson]

I see the use of machines with horses as a way to do business for me personally . It may be different for someone else but for me it is what works. The reason I don’t use a small tractor is because I don’t want the break downs , they cost to much , they will not hold up in heavy timber or under heavy loads , fuel is expensive , ……….. and on top of all of that the horses can get more done in most circumstances. ( I am talking 45 hp tractor and down ) . I know some guys that ran small tractors in the bush , they tor them to pieces out there. In the same timber I have never had a day I could not work because of my horse.
I happen to love working with horses and mule I was born into a family that gave me that hunger but that is not the total reason I work horses. In a true select cut , small acreage, rough rough terrain horses are a better choice for the job for what they can do and for the way it pencils out. To use a machine to help out in what I do is not a problem, I am not really trying to be a traditionalist just trying to stay a logger ( not a factory worker who is on a moving dissembling line on tracks in the bush aka processor LOL ) .
I do like my forwarder but I do not try to make every job a forwarder job . There are times when I don’t need it and to use it would just add another step into the process that does not need to be there but were it is needed it is a great help to me and the horse.
Bottom line is it has to make you money or it is not worth doing . Don’t not use traditional things just because you think they are old and don’t get to caught up in machines because they are a little easier . If a machine is not a hole hell of a lot easier than it probably wont pencil out and if it is to expensive to buy or fun it will not pencil out . We need these odd little skills and old tools along with some specialized new equipment to get those niche markets and jobs out there and to beat the big guys out of some of it.
My Grandpa was a very good boxer and he use to tell us boys something , he would say ” To have a better chance to win a fight there are three things to keep in mind 1. Don’t box a boxer 2. Don’t wrestle a wrestler and the most important and final one number 3 . Don’t jack with your Grandpa ! ” LOL. He was right about those things and he would say them to us in a joking manner ( me my brother and cousins ) but what he meant by it was don’t play someone else’s game use a different plan and use your own set of rules to get it done. He meant bare knuckle fighting but it applies to logging to . Do what makes you a living , do what can get you jobs and give you happy costumers , don’t worry about being pure to tradition and don’t get to wound up in machines go out and make a living any way you can with animals and don’t fault one another for what we do just try to learn from one another . Taylor Johnson

[mitchmaine]

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this question since we started debating it. We all add excellent points, but in the end it’s like preaching to the choir, cause we all understand what we are up against. And we also share all the reasons for going over the line. So, where did the line come from? When folks come to visit, who don’t know farming( and that’s hard enough to imagine ), they bring certain expectations with them. They’ve been lied to by the news, their congressman, the television, the banker, and they just want some faith in something, the good old days or something. maybe I’m making more of it than I should, but I know the “look”. They say “hey, what’s that?” and I say “that’s my tractor” then they get this look of disappointment like it’s my fault they were misled. Frankly, I get a little irritated with that look, cause I never said one word to make or break their day or build up their hopes. Time to stop talking. The good news about the good old days is that today or this week or month is going to be somebodys good old days someday, so I have to learn to enjoy it while it lasts. Sorry for ramblin’, mitch

[jac]

Mitch you hit it right on the head when you mentioned the “good old days”!! We have the choice to pick and choose the bits we like from the whole draft horse history..the modern materials but not the sheer hard work that went with the good old days or modern vetenary practice and leave docking in the history books.. A hitch cart with an engine is just a tractor with 30 odd hp less and 3 or 4 live animals providing the pull. Im sure in 20 or 30 years from now the draft animal practitioners of the day will be picking some of our ideas and leaving others.
John

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