looking for single horse advice

[Anonymous]

for my next season i am looking to grow five and half acres of produce(mainly storage crops to fullfill a winter csa share) with one large horse and maybe a little support from a tractor. i am planning on using a 12 inch walking plow. i’m not sure about the adjustment on the plow? i read alan slavicks two articles in the small farmers journal from the early nineties. he walked his horse on the landside of the furrow. is it possible for the horse to walk the furrow? I also have a four foot disc but it may be too hard to pull so i guess i’m looking for a small single disc. does anyone have a single horse mower for sale? i am willing to rebuild one. i’ve re built one two years ago. has anyone evr heard of a single horse pulling a potato plow? any comments would help. thanks

[Plowboy]

To cover that much ground extensively enough to harvest a good crop you may want to consider a team. Much of the equipment except for walking cultivators is designed for a team. You’ll tire a single horse quick on a 12in plow and also if your horse isn’t accustomed to pulling a plow it may be hard to drive him especially if he’s not used to hard pulling. In this case a team is easier to drive and the work will be easier. Horses are at an all time low so go for a team. It was a little dry this fall when we dug potatoes on our 1/2 acre plot and our seasoned work horses had a time pulling the potatoe plow. They had to get at it like pulling horses even in my river bottom soil.

[Gabe Ayers]

D. Todd,

You can do all of that with a single horse but you need to have the right sized equipment and some experience with using it with your horse.

I’ve heard old timers say that years ago people worked 50 acres of open land a year with a single horse. I think 5 would be all a person could or would want to do, but that figure is what was called for as one horse farm. Team was needed for a hundred acres. Of course all of it isn’t in open tillage all the time.
There are allot of things the old timers did that I can’t do or won’t do.

I would suggest you get in touch with Jimmy Brown and ask him about the proper sized single horse plow (maybe 8 inch) and maybe get him from help with the draft setting and the tract (landside/furrow) the horse will travel to do the best job.

I suspect he can help you find the other tillage tools like a spring tooth, small disc or whatever you need. Single horse planters are common in the south. The Cole Planter company made ones that would last a long time. The seed plates are probably still around.

He has a web site at [url]http://www.farmerbrownsplowshop.net./[/url]

Then again ~ I also support plow boy’s suggestion that you get another horse.

Having a useful life for a horse by them being with someone that wants to work them is an even better situation. People are giving good horses away everywhere or selling them for less than it takes to keep them a year.

If you enjoy working one single you will enjoy it twice as much working a pair.
The equipment is easier to find and you will get it all done quicker with less effort by you.

Most team equipment is riding…which since I have worked horses all my life is a good thing. The wheel is a wonderful invention maybe appreciated proportionally by those with old legs and hips that are determined to continue working horses.

Glad you are going to work an animal at any level. Maybe more will add to this thread. Glad you are here on DAP.

[becorson]

i have done garden plowing with a single horse and an 8 inch plow. my set-up has been to let the horse walk on the land. i wanted to work a single horse because what little equipment i have is all single horse stuff.
recently some friends loaned me a set of team lines and helped me experiment driving my two horses as a team. i was surprised at how well they took to it. (not that it went perfectly but it wasn’t the rodeo i thought it would be, either) it seemed that one of the two mares clearly preferred to be in the furrow and the other preferred to be on the land (we tried both ways).
anyway now i am ready to get my own set of pair lines and an evener!

[Anonymous]

my decision is to work a single horse for a season. i hope to see the full capabilties a single horse and maybe create a more sustainble model for small acreage farms to implement awork horse. all of my experience is working with teams, minus using a horse for single row cultivation and occasionaly with a stone boat. after one season i will have a better idea and move on from there. i already have cultivators and the plows. alan slavick switched to a 12 inch plow and fit it with a rolling coulter to reduce draft. i plan to plow shallow and use the tractor for breaking sod. i also plan to fit a riding cultivator with a set of shafts to use as a row marker, and to dig furrows. i am toying with the idea of hooking the horse up on one side of another cultivator and tieing off the other side of the evener to strattle rows. i know the horse could handle the load but i’m unsure if it could actually work. i have a few older friends contiplating it as well but i would like to hear some feedback on that. eric nordell is a big proponent of “making the equipment you have work” so i’m trying to stay within my resources. i have all winter to continue to think about it.

[Rick Alger]

Good on you.

I can’t help with cultivating equipment suggestions, but I strongly agree that a single horse can do a whole lot of work. I do about half my logging with a 1500 pound Suffolk. Under ideal conditions she can twitch a tractor trailer load in a long week.

I’ll be interested to hear what you learn from your project.

[henkdemink]

Hi D. Todd Newlin,

I am from the Netherlands in Europe. In the past most farmers worked with a single horse, bullock or cow. A pair of horses was only usefull, when your farm was big enough.
With a single horse they cultivated 20 acres under the plow. The man reason for the use of a single horse was that a horse could only be used for fieldwork and had no milkproduction.
Uptill 1955 there were many firms building single horse implements. Today they are almost all gone, but with the new idea’s some persons are trying to built new one horse implements.
http://WWW.PROMATTA.ORG is building and futher develloping implements that requiere low draft. For there smallest implement you only need a donkey of 12 feet.
Next year in fall I hope to built some of there implements in WA. If you want any photo’s to get an idea what was built in the past, please send a mail.

Henk de Mink.

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