Mule & Donkey & Potato Farmer in Sebastopol CA

[sendin]

Hi Everyone –

I am relatively new to the world of draft animals and probably too far west to be of any use. I have a mule and a donkey. The donkey is trained to drive and the mule is in training. Yours truly is doing the training after digesting as much as I can of Lynn Miller’s & Doc Hammill’s work along with a few others. I have been driving the donkey for about 2 years. I’ve owned the mule longer; since 2006 and he was born in 2003 out of a Peruvian Paso. His name is Marshall Cash and he is more settled now and I am a lot more patient. We are doing things in very small chunks. I am working him with a single tree for farm work and also with a false shaft set up for training so I can use him on a buckboard spring wagon. We are coming along very well considering my level of experience.

I am also a part time potato farmer and grow about one to one and a half acres of potatoes every year. I don’t have a tractor, but we get some tractor work done for field prep each year thanks to my Mom’s cousin who has a mowing business. The rest is all handwork and rototillers. I used the donkey for putting in some furrows and cultivation, but it is pretty limited so far.

For the past 2 years I have been lusting after the French tool the Kassine, but as a few here can attest – that endeavor is pretty much a dead end. At one point, I finally ended up with a price list and a translation from a guy in Sweden. I got a shipping quote and figured would I be into it for between $4K and $5K by the time it was in my hands. The drawings are near impossible to get. I tried to get them and I was using people in France to help me get them. No deal.

Then I hooked up with the drafting dept supervisor where I work and we tackled it from that end using graphics, pictures and whatever to get it on AUTO-CAD. Then she backed out and the guy who told me he would build it died.

Many, many (I mean many) other events transpired in my attempts to get a Kassine or build one from the time I started until now. The events described above are just a couple of hi-lights.

Finally I met Ann Siri and Mike Holmberg at the Not-So-Simple Living Fair in Booneville CA last summer and after an afternoon of me jabbering they decided to take it on.

So Ann designed and built a tool that has some similar features, but she made it stronger, lighter and added some clever features and I should be getting mine sometime this late spring or early summer. She is supposed to be taking it to the Small Farmers Journal Auction on Oregon next month for a demonstration. I want to go too, but I will be too busy with stuff going on at the farm and my full time job.

Anyway – I am very aware that I have a lot to learn and I know that my donkey and mule will be very happy if I keep learning more. I have two local friends who are experienced drivers and one has done his fair share of training and I will be having them over to critique my training well before we attempt any adventures outside of the round pen.

If you want to check out our potato farm – check out http://www.blankityblank.biz Thanks and glad to finally be on this forum. Denny from Sebastopol CA

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Hi! Sounds like an interesting venture – what led you to becoming a part time potato farmer? Just like potatoes a lot? I’m about to branch into doing market gardening with my oxen which is all new for me. Although my dad was a talented gardener by trade and my mum’s a keen veg grower and teaches horticulture, I didn’t really inherit their greenfingeredness and have always been better with stock….but, I’ll also give anything a go!

I looked at a kassine (quotes were around the £4k mark) but as my partner summed it up: “it looks like someone went mad in a garden shed with a load of rotorvator bits”….I think you get more for your money with the pioneer homesteader so that’s what I’m currently looking at…

[Kevin Cunningham]

Denny

I think you should post some photos of the All in One. There are a lot of people on here that would be very interested in see this set up. I know I was super excited that someone is making this type of tool here. Not only that but way closer to my neck of the woods. I will be contacting Ann soon to talk about getting one of these for our market garden.

[sendin]

Hi Ixy and Kevin –

The land was used for silage for a dairy, then the dairy shut down. They went to grapes and everywhere around here is vineyards. Food is going to get very important soon and I wanted to grow food and still be able to do it with a full time job so potatoes are a natural for many reasons.

The Pioneer is okay for what it is, but I am not interested in a tool that I need sit on or one that is so heavy or one that takes up so much room to store. Otherwise I think it is probably the right tool for a lot of people in the US.

If you’d like to see more of Anny’s All in One then check out what I have put on our potato website here
and here. The fit and finish on this tool is extraordinary and harkens back to a time when people took pride in their work. I think the Pioneer will sell well, but more of these will end up in wills!

Thanks for the replies – Denny

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Had a look at the site – is this just for a single animal? As I’ll be working a pair in a yoke for the most part, but wouldn’t mind the flexibility of switching to a single if needed, which the pioneer does seem to offer?

[Ethan Tapper]

@sendin 33190 wrote:

I am relatively new to the world of draft animals and probably too far west to be of any use.

Hey Denny,
Nice to hear from you. You might know by now that this site is run by the Draft Animal Power Network (DAPNet). You can see our organization website by going to draftanimalpowernetwork.org.

While most of DAPNet members are centered in New England, if you look at our member map and check out the posts on the forum, you’ll see that they are from all over. DAPNet sees itself not as a specifically New England organization, but one that can connect folks that love working with draft animals nation and world-wide. We could use more people out west, getting folks out there excited about draft animal power.

I’d love to hear what the draft animal power community out there is like.
Welcome to the network!
Ethan

[near horse]

Welcome Denny!

I checked out your site – nice work and looks like you’ve got things going nicely at your farm. You might be surprised at how many draft animal-power folks are out here in the west. We’re just farther apart.

Also – excellent work on the “All in One” tool. Using the hitch receiver was genius (to me). If I get down to SFJ this year, I’ll try to get some more pics and post. If Ann gets it down there early (I think Wed or Thurs) I’m sure there would be the opportunity to demo it.

Glad to have you aboard here.

[Author]

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