Oxen make the NY Times/Includes discussion of large scale animal-powered operations

[dominiquer60]

Here is a nice article featuring some of our DAPNet friends, draft animals, oxen in particular.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/dining/04oxen.html?pagewanted=2&emc=eta1

On Small Farms, Hoof Power Returns
Published: May 3, 2011

By TESS TAYLOR

ON a sunny Sunday just before the vernal equinox, Rich Ciotola set out to clear a pasture strewn with fallen wood. The just-thawed field was spongy, with grass sprouting under tangled branches. Late March and early April are farm-prep time here in the Berkshires, time to gear up for the growing season. But while many farms were oiling and gassing up tractors, Mr. Ciotola was setting out to prepare a pasture using a tool so old it seems almost revolutionary: a team of oxen.

Standing just inside the paddock at Moon in the Pond Farm, where he works, he put a rope around Lucas and Larson, his pair of Brown Swiss steer. He led them to the 20-pound maple yoke he had bought secondhand from another ox farmer, hoisted it over their necks and led them trundling through the fence so they could begin hauling fallen logs.

Mr. Ciotola, 32, is one of a number of small farmers who are turning — or rather returning — to animal labor to help with farming. Before the humble ox was relegated to the role of historical re-enactor, driven by men in period garb for child-friendly festivals like pioneer days, it was a central beast of burden. After the Civil War, many farms switched from oxen to horses. Although Amish and Mennonite communities continue to use horses, by World War II most draft animals had been supplanted by machines that allowed for ever-faster production on bigger fields.

Now, as diesel prices skyrocket, some farmers who have rejected many of the past century’s advances in agriculture have found a renewed logic in draft power. Partisans argue that animals can be cheaper to board and feed than any tractor. They also run on the ultimate renewable resource: grass.

“Ox don’t need spare parts, and they don’t run on fossil fuels,” Mr. Ciotola said.

Animals are literally lighter on the land than machines.

“A tractor would have left ruts a foot deep in this road,” Mr. Ciotola noted.

In contrast, oxen or horses aerate the soil with their hooves as they go, preserving its fertile microbial layers. And as an added benefit, animals leave behind free fertilizer.

David Fisher, whose Natural Roots Community Supported Agriculture program in Conway, Mass., sells vegetables grown exclusively with horsepower, said he is getting record numbers of applicants for his apprentice program. “There’s an incredible hunger for this kind of education,” he said.

Mr. Fisher discovered farming with horses more than a decade ago as an intern on a farm in Blue Hill, Me. It stuck.

“Using animals is just really appealing to the senses,” he said, adding that he found it philosophically appealing as well. “There’s a deep environmental crisis right now, and live power is also about creating an alternative to petroleum. Grass is a solar powered resource — and you don’t need manufacturing plants or an engineering degree to make a horse go.”

Drew Conroy, a professor of applied animal science at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, who is known in draft-power circles as “the ox guru,” notes that horses and even mules are seeing a comeback. Each animal has its niche.

“Ox are cheap and easy to train but they’re essentially bovine, which is to say, smart but slow,” he said. Horses are faster, more spirited, trickier to train and more expensive to buy and to keep. Professor Conroy notes that mules are better suited to Southern weather. “In the heat, an ox will just stop,” he said.

Even their most ardent supporters concede that draft animals are likely to remain minor features of the rural landscape. For starters, they are cost effective only on small farms. They are also time intensive, performing well only when they can be worked every day, and becoming temperamental when neglected.

On Mr. Ciotola’s first day out with his oxen, he had to struggle with the fact that the long winter had left them rusty. At one point they pulled over and came to a full stop in the bushes. He walked in front of them and tapped them gently.

“They’ve been cooped up all winter, so they get restless,” he said. Indeed, getting Lucas and Larson to go is a much more involved process than turning a key, and even at top speed they are far slower than a tractor. They plod, and Mr. Ciotola must plod along with them.

Drew Conroy, at right with Finn, has written a teamster’s guide to working with oxen. A professor of applied animal science, he holds workshops for farmers eager to learn.

Working with oxen at Moon in the Pond Farm is “better than spending a day with a tractor,” Rich Ciotola said.

“You still have to walk nine miles for every planted acre,” said Dick Roosenberg, the founder of Tillers International, a 430-acre farm learning center in Scotts, Mich. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Mr. Roosenberg helped farmers who practiced hand cultivation in third world countries learn about oxen. Eventually, he also taught ox techniques to interpreters at historic communities like Plimouth Plantation.

But now Mr. Roosenberg’s plowing workshops fill with a new demographic: farmers from Wisconsin, Minnesota and even Alaska who hope to use animal power in their fields. Last year, about 320 signed up.

“It’s suddenly not just historic replication, it’s reinvention,” he said. “A new generation wants to do this again, now.”

Oxen are also cheap, at least compared to a tractor, and can work for 10 to 14 years. Since the dairy industry relies on keeping cows pregnant so they lactate, millions of baby bulls are born each year. A pair of calves start at $150 and range up to $1,500, depending on their breed and how much training they have.

Some dairies even give their young males away. Mr. Ciotola got Lucas and Larson, now 2 ½, as wobbly-kneed babies from a nearby raw-milk dairy, bartering for them with his own labor. “I just had to buy or make the yokes and cart,” he said.

Farmers who want to learn the old art of draft power sometimes find their education in odd places. Dominic Palumbo, Moon in the Pond’s owner and chief farmer, learned to plow with an oxen team by way of an intern from Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass., which replicates an 18th-century Shaker community. Mr. Ciotola first learned to work his team from Mr. Palumbo, then later refined his skills by studying a DVD called “Training Oxen,” made in 2003 by Dr. Conroy.

The film is something of a cult classic in the draft-power community, and in sections covering topics from “the yoke” to “stall etiquette,” the movie pictures Dr. Conroy and his partner, Tim Huppe, working with New Hampshire farmers who raise oxen from their cute baby phases through their slightly belligerent adolescence. It also features each of Mr. Huppe’s four daughters leading her own team around the farm.

Interest in ox-farming became so strong that in 2005 Dr. Conroy and Mr. Huppe began hosting three-day workshops at Sanborn Mills Farm in Loudon, N.H.. At first they were surprised to find themselves emerging as minor celebrities on the draft-power circuit. After all, they had learned ox-pulling as teenagers in 4-H clubs at a time when the activity was mostly seen in shows. “It used to be kind of a cultural thing, a county fair thing,” Dr. Conroy said.

But Mr. Huppe, who sells yokes, oxbows, carts, goads and other gear at his store, BerryBrook Ox Supply, in Farmington, N.H., said his clientele is changing.

“It used to be 15 percent small farmers,” he said. “Now the farmers are more like 60 percent.” About his workshops, Mr. Huppe said, “I feel like the Johnny Appleseed of oxen.”

As draft power spreads, a 7,000-year-old technology is being looked at in different ways.. Some young farmers are developing a hybrid practice, using oxen to supplement, rather than replace, tractors. Some use them just to log and plow, while others have their teams haul machines with engines. Even this can be energy efficient.

“If you use animals to pull a motorized hay-baler,” Mr. Roosenberg said, “you can bale hay pretty fast with about one-third the gas.”

Mr. Ciotola, who does not yet own his own land but who makes his living doing jobs at Moon in the Pond and other Berkshire farms, does have a lightweight tractor, a 1949 Farmall Cub that is particularly suited to small acreages. Some of its accessories — the manure spreader, stone rake and disc harrow — can also be fitted to the ox-drawn forecart he bought from Mr. Huppe’s store.

As the spring morning passed, he continued breaking his team into their third season, walking alongside Lucas’s left side, talking softly. About three hours in, after Lucas pulled into the bushes, Mr. Ciotola turned to head out for one more load, and Lucas pulled back toward the paddock. Mr. Ciotola decided to let him go.

[dominiquer60]

“Lucas is always the troublemaker,” he noted, patting the blond steer. “He’s been restless all winter, but then he gets stubborn.”

For Mr. Ciotola, the most challenging aspect of working with his oxen is finding the time it takes to break them in.

“The best pairs need to get worked every day, and that’s hard for me because I have to do other work during the winters,” he said.

Even though Lucas and Larson now stand 5 feet tall and weigh 1,500 pounds each, they are not yet fully grown. Over the next two years, they will each gain 500 pounds and grow two feet. At that point, they will easily be able to pull 4,000 pounds. Mr. Ciotola wants to have them in prime shape for logging, plowing and haying.

After this season’s first expedition, they stood calmly in the dung-scented paddock, rolling their eyes and flicking their tails as Mr. Ciotola brushed them. Larson ambled off to eat some hay.

“Even when it’s tough with them, it’s better than spending a day with a tractor,” he said.

Then again, there was that time when he nearly took a horn to the groin.

“A tractor doesn’t do that either,” he said.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Yes it made it over here – was quite gratifying for me after being told so many times that oxen are a thing of the past!

[Patrick]

The best thing about the article is that it was correct. I’m so tired of reporters getting their facts wrong, or from pseudo experts, or making anything to do with animal agiculture hokey.

[fabian]

@Patrick 26810 wrote:

The best thing about the article is that it was correct. I’m so tired of reporters getting their facts wrong, or from pseudo experts, or making anything to do with animal agiculture hokey.

Oh, are the reporters in the States similar to them in Germany ?

[dominiquer60]

I would assume so Wolfgang. Many don’t understand what they are writing about or think that they are interviewing an expert that in real life has no idea what they are doing. This article focuses on some well known teamsters and farmers and doesn’t make light of the fact that these folks are performing serious work that results in jobs, incomes and good role models. Generally this type of article makes me cringe, but this one did not at all. Also I heard that this article made the front page of the dining section and the picture of the man with the handsome pair of Swiss steers took up a 1/2 page, so this was given a very prominent place in a very well known paper. It is good to see honest sustainable work featured to an audience that does not realize that it still exists.

Erika

[Nat(wasIxy)]

One question – why does everyone qualify these sorts of things with an ‘obviously this is only for small farms’…why? Very large estates used to be worked with draft animals…at what point does a farm become ‘large’? To my mind, big farms would simply need more oxen, just like they need more/larger tractors. If it succeeds on a small scale, without ‘economy of scale’ then it’s sure to work largescale too.

[bivol]

Ixy,
i suppose they mean that on bigger farms animals, especially, oxen, would simply be too slow to do the job on time. if you have 5 acres to plow, oxen are OK but if you have 50 acres to plow? big and small are in this twxt, IMO, also defined by the ability of the animals to do the work on a farm of a certain acreage.
and by the (low) income the farm brings, that would make owning a tractor unpractical.

the so-called “economy of scale” is a mantra we are all tougth, but IMO it’s worth nothing really – it only works when there are enough fossil fuels to make the modern production and market (transport, ect.) going.
instead there should be a “human-scale” to doing things. that means applying it to see the ammont of work a human (or draft animal,s for that matter) can successfully do in a day without significant help from machines.

and just because there are draft animals in the equation instead of machines, the economy of scale don’t work in favor of animals. but “human-sized” farms do.

Dominiquer60, you’re right about press, here they’re at it too! it’s so nice to have someone on the “inside” do the writing. people who know the problematic should be writing about it more than they do now!

[dominiquer60]

Bivol,

I Don’t know who the author of this article is, except that her name is Tess Taylor and that she works for the paper. The people that she interviewed are for the most part involved with our group here and represent a high level of their craft, they were certainly able to impress upon her the reality and importance of using draft animals.

Erika

[Nat(wasIxy)]

@bivol 26850 wrote:

Ixy,
i suppose they mean that on bigger farms animals, especially, oxen, would simply be too slow to do the job on time. if you have 5 acres to plow, oxen are OK but if you have 50 acres to plow?

If you had 5acres to plow, you might use a little Fergie – the equivalent of a team of two oxen. If you had 5000, would you still use the little fergie? Or would you buy a Deere, or many more Fergies and drivers? So would you logically use the same two oxen, or would you use 500 oxen instead? 😉 And when you take into account the cost of buying, maintaining and fuelling the tractor I reckon teams of oxen would compare pretty well, given modern ploughs, training and harnessing.

[dominiquer60]

A farm with 500 oxen and 250 teamsters sounds like what I would call a working community not a farm. However if one person did own and employ all of these cattle and teamsters, it would be an industrial Ox powered farm, not entirely different in theory from the industrial tractor farm with a fleet of 200+ Hp tractors, it would just us less petroleum. A farm of this size goes way beyond the size of a farm that a family can tend to comfortably. The family sized farm is the ideal sized farm in my eyes, much less land and you have a small farm, need more than a couple generations to work the land and you have a big farm. Perhaps this is over simplifying, but simple works for me.

Erika

[Nat(wasIxy)]

That is really a separate issue though, not about whether oxen would ‘work’ on a large scale, but about whether one person *should* own 500 oxen….

Me? I dunno. We are a small ‘family farm’ but I don’t like to lay down rules about what other people should and shouldn’t be doing. If there aren’t enough families to take on farms to grow food for everyone, clearly we need bigger farms – perhaps they would rather work 9-5 as an ox teamster and go home and not think about it anymore? They kinda chose that in the industrial revolution. Some didn’t like it, like me, but most obviously did otherwise why aren’t we seeing mass, and I mean MASS, emigration to the countryside and the cities and towns being deserted? People like the idea of being a family farmer, but not the reality. Fair enough! I like the idea of having a better car maybe, better clothes…but not the reality of sitting behind a desk all day to get it!

[jac]

Some really good points on this thread people…. I for one believe that draft animals could do things on a big scale… I have a pamphlet that was written in 1927 by The American Mule and Draft Horse Association to help farmers hitch bigger teams to try and stave off the advancing tractors.. A Mr Loyd Talkington in the 1926 harvest combined 900 acres with a 20ft combine and 27 horses. His son drove the team and he worked the mill.. a day short of 3 weeks and the job was done!!!! not bad even by todays standard. Now the crops were probably lighter but the combine was also less efficient too, so with a well set up modern combine and a heavy crop, the same results could be achieved… and with a donkey engine on the combine the team could be reduced by half.. the real issue has been the move away from agriculture to a monoculture.. horses would stuggle with the narrow time window of 2000 acres of wheat to cut.. but give them a variety of crops to harvest at different times and it all becomes possible.. I recon..
John

[Nat(wasIxy)]

big farming has always been around – monks here were farming 6,000acres in 1130-1538 at Rievaulx abbey.

[Carl Russell]

Ixy;26866 wrote:

big farming has always been around – monks here were farming 6,000acres in 1130-1538 at Rievaulx abbey.

Nonetheless they farmed as a community, not as a distinct individual enterprise. To use large areas to produce for many people using animals is certainly a possibility, but the scale of operation for each person involved would be on a human level.

I think the distinction in the article is purely one of modesty by those being interviewed. Firstly, so that people reading don’t get the idea that the farm products they are buying are coming from animal-powered farms, and secondly so that they don’t get accused of misleading consumers about our modern food production systems.

The truth of the matter as we stand today, there aren’t enough teamsters, nor animals within any particular area to actually perform the tasks in any way other than on a small-scale basis…. and it will probably be like that for a few generations to come, with the exception of a few communities here and there that get the ball rolling.

Thanks for sharing this Erika, Carl

[Author]

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