What we can do.

[Stable-Man]

After looking at everyone’s dreams about the future of farms and draft animals on them, I thought about some solutions some of which I mentioned, but here’s my perspective again:

Growing up in the suburbs, I know how far most Americans are disconnected from the farm. They see countryside as nowhere and boring.
First, no school K-12, at least in this area, puts any value in agricultural education. We have electives in religion and law and journalism, but none in agriculture, probably due to lack of funding or interest. My assumption is that nobody believes a kid in the city or burbs will have anything to do with agriculture or if they do, they can specialize in college. But the result is one has no chance to develop an interest inside of school; they will end up finding their own way like I did: reading books and attempting to get internships or jobs. We did things like earth day, planting trees and such, but none of that involved growing foods or having food plots on school grounds.

Aversion to dirt and nature: This stems more from the inside culture: we’re inside malls, inside our houses playing video games; once people reach a certain age, it seems, they never want to go outside. My friend and I used to explore the woods and hike, but now the most we ever do is sit on the balcony or drive to the mall…oh we did once walk around one of the large drainage lakes here. There’s an area where people can bike or hike that’s surrounded by farms (or a farm, expansion happen here, too) but bikes make us less perceptive since one must worry about crashing more than examining the surroundings, point being we appreciate the quiet, country feel, but I question the depth of the emotion.

Today I was raking up leaves off an abandoned road for my compost pile and underneath was some of the best looking dirt I’ve ever seen, not the clayey hardpan subsoil that somehow grows grass in my subdivision. Getting your hands in that stuff feels good, and I get the feeling if a teacher gets elementary kids turning dirt like that they will love it, maybe not the food that comes from it, though.

As far as getting animals on the farm, that’s a couple of steps farther. General affection towards animals is a plus, but the love of speed and time efficiency is hard to overcome. From viewing some comments by farmers, I feel like many will not like an animal doing the work because it’s “backtracking.” (BTW, if you have facebook check out “Support your farmers, they feed you” group, which is where I learned some of my impressions). Just from seeing what people are doing on this group and seeing some of the equipment elsewhere online, it certainly isn’t backtracking. That’s like saying writing by hand when we have computers is backtracking; sure, it isn’t as quick if you know touch typing, but in some cases it’s more practical. Using animals and equipment is an innovative approach of mixing old and new, which is also something to pass on to forming minds so they don’t immediately think new has it all.

I may’ve ranted on some there, but hopefully it was worth something. For the record, though, I am not all that fond of the ever-changing technology and the so-called advancement of things.

[sanhestar]

interesting thoughts.

I’ve always felt a strong connection towards animals and a more rural live although I don’t have any “green thumb” – so I would do the work connected with animals – training, raising, milking, feeding, etc. while somebody else has to do the actual farming.

I come from a family with a long tradition of being farmworkers/helpers and my grandma still grew vegetables in our small garden patch when I was a kid. So maybe it’s a bit genetic involved, too.

Sad was a talk I had with my neighbor this weekend. He’s a dairy farmer, has been his whole live but he would never consider to use the smallest amount of draftanimalpower in his daily work and considers this type of work as a waste of time, only doable with funding from somewhere else. We spoke about logging with horses and oxen instead of using harvesters then about alternative fuel sources and it was sad to hear him rejecting every idea, every notion of changing the actual ways. Maybe he’s too old and too burnt out to still dream – I think he holds on, keeps going only until he has reached retirement age but is strongly disappointed how farming has developed over the years.

[jac]

Hey Stableman…. This is the kind of discussion i relish..I know how you feel regards the speed and time issue using draft animals.. My young nephew has started a new job 400 miles away from home on a 3000 acre farm in Oxfordshire. 3 men handle the whole operation with the largest equipment New Holland make, the combine broke the harvesting record last year I believe, and the tractors start at 300hp:eek:… then I look at my own implement shed and think …”is this all just a pipe dream ??? “. In answer to your page title WHAT CAN WE DO… I dont think we can do much more than we do already, keep the skills live in our own families so they are passed on to there children and so on. My own personal experience is you can tell folks over dinner that horses can do the job but you get the usual arguments against.. What i do now is shut up and just plug away and get the horses out,do the work I need to do. The neighbours all come to see what Im up to and are all quietly impressed with what horses can actualy achieve… However… As long as the world has cheap goods and steel from Asia I dont see the populace changing much. Like it or not the percieved wealth of the western world is built on other countries working for a lot less money than we do or in extreme cases outright theft. British Empire being a prime example.Change isnt going to happen overnight and im sad to say no one on this form might see the big change but if I have passed the skills and mindset over to my daughter then Im a happy man… In many ways this latest recession has slowed the change down. I have a friend who has a butchers shop that sells organic. He reports sales down because people can get a chicken that has spent its whole life standing in a shed with 50000 other birds to end up on the shelf for £2 {$3.00}.”Feeds” a family for a meal.. The organic bird can do that to and also make a great pan of soup as well… the other birds bones turn to plastic.. Enough ramblings…
John

[sanhestar]

and I have to chime in again, because the time issue will be important for me when/if I should finally make another step towards draftanimalpower.

I’ve been thinking about the use of animals for traction during this whole winter. When the snow got so high that our Subaru wasn’t able to navigate the snowblows any longer and I had to use an old sled and snowshoes and MY power to get water and food out to the goats on winter pasture I strongly wished for a trained team of horses or oxen. When we weren’t able to get to the hay storage with the car for two weeks and again yesterday when we had to rely on our neighbor’s help to get the old horse trailer we use as shelter for the bucks out of the winter pasture to the new pasture. When I look at gas prices and heard that the German government plans to raise taxes on gas another 0.30 EUR over the next years.

But with our animals 8-12 kms away in summer on pastures I simply don’t know how to make a change work:

I either put the draft animals out on the same pastures and still have to use the car to get out there, using the drafts only to do “local” work – almost no saving in fuel costs

or

I stable/pasture the drafts near the house, using them to drive out to the pastures with considerable time efforts. I don’t want to go on the roads (speeding cars) and I can’t cut through the forest (privately owned, no carriages, etc. permitted) so I have to drive a large detour around the forest and the next town. And who will earn my money when I’m away half a day?

[Stable-Man]

@jac 17081 wrote:

Hey Stableman…. This is the kind of discussion i relish..I know how you feel regards the speed and time issue using draft animals.. My young nephew has started a new job 400 miles away from home on a 3000 acre farm in Oxfordshire. 3 men handle the whole operation with the largest equipment New Holland make, the combine broke the harvesting record last year I believe, and the tractors start at 300hp:eek:… then I look at my own implement shed and think …”is this all just a pipe dream ??? “. In answer to your page title WHAT CAN WE DO… I dont think we can do much more than we do already, keep the skills live in our own families so they are passed on to there children and so on. My own personal experience is you can tell folks over dinner that horses can do the job but you get the usual arguments against.. What i do now is shut up and just plug away and get the horses out,do the work I need to do. The neighbours all come to see what Im up to and are all quietly impressed with what horses can actualy achieve… However… As long as the world has cheap goods and steel from Asia I dont see the populace changing much. Like it or not the percieved wealth of the western world is built on other countries working for a lot less money than we do or in extreme cases outright theft. British Empire being a prime example.Change isnt going to happen overnight and im sad to say no one on this form might see the big change but if I have passed the skills and mindset over to my daughter then Im a happy man… In many ways this latest recession has slowed the change down. I have a friend who has a butchers shop that sells organic. He reports sales down because people can get a chicken that has spent its whole life standing in a shed with 50000 other birds to end up on the shelf for £2 {$3.00}.”Feeds” a family for a meal.. The organic bird can do that to and also make a great pan of soup as well… the other birds bones turn to plastic.. Enough ramblings…
John

Passing down knowledge is great but it only works if there’s a passer. Your daughter’s fortunate to have a dad that can fabricate implements and work with horses. My dad grew up in an old house and knows how to cut and hang doors, drywall, that kind of thing, but it’s not the same. I was surprised to figure out some people don’t even paint their own houses; they hire professionals. Old skills are dying which is why I do unusual stuff for a 20 year old guy like spinning and occasional leather work and attempt farm jobs instead of working at Best Buy. (I’m not the best with people anyhow).

Surprisingly enough, organics are doing best in cities–like downtown D.C.–because the people like being conscious of where their food comes from, although I believe most of their wine and cheese is outsourced. They also make more money than the surburban people so paying more for vegies and meat isn’t as much a problem.

I don’t have much of an answer for getting draft animals on the farm; an old book I have from 1927, used to educate farmers, asks that they measure the economics of having a tractor vs horses, and you won’t see that in any farming textbook now. It was, however, mentioned as an option in The Contrary Farmer ca. 1993. Having never worked with animals I don’t know how easy they are to train and their frustration factor compared to an affordable, and probably old, tractor, but it should be an option for the aspiring farmer; a team of trained oxen you can pick up for like 1200, maybe? A new big tractor will cost many times that much, a new, small tractor at least the same price. One puts out exhaust, the other manure. But I don’t need to go on.

[Stable-Man]

@sanhestar 17082 wrote:

and I have to chime in again, because the time issue will be important for me when/if I should finally make another step towards draftanimalpower.

I’ve been thinking about the use of animals for traction during this whole winter. When the snow got so high that our Subaru wasn’t able to navigate the snowblows any longer and I had to use an old sled and snowshoes and MY power to get water and food out to the goats on winter pasture I strongly wished for a trained team of horses or oxen. When we weren’t able to get to the hay storage with the car for two weeks and again yesterday when we had to rely on our neighbor’s help to get the old horse trailer we use as shelter for the bucks out of the winter pasture to the new pasture. When I look at gas prices and heard that the German government plans to raise taxes on gas another 0.30 EUR over the next years.

But with our animals 8-12 kms away in summer on pastures I simply don’t know how to make a change work:

I either put the draft animals out on the same pastures and still have to use the car to get out there, using the drafts only to do “local” work – almost no saving in fuel costs

or

I stable/pasture the drafts near the house, using them to drive out to the pastures with considerable time efforts. I don’t want to go on the roads (speeding cars) and I can’t cut through the forest (privately owned, no carriages, etc. permitted) so I have to drive a large detour around the forest and the next town. And who will earn my money when I’m away half a day?

This year we had two storms with about 2 feet of snow for each and nobody could drive so they abandoned their cars on the roads. It’s interesting what one can do by slapping on snowshoes and walking.
It sounds like you live in town and have land out a ways? I saw a video in Britain of people driving carriages on the roads and the backup was a long one, same here with the Amish.

[sanhestar]

@Stable-Man 17113 wrote:

It sounds like you live in town and have land out a ways? I saw a video in Britain of people driving carriages on the roads and the backup was a long one, same here with the Amish.

no, we live in a small village, about 400 people. But all the pasture here is taken by the remaing dairy’s and beef farmers and we have to take the unwanted patches and do weed and brush clearing in enviromentally protected areas. It’s perfect browsing for the goats although we have to move from place to place.

I spoke yesterday with somebody who gives driving lessons for horse carriages and she indicated that there are possibilities to get permission to drive through the forests if you “do it right” – I will investigate that, maybe I’m closer to a solution than I think.

[jac]

Stableman farm work is what I call an honouable way to make a living..pay isnt great but the side perks are priceless.. Check out Erikas post on the “elite” discussion in the equipment page to read about a truly reprehensible act and what a lowlife lawyer must have done to get his “elite” client off a fatal “accident”. and that kind of crap goes on in all western civilisations.. money shouts:(.. As Ive grown older I’ve come to realise you dont need 1 good paying job.. 2 or 3 lesser paying pursuits can still cut it.. the 3 skills you mentioned.. spinning ,leatherwork,and farmwork are all valuable and are now with the greater want for people to have localy made stuff, you can develope that and make a decent honourable living… Dont know if you get the Small Farmers Journal but they run a few pages of books on skills and craft.. including spinning and leatherwork…
John

[Marshall]

This is why I am trying to teach my girls as much as I can about being able to take care of themselves. Not that I know everything, but it is amazing how few people know about working with horses and doing farm work without all the fancy machinery. Emily(7) will soon be taking riding lessons. Before she was always a little timid about working with the horses. Now she is more always wanting to go out and work with Chester the horse. She can also do all of the chores for the cats, cows and horses by herself. Erica(4) is already trying to do everything that big sister does but she is a little small yet. I keep telling my wife at this rate we are going to have a couple girls that can out work the boys. I am one proud father!

[jac]

I agree Marshall, its a great feeling taking your place in the big wheel as a “passer”..
John

[Matthew]

I have wanted to be a horse logger since I was a kid, I did not live on a farm as a child. My closest friends were dariy farmers so I was exposed to the farm life but they used tractors not horses. I would go to the fair and longed to have anything to do with draft horses. In my late teens I worked with a guy whos father had belgans and did a little logging. He tought me to drive, log, plow, and care for horses. As life went on for me and the older I got I found my self getting further and further away from my dream. I got married, bought some land, built a house, had some kids. All these things changed my direction in life, not for the worse but my priorites and responsabilitys have changed. I hear people talk about logging with horses is a low over head low start up buisness and I agree to a point. I bought my land and payed it off before I built my house I took a morgage out to build my house and did a lot of the work my self so my morgage is not huge (for the area I live in) the point I am trying to make is if you are not inheriting a farm and you need to buy land and build a house and barns and clear land and build fences you need lots of money. I am getting a little off my point, to have a place to keep your horses or to raise a cow or plant a garden you need land and unless you live in a tent you need a house and all these things cost money. My town taxes alone cost me over $7000 a year and the land is in open space. In my persuit of a life of being a horse logger with a small homestead I have lost my way, making more money to pay for all these things has pushed me in directions I didn’t want to go. Full time employment for me and my wife means daycare for my kids $300 a week if she quits her job we loose are health insurance If I quit to log I couldn’t aford to pay my bills and would loose my house and land. Then you have to think about retirement you don’t want to get old and unable to work and loose your farm because you can’t afford the taxes, if my taxes are $7000 a year now what will they be in 35 years? I under stand the whole sense of worth and doing good for the enviroment but how can the avrage guy make ends meet making so little per year in this world having to pay for so many things. I would like to think you can make dreams reality with hard work but I am getting fustrated. Any words of advice?

[jac]

Hi Mathew.. There could be 50% of the folks on this forum in the same boat as you, myself included. I would give anything to be able to farm with my team but silly land prices, brought about by the doctor/lawyer/banker types buying up the old farms with 10 acres to keep there daughters/sons pony :(..
means we have to rent land . We do all our field work with horses. I do parades and fairs with the waggon and local companies pay to put their signage on the waggon. What Im trying to say is, dont lose the dream but perhaps alter it to suit the “here and now”. Steping off the treadmill is, I agree, easier with a bucket of money or if you inherit a farm but if we dont have those we need to attack it from a new angle {took me way too long to figure that one}.. I am self employed and am perhaps luckier that I can alter my work patern. The more money we can stop going out the door on stuff that can be made or grown at home means less time I need to work away from home..By the time you figure the tax on your hard earned $ or £ and the time we spend in traffic jams at both ends of the day,the money needed to keep a reliable car and so on, your cheap food from the big store is actualy very expensive.. I make my own bread now for example and the amount of times I hear “oh I can buy a loaf for 30 pence” and my answer is yes but you have to eat the addatives in it to and when I make my loaf my family are around me.. that may sound as if Im off track but im trying to say take it in smaller bites…
John

[Stable-Man]

Yeah, the land prices here appear to run about $100,000 an acre. Most of the sizable farms are many generations old. One interesting thing is we have a farmland preserve here since the county saw the ravages of development over the past 40 years, and I’m wondering what will happen if the farmers’ children don’t want to farm and they can’t develop more than 1 house per 40 acres. It’d be great if they had some kind of incentives program to get new people on the land, but I doubt that will happen. I have known several people that are interested in horses for riding but not in farming. It’s unfortunate to see land price kills the dream when nobody ever used to own land. Speculation and woefully sprawled towns are driving out existing farmers and preventing new ones from getting in.

Sanhestar–it sounds like a cool place you live in. For many years I’ve wanted to live in a village and work on a farm outside of it. I hope you can drive through the forests. One time I wanted to climb the highest mountain in MD but it was on private property.

I learned some of those skills hoping I could make or save some money off of them. Course what I learned was spinning takes a long time. I have some flax that I should spin for linen and leave the wool for felting (much quicker than spinning), but I think the wool I have is superwash, so it won’t felt. Leatherworking has produced a pair of ok-for-a-first-try boots and a leather hat too heavy for my neck.:rolleyes:

[sanhestar]

@Stable-Man 17141 wrote:

Sanhestar–it sounds like a cool place you live in. For many years I’ve wanted to live in a village and work on a farm outside of it. I hope you can drive through the forests. One time I wanted to climb the highest mountain in MD but it was on private property.

yep, we like it here, too. It’s rather thin populated for Germany in general and friends that visit us from more populated regions always wonder about how dark it is here at night – no lights from bigger cities on the sky.

Our neighbor with the dairy will retire in 2-3 years, we hope that we can take over his stables and some of his land, then.

[Stable-Man]

@jac 17081 wrote:

However… As long as the world has cheap goods and steel from Asia I dont see the populace changing much. Like it or not the percieved wealth of the western world is built on other countries working for a lot less money than we do or in extreme cases outright theft. British Empire being a prime example.Change isnt going to happen overnight and im sad to say no one on this form might see the big change but if I have passed the skills and mindset over to my daughter then Im a happy man… In many ways this latest recession has slowed the change down.

I rarely buy new electronics or anything that needs to function anymore because almost all of it is junk. My parents’ TV blew out after 2 years, and I’ve had several things that don’t work out of the package or last only a year or so. I expect anything less than $100 to not work for long. Making almost all our stuff elsewhere helps those countries some but when it’s not economical to ship things halfway across the world maybe we’ll get some sense.

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