Discuss: Horse Power

Thank you - What a wonderful article to see in Orion!

Here in New Hampshire, and in neighboring New England states, there are quite a few folks using (and more that are learning to use) draft animals for farming and logging. The trend seems to be on the upswing, and has been for some years.

I myself use my Percheron mare for working my woodlot, and for driving around with a cart. The Granite State Draft Horse and Pony Association is growing year by year, with many events over the seasons. Besides NH, I know many loggers and farmers in Vermont and Maine who work with horses. “Draft Horse Days” are held all over the place. I see more and more pastures with Belgians and Percherons in them throughout my travels.

When the crunch comes, I believe that there will be an adequate reservoir of draft horse expertise to spread the knowledge.

Meanwhile, I surely treasure “the smell of horse sweat, the jingle of trace chains, and the cozy munching sounds when you’ve pulled the harness off your tired team and thrown them their sun-drenched hay.”

Thanks again very much for bringing attention to this important subject…

- Steve

An excellent article Mr. Courteau!  Thank you!

I raised Shire horses for about 16 years in Washington State and Colorado.  Life has its twists and turns and I’m doing other things now, but I dream frequently about getting back into it on a limited basis.  I’m down to only two now but we had as many as twenty-four on the farm at one point.  The two I have left are in their mid-twenties and I pray they will live another twenty.

I’ve met many farmers and families who work their land with horses.  They’re so attuned to the horses, the land, and themselves that the combination produces what seems to me a somewhat magical atmosphere of happy work.  They seem at peace as do their exceptionally physically-fit work partners, the horses.

We often talked of the value of horses in the near future as increasingly feasible alternatives to fossil-fuel driven transportation.  If many more smaller farms were created around cities of all sizes, food would cost less and farmers would make better profits, not only from the lower input costs of horse-farming, but from being rid of agribusiness in the middle determining profit margins.  Community-supported agriculture operations (CSAs) would likely become extremely popular all across the country, in my humble opinion.

The resurgence of equine power could also help rebuild our rail systems across the country because horses can pick up and deliver from local depots at lower costs that trucking companies in many cases.  I know somewhere in my files I’ve kept a couple of studies from many years ago that break down the various costs for comparison and demonstrated that the horse-drawn operations won depending on circumstances.  Cities, counties, and States might find ways through free enterprise and public support to refurbish rail infrastructure and create new avenues for transfer of goods.  Here in Tennessee, rail systems are being refurbished with such a new outlook, though not for or because of increased use of horse drayage.  But one never knows that such a thing might occur in many towns later on.

We need a return to our agrarian roots by a large number of our citizenry.  Sure, we need the cities and hope that people want to live in them and not spread out and eat up the land, but so very many of us are “meant” to be part of the agrarian culture.  Horses will be a big part of that return; I truly believe it is so.  I’m not certain about the actual numbers, but it seems to me that at one time in the recent past there were about 30 or so States in which draft horse organizations existed.  With a little looking around, one can find a great many operations of varying sizes—especially growers using strictly organic methods—that have horses helping the work the land.

Again, Mr. Courteau, thanks for the great article and I hope you’ll give us the pleasure of follow-up articles about this needed return to the ways of yore.

Wonderful story.  It opens up another way of thinking on how to solve our carbon energy, corporate agriculture, and chemical fertilizer
dependence.

Thank you.

Dear Mr. Courteau,
Yours is a very pleasing and well written article on the possibilities and probabilities of horse farming.  There seem to be a mix of breeds and grades of drafts in the pictures of Mr. Israel’s Suffolks and Belgium.  Is that Jay Bailey of Vermont with the rasp on page 65 and one of his family’s teams pulling that great wagon on page 66.  It looks like all young people enjoying being teamsters on page 66.  We breed and work Suffolk Punch draft horses.  We cannot say enough good about this breed.  I agree with many of the writers before me that with the peak of oil production soon arriving we have to stop considering alternatives and MOVE immediately to other options.  No better one in my book than the horse!
Rex Miller
Colorado

Missed this article the first time around. Glad to see you’ve covered it well.

Wes Jackson ran a farm using horses, and tractors powered by biofuels for ten years in Kandsas:
http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/03/28/3accb0712

I only plow my garden every year with my thoroughbred/paint cross. Still looking for a good team of Suffolk mares, Draft horses and oxen are getting more popular all the time They are an efficient and profitable way to farm.

One of the goals of my life is to get to Horse Progress Days, which rotates between Amish communities in the midwest every year on the 4th of July weekend. Small Farmer;s Journal and Draft Horse Journal have details.

Re “HORSE POWER”
The author replies to correspondence:

Thank you all for this lively discussion. I’ll try to address you and your comments individually, in no particular order.

Janine, maybe “bullied into cities” is a bit strong, but I go along with the drift. “Deceived,” “lured,” “seduced,” come to mind, maybe seduced by ourselves. Sure the bait was laid, but did we have to take it so eagerly? We all sang the praises, we older folks, even back then, of the beauties of country living, but we wanted higher incomes, paid vacations, a college education, and a nice car too, and then�ah, weak flesh!�there�s always been that powerful drive, what some old sage put his finger on, sighing, “Eros, the builder of cities.”

Robert, thanks for calling attention to Animal Power Days at Tunbridge, VT. How I wish I could be there to meet some of the leading lights of our movement, like Drew Conroy and Lynn Miller!

Cindy, I’m glad I got you mollified regarding the Small Farmer’s Journal. I probably should have mentioned Lynn Miller’s book on training, but I didn’t find out about it in time for a review. I keep learning too.

Melissa, thanks, and I hope you get that pony cart, but be careful, and get some competent, experienced help to get started. Ponies, too, are fast and powerful!

Jessica, up there in Montana, the state I call my second mother, it’s good to see a mind and heart like yours in sustainable farming. And along with you, Bill, and with Steve from New England, and many others I�m sure, I thank the editors at Orion for seeing some value in my off-beat article and its quaint subject matter.

And Steve, thanks for catching us up on the encouraging developments in New England. There is nothing like a good horse for working in the woods. Been there—a lot!

Bob with the Shires, you write more eloquently than I of the spiritual aspects of working with horses. To your felicitous phrase of “magical atmosphere of happy work,” I might only say amen with words like “harmony,” “at one with nature,” even “love.”

Amoz and Martin, I’ll try to get around to Rifkin’s Entropy, and maybe I’ll see you before long?

Walt, your plowing with Thoroughbred paint cross shows that almost any breed can be harnessed. We have worked, as wagon horses, a misshapen, woebegone but willing little Appaloosa mare, a half Arab, a Morgan, an American Saddlebred hinny, and, years ago, my fiery, red-hot Thoroughbred reining mare (but novices, stay away from those Thoroughbreds—these great horses can be kind of crazy). We do best, though, by selecting from breeds with demonstrated aptitude, like those Suffolks that Rex Miller raises. Though quite new to the United States, their fame goes before them as strong quiet agricultural workers. The little Haflingers are a superb breed, rising stars on the smaller farms of this shrinking planet. And Rex, I can’t tell you a thing about the photos—Orion supplied all photography.

Don Alfredo, down there in Argentina, thanks for sending us your own publications proposing a return to more animal power. It’s great to know of this internationally broad interest. Your experience and mine have been so similar. Though considerably younger than I (14 years), you too remember when horses were used in large numbers, yet your friends, like mine, could not hide a smile when we suggested some reliance again on a technology that had been immensely useful until so very recently. You state that every human society will have to respond to the coming oil shortage with substitutions, “according to its own possibilities.” Obviously, your fertile pampas, like certain of our rich soils, have tremendous potential for substitution, producing grass and grain to be run through work animals, not engines. You rightly suggest that a shift to animal power, only one change among many, would entail a total redesign of life at its roots. We agree on so much, but, whoa there, amigo mio! What’s this about biotechnologically powered horses? Are we talking genetic engineering here? Let our engineers exercise themselves building those lighter wagons you propose, but leave our magnificent horses alone! And by the way, now that we’re emboldened, let’s not hinge our argument too closely on just the price of oil. I’d work horses if gas were a nickel a gallon.

I had expected at least some negative reaction, honest and sincere, to my ideas. Should we “converse the coin,” and I were in the audience, instead of at the podium, I would press the speaker with some hard questions. How about animal welfare? Don’t horses leave a heavy track on the planet too, and can’t they be dangerous? And how about the waste and inefficiency decried by those critics of yesteryear? We could turn this subject ‘round and ‘round. These are valid concerns, and I’m prepared to address them, but right now I gotta run. I have a couple of young Belgian mares in training that need work badly. Let’s keep talking though.

Dick Courteau

I’ve been saying for a long time that   things will have to go back before they get better, and I would love to see more respectful use of horses etc.

re Jaqueline/ Dick, #14

Chester (rthe thoroughbred/paint) isn’t all that keen on plowing. He tends to be high strung, I haven’t had the nerve yet to hitch him to aything with wheels.

Lynn Miller, editor of the Small Farm Journal has writen about treatment in his books. Some of the excesses of the past included working horses til they dropped and using rubber tires instead of a proper collar. His point is that today it’s a choice, no one has to use a hores. That may change as we move past peak oil and we’ll need to keep it in mind. There’s also the human safety issue, it is very easy to get hurt if you are not careful working with such powerful animals.

And Wendell Berry has pointed out that farm land has been ruined by farmers plowing with horses, oxen, and using digging sticks. Horses are not a panacea, we still need to relearn old ways and leaven them with new scientific understanding if we are to farm sustainably.

I wonder at folks who spend their recreation time running noisy, throbbing appliances such as jet skis, ATVs, and dirt bikes. It seems stressful to me, and I admit I don’t understand them. Mowing a field with horses is a much nicer experience than using a tractor. But to me, so is riding a horse (or hiking) down a trail instead of on an ATV.