[Carl Russell]

My New Idea mower has a 5 foot bar. I thought many times about replacing it with a longer bar…..you know size matters and all that….but my animals mowed with such ease that I thought that the extra pass around the field that I would save was easily made up by the energy saved by using the shorter bar.

I know a lot of guys who think they need to have a 21″ bar on their chainsaw, but the saw is so much more efficient and easy to handle with 18″ that I just figured the same would be true with the sickle bar.

With a 5 footer there is less weight, less side sweep, and less cutting surface the drag through the heavy grass, so my animals were able to work at a comfortable walk and could mow for hours.

I also preferred to mow in the pm. Laying down grass as the sun is waning is a fantastic enterprise. That way the grass was already partly wilted by the time the sun hit it the next day, and I could ted afternoon, then mow more if i wanted. Then ted and rake the next day. This way I often only needed 2 drying days to get it in.

I never made huge amounts of hay anyway, but could feed 1/2 a winter for 2 horses, 2 oxen, and a milk cow.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

First I would like to confirm that we are talking about conformation…correct?:D

I also think that the way an animal is built is important, and I will make a few comments, but there are so many environmental and physical affects that can alter the animal’s effectiveness more than their natural conformation.

I like the way your horses stand, at least from the side view, with their front feet solidly baring weight. It would be good to get a front view, of their stance, and chest.

I like the pronounced shoulder, with good seat for collar. I also like the way they hold their heads up in relation to the angle of their shoulder.

I am partial to this style of horse with the deep chest and long barrel, with legs that are not too long.

Proportionately, I think this conformation provides excellent power through muscle mass on the hinds, with a long spinal lever against the ballast of the deep chest. They may not be the best for long light loads like wagon trips to town, or even haying, not that their conformation would preclude that, but they are excellently built for work such as plowing and logging.

I know folks who prefer short coupled, long-legged horses, and in some cases that conformation may have advantages, but all-in-all it really make a difference that the animals can move freely, and unless you are breeding to meet some standard, then variations in body type are insignificant (in my humble opinion:rolleyes:). That’s not to say that I don’t look for the details that I laid out above.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Three days and two thousand miles later, I’m home.
On Friday I met with Amish maufacturers of horse-drawn farm equipment, the Wengerd family at Pioneer Equipment, and rode on the forecart and talked about life with David Kline while he planted corn with 4 abreast on a a rounded hill-top field in east central Ohio where we could see similar fields and farmers in every direction.

Saturday I ate breakfast at a restaurant in Punxsatawney PA, with a woodchuck mascot sitting on the counter. Rendez-vous’ed with Andy Carson (Countymouse)(Great to meet you too Andy)to check out his draft buffer single-tree at David Miller’s Forest Manufacturing, where we all fell into discussion of the horse-saving theories behind the innovation. Traveled to Lancaster PA to I&J an White Horse machine, spending the afternoon traveling lanes between Amish farms. I drove back to Central PA to reunite with Erik Lofgren and his family, after 30+ years, thanks to FaceBook. After 14 hours behind the wheel found myself navigating curving back roads through PA mountains in the dark and pouring rain to stay with my young friend Kevin Cook.

Today I started with home cooked breakfast of eggs potatoes and scrapple with Kevin, made a stop at new horse farmers Beth and Mikah’s Plow Share CSA, then on into North Central PA mountains to visit Eric and Anne Nordell, where I shared a noon meal of fresh greens and home cooked food, before the 7 hour drive back to VT. Today my map reading skills were inadequate, and due to impromtu stops, I was unable to meet with Donn Hewes, or Erika (dominiquer)(Sorry to both of you, another time)

I will put together notes on specific details to share…..after I get some sleep.

[Carl Russell]

Countymouse;18343 wrote:

….. Personally, I like to be able to feel ribs, but not see them. Well, maybe the last one of two on a sunny day…..

That’s all I meant. Able to “know they have ribs”.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

CharlyBonifaz;18351 wrote:

http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/projects/poison/plants/ppredma.htm

acording to this:
“as little as 0.3 % of the body weight as leaves”

For a 1500 # horse that would be 4.5 #, which I think is a lot of leaves.

I suppose if they had all night to eat on a tree they could ingest a lot.

A shame.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Jason, there is some toxicity to Red Maple (Acer rubrum) but it has been described to me by a vet as needing a huge amount.

Very sad to hear. Was this in the fall, when leaves had turned?, or just recently with spring flush?

It would be good to get more details as red maple is one of the most common trees, and I have seen horses chew on leaves, twigs, and bark for years, with no side affects.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Michael, you pretty much have it nailed. The VT Dept. Forests & Parks, wants to back it badly, as it equates to financial investment in the forest industry. Capital investment in secondary processing is job security for foresters, who will need to be employed as this type of harvesting will require regulation to ensure sustainability(?).

There is a lot of talk about how markets like this will increase the value of traditionally low quality material, thus making it more lucrative to harvest low-grade while improving the forests. These markets will not raise the value enough to change the nature of this type of harvesting which will still require economy of scale and volume production to be cost effective.

I do think that facilities such as schools etc. should be heated this way. I also like the idea of there being other local markets for low grade material. However I have very little faith in modern communities. Most people don’t ask the questions that you have. Most people see the forests as wasted material waiting for a better use.

I think this trend will be one of the hardest to manage impacts on our forests. In this area our forests are all still recovering from being over-impacted from pasturing less than 100 years ago. The big selling point is how these markets will help to “clean” up our forests. There is an acceptance that dying or downed trees are “waste”.

Even if our hillsides are not clear-cut, they will be managed at low stocking which will not be beneficial to soils, water quality, nor wildlife.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

firebrick43;18326 wrote:

…
Extra protein in cows/horses that isn’t being used has to be processed out of the body through the kidneys and liver. ….

The old-timers who fed way more grain than we do always added salt-peter, so the horses would make more water, and they also didn’t feed them grain when they weren’t working.

I feed the bulk 2/3- 3/4 of my working ration in the AM before working, or in AM and at noon, and the remainder as dessert in PM.

I agree that grain fed to keep a horse fat is wasted. I only feed enough grain to provide the kind of working energy that I want in the woods.

I, like Mitch, like a horse that is obviously muscled, has a clean dappled coat, but has ribs.

Feeding horses is not just a menial task of tossing calories at the beast. It is a substantial part of the art of husbandry, and every horse I have ever had was different in the way it utilized its feed. When they need more, I give it, when they don’t, I don’t.

I manage my horses based on the work I am doing with them, and I like to use the simplest ingredients I can, hay, oats, corn, with salt and kelp as amendments.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I did some rough calculation based on how I vary the rations, and came up with less than a ton per animal per year.

As I said when they are on grass, they get virtually none, or just a pound or so when I bring them in. I have found that even when not working they have a hard time maintaining condition on hay alone.

Speaking of hay, I feed 35ish pounds per horse per day, for about 250-300 days, which is about 9000 lbs per horse.

I have been working this around in my head ever since I started this endeavor. I always intended to raise my own grain. Finding land and equipment, and perfecting the techniques are challenge enough, then comes storage.

As we are carving out farmland from forest, grazing is about all we can provide right now, but we are moving toward developing enough open land to provide feedstocks for all that we produce here. When envisioning this, it becomes clear that the bulk of our farming will always be just to provide for the operation itself. This is why it has been a high priority to use land that had no debt (family land), and build our way into it limiting ourselves to resources and skills that we provide for ourselves.

Raising grain is still many years down the calendar, but we will start sowing small patches to harvest by hand soon, just to learn the factors. I also know several others in this area who have better land, and who are working at least in part with horses, and I’m thinking about how to get in cahoots with them.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Taylor, we have about 640 amp hours of storage in 12 deep cell batteries, 2400 watt inverter, 960 watts of solar panels, and a 1kW wind tower, with back-up generator.

We started with the generator and added the wind tower, then solar. The generator gets old fast. I have never bought a really good generator, just big portable ones so I can use them for other jobs.

The first key is conservation. We use a highly insulated DC fridge. It cost a lot, but it uses very little electricity, and being DC it is more efficient as there is about 10% loss inverting DC to AC. Water pumping and heating are huge expenses. Obviously propane is a good move for water heat, but pumping is hard to find alternatives. We have excellent gravity fed water @ 20-30 psi which saves a lot.

Cut out all the energy suckers like coffee makers, we make ours with a drip maker we add boiling water to. Sweep instead of vacuuming. No digital clocks, and put the phantom loads like TV, stereo, and computers on power strips so you can turn them off completely. I set my inverter to go to sleep when I turn off all the lights at night, saving more.

I can go on, and probably will later. Chore time….late, Carl

[Carl Russell]

It’s definitely a luxury.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

I feed 7-10 lbs of 12% complete feed with 7% fat. I find logging work to be hard enough that I like to keep the energy and condition up. When they are on grass, they get a lot less. Also if they are idle for more than a week, I will just feed a 1-3 lbs/day.

But I agree about the impact. It is just one of those things. I have worked them without feeding grain, and have found it to be beneficial.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Being and “educated Forester”, I would argue that just because you mark trees doesn’t mean you are pretending you are a forester. If you work out a deal with the landowner to improve their forest resource, then cutting trees to facilitate that is exactly what you are being hired for.

That doesn’t answer the question as to whether you have experience and knowledge to back up the claim of improvement, but there are no guarantees that a “forester” will actually improve the stand either. If you are not interested in forest improvement, and merely in sawlog liquidation, then you certainly don’t need a forester then either.

I am a staunch supporter of forest improvement. It is the residual stand that is the product of logging, not the log pile and stumpage check. I see no reason to log with horses or machines without offering a service. If you leave yourself at the mercy of foresters to administer your jobs, then it will be them who gets paid for the service, and you will be relegated to some squeeze between the mill and the landowner.

You do not have to work for a mill to get paid straight-through. I contract with LO to improve the woodlot at a flate rate, $X/mbf to cut, skid, and land their timber and wood. When I get paid by the mill I pay an independent trucker his fee, take mine, and pay the LO the remainder. I find that in this way, I cannot be accused of making out financially based on my harvesting choices. In fact the better logs yield me the same as the junk, because I want to be able to afford to cut the junk (my service), but the higher the value logs, the more the LO makes.

By the way the best way to log is WITH HORSES!!!:D

Have fun, Carl

[Carl Russell]

I’ve got to agree with Geoff on this one. I have zero tolerance for the oil industry.

All of the rest of us, either by legislation, or at least by moral code, take measures in our work that protect resources, or we to install fail-safe back-up systems, or minimize risks. Just because there is huge global demand for the stuff, doesn’t give them the right to, on top of gargantuan profits, make half-assed attempts to acquire oil from these hard to get to places.

It makes no difference what scale the disaster takes on, we should not be trying to diminish the impact based on the importance of potentially securing the resource. The stuff is toxic and should be handled like it is. That means it should be harvested only in ways that PREVENT leaks and spills of ANY kind or amount.

It will cost us one way or another. Better to pay money for a more costly product, than to shift the cost onto unmeasurable numbers of organisms, and our descendants who will be the ones who finally find out the true long-term costs.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Market aside, the idea that the processes of horse or machine are interchangeable is difficult for me to support. The original question had more to do with the choices that we make as practitioners about what we need to make our operations successful. I have no judgment against someone who uses machinery of any kind. What narrows the focus for me is when we start trying to determine if using a machine with horses still allows the user to say they are farming with horses.

Using horses on the farm is great, and many people farm or log at a scale where horses are not a sufficient answer. There are however underlying factors about the use of animal power that are philosophically different that those that support machinery, so the products of one are different than those from the other, at least philosophically.

We sell garlic raised on land that has been tilled by horse and hand only, for over twenty-five years. All manure has been hauled there with animals, and it has been loaded by hand. Every stick of dimension lumber in my home was hauled from the woods and brought to the site with animals. For twenty-five years I have skidded logs with horses and piled them by hand. I can honestly say that I farm and log with animal power.

As far as marketability, I cannot feed the world farming or logging like I do. My choices don’t make my products any more functionally valuable than any other. However to me they possess incalculable value, because this is how I want to do it. I am not trying to capture a niche market to recapture anything based on claims of purity. But at the same time when someone says “I can pay half that for the same thing, from that guy down the road”, I can honestly say “that is not the same as what I have here”.

At this rate I cannot produce enough or sell enough to make loads of money, but what extra I do have for sale is sold to the few who appreciate the way the food was grown, or lumber was harvested.

True I use chainsaw, computer, cell phone, F-250, wood splitter, Wood-Mizer, but the marks I make of the land are made using animal power, and for right now, that is where I can comfortably draw the line. My impact on the natural resources I depend on are limited by the fact that I use natural power.

I guess the point is that using draft horses is a priority I set a long time ago. It was not based on how much I could get done, or how much money I could make. I was committed to adjusting my lifestyle to accommodate the limitations that I found.

I don’t see anything wrong with other people using different parameters to base their decisions on. It is easy to justify the use of a machine in place of the horses because it is available, or it will help me do what I can’t do now, or it will help me to make more money. To me, it just doesn’t get to the same place.

Carl

[Author]

Posts