[Crabapple Farm]

I don’t think acreage is the best way of measuring the work required on a farm. Small scale intensive production can be just as much or more work than large scale extensive production. And there are all sorts of labor saving devices out there that you can always do without, in favor of doing things the slow way.
I find the main thing that gets me onto the tractor (yes, I have one) rather than yoking up the oxen is feeling like there is too much work to do. So the work gets done a little quicker, while the oxen lounge in the pasture, and then when I have something that I want to do with them, they aren’t used to the work.
I think if you set yourself up from the start with daily chores that get your horses harnessed and out working, you are more likely to find other tasks for them. If you’ve got any lawn, get a reel mower to mow it with the horses. Make your own hay. Bring in firewood in the winter. And above all, figure out how to give yourself the space to do things that way. Anyone with any acreage knows that there are always more tasks to do than can get done.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

Not only how do they carry it, but how do they hold that cart back going downhill or backing up? It looks like there must be a strap running behind the horns, which would probably be adequate when they just have the pole weight when moving forward. Without any solid yoke, it seems like stopping and backing up would pull the animals together in an uncomfortable way. Looking at those pictures again, it looks like the pole is being carried by collars around their necks, which doesn’t seem ideal to me.
But for simple pulling operations, it definately seems like a good system.
Maintainence shouldn’t be different from Horse collar and harness, but there’s a lot less of it to maintain.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

Yes, yes, Neil. We all know that your way is the best way.
Funny thing is, I know half a dozen old timers all feel the same way, and they each do things different (from you and each other).
I won’t knock your experience, but I also know that you weren’t the first to try putting a collar on an ox, and most folks with oxen use yokes. Folks up in Nova Scotia swear by head yokes, around here it’s all neck yokes. I’ve heard that in pulling competitions, the Mainers and the Nova Scotians come out pretty even. As long as it is well designed, properly fitted, and well used, seems like there’s more than one way to do it that works.

We aren’t running down the way you do things, Neil, we’re just running down the notion that your way of doing things is the only best way. Your situation is different than mine, different animals, different work, different equipment, different teamster, different terrain. (I know Carl’s already said that in different words, so I’ll leave it at that).
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

We take apprentices on our farm and have a team of oxen as well as a draft horse. We are slowly transitioning over from tractor to animal power, not all there yet, but hoping to do more and more with the animals as time goes on. We do a bit of everything here, so an apprenticeship with us wouldn’t be focussed solely on oxen or the horse, but they are a piece of what we do.
I apprenticed with Rob, so can vouch for that being a good place to learn too.
I think Tillers International also may take apprentices.
-Tevis
crabapplefarm@verizon.net

[Crabapple Farm]

Yes, pathogen contamination can be a concern with using manure for vegetable crops. It is more of an issue with crops like spinach or lettuce than, say, eggplant, which washes clean and you cook before eating.
Proper composting will kill pathogens, but “aging” alone might not. My basic rule is, if it seems like there’s still shit in there, don’t put in on your food. It should look, feel, and smell like compost, not manure. Feel is important – if you aren’t willing to handle it with your bare hands, it ain’t ready.
The Federal Organic Standards (we’re Certified so I’m up on them) require waiting 120 days after incorporating manure in the soil before harvesting a crop, or 90 days if the harvested portion is not in contact with the ground (such as sweet corn, well mulched tomatoes, etc.). That time period should be sufficient to allow soil-dwelling microbes to kill off any pathogens present in the manure. (that’s for manure, not compost)
Of course, if the source is animals that you trust are healthy, and you trust your immune system, don’t worry about. We sell vegetables to the general public, so are careful, but tend to eat a fair amount of manure ourselves over the course of an average week inadvertently (tail in the face when milking, hitching, etc. breathing dust in the chicken house, and so forth) Not Much, but enough to feel like our immune system at this point can handle a little bit of whatever our animals have. Especially since we aren’t real concerned about our animals carrying any serious pathogens.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

No, Kristin, we won’t thresh by hand. We tried that last year and it didn’t go as well as we hoped. I had threshed out dry beans in the past with flails, which is easy, so thought threshing the wheat wouldn’t be a problem. It didn’t thresh nearly as easily.
So instead I rigged up a mechanical beast:
A friend gave me an old leaf shredder she had taking up space in the garage, I replaced the gas engine I couldn’t get to start with an old two speed electric motor my dad had kicking around, added some boards and bits of tin to make it into a thresher, and “added” a fan from the old oil furnace we tore out of the basement when we moved here to winnow it while it threshes (the fan’s powerful enough that it has to be set about ten feet away to avoid blowing the grain away with the chaff). It works reasonably well, if we increase our production much more we’ll have to get something better. The main problem is it can’t handle the straw without clogging, so we have to stick each sheaf in one at a time – it only takes about ten seconds per sheaf, but that does add up.
Last year the wheat sat in the barn in the sheaves for a couple months between the time we tried threshing by hand and I finished rigging up the electric thresher. Which meant that when we threshed it there was a lot of mouse poop mixed in, which we weren’t able to winnow out. The chickens don’t mind, but we had been hoping to have it fit for human consumption. This year, with a threshing rig worked out, hopefully we’ll be able to thresh more promptly, before the rodents get into it.
Yes, Kristin, we’re fairly close to Springfield, MA, at least compared to from where you are. It would be great to have you stop by.
Lane, I’ll see if I can figure out how to get a picture or two from last year posted, and will post more when we get through this year’s harvest.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

Sounds like good old fashioned switchel to me – an old haymaking drink which is great for the hot weather, though we haven’t offered it to any of the animals.
For ourselves, we mix some cider vinegar, salt, maple syrup or molasses, sometimes juice, sometimes ginger, with water. Good stuff.

[Crabapple Farm]

If you’re just going to work her single, there’s no real reason not to dehorn a working heifer. In my fairly limited experience a single yoke, without a britchen, tends to slide up on the neck and flip over when it’s not under a load, so I would always use a britchen when working a single. Once there’s a britchen there, you don’t need horns to hold the yoke back.
One thing you’ll have to watch out for with working a milk cow, which may be obvious, is that you don’t ask too much of her. Milking takes a lot of energy, pregnancy takes a lot of energy, and if you ask her to work on top of that, well, you better feed her well or she’ll waste away. And old dual or triple purpose breed (durham or devon, say) will take to it better than a skin-bones-and-bag jersey or holstein, because they tend to carry a little more condition.

[Crabapple Farm]

Yes, Oxen are sometimes trained singly. Hopefully Howard Van Ord will check in soon, as he is a big proponent of working single oxen.
Other than strength, the advantages to a team of oxen, as I see them, are a) a team yoke is actually a simpler set up than a single yoke, though heavier. No britchen, traces, or singletree to deal with. and b) it can be easier to keep a team on task because one can’t wander off without the other, whereas a single ox can more easily act on notions he comes up with on his own that you didn’t tell him.
Neither are major issues, if a single is what you want.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

The NRCS Soil Survey is a great resource. Obviously you want to look for the best piece of soil you can find. Equally obviously no piece of property is going to have everything you could desire.
I personally would look more at the physical properties of a soil than the chemical analysis, as fertility is much easier to fix than, say, drainage or slope or stoniness. We’re farming vegetables on soil that isn’t really suited to it – not good drainage, some slope, glacial till that grows new stones annually. The soil limits our production ability, and takes a toll on the equipment, but vegetables are still our main income. We’ve got a small-scale, direct sales market approach, because we don’t think it makes sense for us to compete with the much larger veg farms on ideal soil down in the valley in wholesale markets. It all depends on what you want to do, and how you want to do it. There are some pretty amazingly productive mountainsides in italy and peru and china, going to show that you can turn almost anything into farmland if you want to.
Drainage: it’s easier to add water than remove it, assuming there is a water source. However, with drainage comes leaching of fertility. Dry soil also warms up quicker in the spring, giving you a head start on the season. We’ve put up hoophouses, so we can have stuff at market before the folks with nice warm dry soil.
Stones: break equipment and your back. Frost heaves more into the plow zone each year. But it’s certainly satisfying pulling a boulder out of the field. And they build character.
Slope/aspect: if you’re gonna plow, look for less than 5% slope. South and west facing are warmest, east and north cooler. A slope can shed frost, so in the same area at the same elevation, a sloping field is less likely to get hit by a late or early frost than a flat one. But cultivating on a slope can be tricky, and you can run into erosion issues.
Layout: if there are buildings, are they conveniently and centrally located? Are the fields visible and accessible? It’s tricky to manage fields that are out of the way, because it takes a special trip to see how they are doing and what needs to be done.

-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

I think one factor in the pole or not equation is the size of the field(s) you are disking and the type of tillage. For disking a reasonably sized field after plowing, you would normally make wide arcing turns in the field and don’t need a pole. However, if you are disking in a few rows of a crop between other rows of crop, then turning in the headland to disk back over rows, then having a tongue can improve maneuvering at the ends of the rows. I think a single gang adjustable angle disk with a fixed pole is ideal for the latter type of work (steers just like a forecart), whereas a double gang drag disk is great for whole-field disking.

[Crabapple Farm]

Thanks, Carl.
I’ll try the whip butt in the ribs technique. I think I’ve probably been mainly driving from about even with the yoke, I’ll try to get behind the shoulder as you suggest.
I’m not entirely satisfied with the yoke fit – it’s a yoke I made for a previous team who never had any problems with it, but it seems to ride high and far back on these boys. Adjusting the bows didn’t fix it, I’m going to shim down the ring to lower the hitch point a little to see if that helps. Unfortunately, with them not pulling even, it’s hard to tell how the yoke really fits when working. But I’m pretty confident that the yoke is not the cause of the problem, though it might be making it worse.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

@goodcompanion 1516 wrote:

What are the ethical implications of advocating a type of power and traction that may work for those that have animals, water, land, functional social structures, but which offers little in the way of hope or help to perhaps 90% of the u.s. population where and how they are currently living?

We can not hold ourselves responsible for the choices that have been made by millions of people over the past hundred and fifty years. The majority of that 90% not in a position to benefit from animal powered farming could have made different choices in their lives, and still can make choices. I may be hard hearted and cruel, but I will not weep when I hear about refuges fleeing the drought-stricken southwest when that time comes. What were they thinking when they moved there? Just as I have no sympathy for folks who bought a big house in the suburbs a few years back and now their house isn’t worth much and it costs a lot of money to fill the SUV they commute into the city to work (where they used to live).
The best thing that we can do is to help people realize that there are choices that they can make. Most people do what they do because that is the option that they see open to them – and most people are so used to blinders that they have lost their peripheral vision.

As a side note, I was somewhat dismayed by the response I got from the local Peak Oil/Sustainability group when I directly addressed their question about how many people our farm could feed entirely, if it came to that. They were reassured to hear that I thought our land base (though not current labor) could feed about 100 people, tops. I guess it made them think that the food situation locally wouldn’t be so bad. We’ve got over a hundred current customers, most of the folks in that group aren’t current customers, there are about a thousand folks in our town, and most of the folks in the group were from neighboring towns. I’m not sure what made them think that they’d be part of that 100. There’s a couple folks with cattle, one grain farmer, a blueberry farm, and many home gardeners in town in addition to us, but no one with the skill and knowledge set required to actually provide lots of people with a complete diet (I think we’re probably closest, and we have a lot of learning still to do about grains and other storage crops). People heard me say that the land base was ample (current population around here is about the same as it was in 1900), but didn’t hear the bit about the skills not being here.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

Having tried to pass myself off as knowledgable, you called my bluff. I’ve never worked three abreast, so I’m going out on a limb here. The problem I see is that the three horse evener puts the hitch point behind the middle horse, whereas walking plows are normally designed to be hitched halfway between the furrow horse and the adjacent horse. Is there a way to create a horizontal hitchpoint adjustment on your plow? Alternatively, now that you’ve trained your furrow horse to walk in the furrow, you can teach them the bad habit of walking up on the plowed ground.
Hopefully someone with more experience will give you better advice.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

A few more thoughts: check power in several locations. Our fence makes a loop out from the barn, around the field, and back, so the “far” and “near” ends (as measured in wire from the fencer) are quite close to eachother and so easy to compare. If I can see a voltage drop between them, then I know that I have either a short (or many, when the grass grows up) or poor conductivity. If they read about the same but a physically far point shows a drop, then the ground is the problem. We’ve got soil that stays moist always, so haven’t had much problem with grounding, but in dry soil (i’ve heard) even with good grounding there’s a limit to how far the electricity can travel through the ground – since it’s the water in the soil that is the conductor. And if the top six inches are bone dry, no amount of grounding at the other end is going to give you a good shock in the field without a seriously powerful fencer.
-Tevis

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