[dominiquer60]

In college we trained a lot of drafts to drive, they all left for home having had someone on their back and riding around. After 4 weeks of being in a heavy harness none of them had a problem with a saddle or riding. Drafts are so tolerant and versatile that it just seems natural that they accept us riding them also. I even know a few that could not be driven, but were fine to ride.

I hopped on one of the black mares last week. We were working the horses to get ready for the fair. Sam took one in the cart and since we only have one cart, I grabbed riding reins and a saddle pad and followed him down the road with the other mare and into a hay field. She was good for me, she did get a little silly when she lost sight of her sister for a moment, but as in cart she was very light in hand and responded well to voice, my legs meant nothing to her. After a little while Sam asked how she was going for her first time ever being ridden. I figured it had just been a while, she sure had me fooled.

Drafts make fine mounts if you are willing to put the time in to make them that way.

[dominiquer60]

Good idea with the budget and planning, these are important steps to running a successful garden. I posted some comments on Facebook, but this post reminds of another important consideration. I have worked at 3 different market gardens and visited dozens of other before I started my own market garden this year. All the market gardeners that I know who started right out of school on there parents farm (or still in homeschool at age 15) market gardening all said the same thing, “they wished that they had spent some time on other farms before they started farming.”

One gentleman that I know finally got away from his very successful market garden and interned with Joel Salatin last summer. It was really good for him to go and see another successful farm and learn new things (he also met his future wife too). It could work out fine to start next year if this is just a phase for your daughter, but if she catches the bug and wants to do this for a living I would advise that she go check out other farms and go on every market garden tour available, attend workshops and conferences, apprentice on a farm that peaks her interest, etc. There are so many ways to grow good food and the way that is best for her and your farm is yet to be discovered.

Best Wishes to your daughter and you in your new endeavor, growing produce gives you more wealth than you can imagine and maybe even a little extra cash if you do it right 🙂

[dominiquer60]

I have used the tractor version of a cultimulcher on 3 other farms in the past, I really liked it for weed control and seed bed prep. Here is a video of the Perfecta II that I am used to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8_MCajjA3k. This version comes with a wider duck foot sweep on the s tines and is able to dig deeper than my Schipshe cultimulcher.

Here is what I currently have on all of my tines, http://qualityfarmsupply.com/products/2-3-slash-4-x6mm-2-hole-danish-sweep
Last week I bought a set of more aggressive sweeps for one row of my S tines, they look like this http://qualityfarmsupply.com/products/6mmx4-danish-sweep. I want one row to be more aggressive to larger weeds. The first row of S tines is the least aggressive and the back the most aggressive, I will try these new sweeps on the middle row of tines. I fully expect the pull to be harder, but this time of year the horses are in shape, the weeds are larger and the area being covered is smaller.

I think that any tillage tool has the potential to make a hard pan. Below is some picture evidence of the hard pan that the perfecta on the tractor made after bare fallowing this section of the field for several weeks (the section of all open water to the left of the sweet corn). We had planned on seeding it down to fall crops, but didn’t have time to do it until right before Irene hit, so we opted to wait and see what the storm brought. The field turned into pudding and we weren’t able to do anything but broadcast some rye onto it for the winter and even that didn’t work well, darn lowland clay. Anyway the storm peeled back the layer of topsoil that we had been working with the Perfecta and showed us clear evidence that it can also cause a hard pan.

As Eli points out this type of tool doesn’t do a good job killing quack grass, I leave the disk and chain harrow for that task.

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[dominiquer60]

This is a great lesson to watch and a very handsome Molly to boot 🙂

[dominiquer60]

I love my cultimulcher. It can replace the disc and drag in some cases and a finishing harrow in most cases. I rely on it heavily for seed bed and transplanting preparation, and also as a stale seed bed tool or bare fallow for killing a weed flush. We have also used it successfully to work in a cover crop seed and to roll it at the same time, not as good as a harrow and cultipacker, but works great right before a good rain. I am going to try killing some tender buckwheat with it tomorrow in preparation for some winter crops.

We have very rocky soil, some rocks get stuck in the rollers, but can usually be freed easily. Of course it helps to pick rocks first, but it will hump up over the big ones. My Schipshe is rugged enough to handle our boney ground.

The one thing that I don’t like about this tool is that if used repeatedly for bare fallowing, it will pack the ground some, so sometimes I will use a disk between cultimulcher uses.

The picture below is after using it during the monsoon season we had in June, I hated to use it while the light rain came in, but no telling if it would rain so much that the ground would be too wet again. While some of the weeds regrew, it certain knocked them back some until it dried out again for another moment to get on this field. Though it is a Woodbridge sandy loam, don’t let that fool you, there are a couple of wet spots in the low parts of this field, I never got sweet corn in because of them.

We have a 5′ 2horse Schipshe with the articulating front roller (a must if you ask me).

Hope this info helps,

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[dominiquer60]

I used to live in an old 2 family house heated with a Tarm indoor wood boiler. It was 20 years old when I was there and it still worked very slick with little maintenance (mostly cleaning ashes). There were 4 zones and getting wood to it in the basement was easy. A trap door on the porch opened to let the bucket loader (or by hand off the cart) dump in the wood room right next to the furnace, not having to go out side to stoke was a real plus. 10 cords a year for this leaky old house wasn’t too bad, it would be over kill for a house like Donn’s, but a very good system over all. Currently we have an “outdoor” furnace in an attachment to the house/shop with a wood room off of that, again, no need to go out into the weather to tend to the fire, a real plus at times.

[dominiquer60]

14″ is good sized, we use 3 horses for ours. If they were my steers I would certainly not hesitate to go down to a smaller plow, the side draft will be less frustrating to all than a plow share too large for the teams fitness level. My team is never very hard so I use a plow size that I know that they will have success with. We can get more done with a more comfortable situation than a struggling situation.

Jumping in and out of the furrow while they struggle is a bad habit that you don’t want them to get used to. Depending on the plow you may be able get a 12″ bottom so that you can work up to the 14″ when the time comes. But yes for now if you can get a smaller walking plow go for it.

Good Luck

[dominiquer60]

“Is that going to ruin the horizontal adjustment and make it hard for the plow to ride true?”

Sam says it will impact the horizontal adjustment some, but not ruin it. Use a longer hitch chain to lessen some of the side draft.

Is this for the team of Devons? If they are mature they should not have an issue with that size plow.

[dominiquer60]

Thanks for the fly predator info I will look into it. I am not sure where the nets came from, but Weaver makes them and My Draft Horse Superstore carries them. https://www.mydrafthorse.com/cfwebstore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=322

[dominiquer60]

Billy,

I have heard good things about fly predators, but I wonder how effective they would be. It would probably be easy to treat the working stock, but we also have 200+ cattle all over the place and I am not sure that our efforts at the horse barn would be noticed, or if we could afford to treat the whole farm.

Our fly masks fit right under the bridles which I like. The body fly nets are effective, the flies can still get to their legs and necks, so that is were we focus the fly spray. I had problems with the net shifting yesterday, but I think that a fastener on the spider ring should fix that problem.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

Last year at the Big E we were watching a friend’s crew unharness his 6-up and we asked how he kept all of his harness straight. He uses colored zip ties, one color for each horse. So after a couple stops on the way home we found some colored zip ties and assigned each horse a color. Now all harness, collar, bridles and team lines are color coded, plus with the addition of scoring some neon zip ties we have all of our different length lines color coded too. All of the colors and corresponding animals and lines are written on the harness shed wall. Except when father uses a team (some old dogs don’t acknowledge new systems) this method works really well for us.

Below are a couple photos. The team lines with Yellow and Pink are for Dan (yellow) and Annie (pink). We use team lines with a ring shortly after the cross line connection, this way we can snap in a pair of but lines of the appropriate length. Generally we use short butt lines on a fore-cart, disk, sulky plow or cultivator. However we often need longer butt lines for other tasks, the orange is 24′ for single horse cultivator, cultimulcher or the Leroy walking plow, the blue is for the Oliver walking plow or single twitching and the neon yellow is for the leaders of a 4 up. Nice and neat and so much easier to keep order in the harness shed.

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[dominiquer60]

Remember if you cannot attend this intensive workshop, Doc will be giving smaller workshops at the Draft Animal-Power Field Days in Barton, Vt, September 27th-29th. Personally I can’t get away both weekends, but I sure wish that I could.

[dominiquer60]

In order to cultivate with ease it is best to prepare the soil well first. Sam Rich (former National Walking Plow Champion) will be in Barton to demonstrate proper plow set up and use. Turning a clean furrow to your liking is a good start to many a market garden. Sam will be using a pair of horses and a pair of working steers to demonstrate this skill. Sam has been actively helping with a market garden and using his horses to cultivate corn, make hay, log, sugar and anything else that they come in handy for around the family farm. Come see, ask questions and get some tips on how to get a good start to cultivating your crops and relationships with other draft animal folks.

[dominiquer60]

They are adequate for a small garden plot, but are not a good sod buster.

[dominiquer60]

Does it have good suction? Did someone try sharpening it?

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