[mitchmaine]

if you google mount hope auction. downtown mt. hope across from mrs. yoders kitchen. the spring sale is well attended, and usually falls on or about the second week in march. contact them and you get on the list and they’ll send you a card. buy a horse and you’ll know whats happening there till eternity.

[mitchmaine]

well said geoff. the discription of an emotional response or a mental process given to someone who hasn’t had the same experience is darn near impossible. two people with similar experience can share a language, no matter how vague the image presented. not sure if i was too clear with that statement. but we have to start somewhere. and words are what we have.

[mitchmaine]

Hey mark,
I’ll take a stab at this one. First, participants were discouraged from bringing their own animals. This freed everyone up to work with teamsters and broke horses. In the past, lots of time and energy went into working with owners and their horses that seemed to draw attention away from the logging aspect of the event. It was successful by itself, but didn’t seem to be part of low impact forestry. Instead, now, several teamsters with their own horses, work with three or four participants for three days. One, in the barns, working and talking about feet, teeth, health, condition, harness and logging tools and various ways to work in the woodlot. The second day is a repeat of the first but moves out into the infield through an obstacle course designed to provide obstacles you might find in a woodlot, and focuses on driving skills and gives the group hands on experiences. The third day repeats the first two, and moves up into the woodlot through the trails and log brows and includes twitching, loading scoots and moving logs. Groups are always close enough to share their experiences and so forth. There is a silviculture day with foresters in the woodlot making plans, laying out trails. Its very calm compared to the former program, and can be adjusted on the move to accommodate other ideas and so on. It had a great feel to it, and I think everyone seemed pleased with the way it went.

[mitchmaine]

Hey scott,
Its international rule around here. It gains slightly on scribner. We used to have maine or bangor scale, a 42’ scale stick measuring logs 12 to 30 feet by 1 foot increments. A fair rule, but expensive for the mill. I can’t see why. All they had to do was adjust the price. In the end the scale means nothing. It changes drastically as the wood yard fills and emptys. Take good care of your pole scaler. Friends in this business are hard to find.
Actually what I was trying to say was that I gave a piece of advice to someone that I had never challenged. And wondered instantly if it was accurate or not and ran the numbers to see. It would be like telling you I drove three abreast with single lines on the middle one and just let the others follow along. If you didn’t know better and passed it along till someone actually tried it with the expected results, well, I try to make sure I have done or tried something before I pass it on. That’s all. Good luck in athol next week. Wish we could make it down. We’re heading for Oregon for thanksgiving. probably pass you in mid-air. mitch

[mitchmaine]

good goin’ george. your horse is lucky to have you. sounds like you are tuned into his special needs and worries. and capable of dealing with it when it comes up. my dad told me to always expect the unexpected. some things never change.

[mitchmaine]

hey jay, glad you made it through ok. those three armed peices of brush a pretty unpredictable. sounds like you have a good quiet pair of horses. good teaming!

[mitchmaine]

@Donn Hewes 30131 wrote:

Even with the low prices 25$ four mules sounds fishy. Was it just the end of a long auction or something? I think I could sell twenty teams of horses in my neighborhood right now. I bet they won’t be that cheap in the spring. My place would also make a good place to stop for anyone traveling to NE from Ohio.

exactly donn. it sounds funny to read and it was worse to watch. 10 am saturday morning withplenty of people watching. evidentally all those that wanted horses were someplace else. one of those wrong place and time things. sometimes a friend will bale you out and buy your team back for you and your out auction fees but that guy didn’t want those mules this winter. like andy says, another day and the same horses would so expensive you wouldn’t be able to buy them. go figure. thanks for the offer and we may take you up on it. what used to be a 16 hour ride through the night has become a 16 hour through the night if you know what i mean. we don’t jump out of the truck like we used to.

[mitchmaine]

Hey George, my memory is that there are always a bunch of draft quarter horse and draft morgan crosses in the sale. There used to be a lot of spotted drafts, and that’s down but halflingers are showing up. Not many suffolks or clydes orshires but everything changes. I think the amish breed long legged drafts hoping for a sale to a big hitch and the result is a lot of big rangy horses. But there are still the chunks if you want to call them. Horses are how you find them.

Erika, those folk at pioneer are tops. John Morton asked me a few adjustment questions about his pioneer footlift plow, so I asked the same questions out there this week. They pulled one into the shop and we went over that plow from top to bottom. And I think if not for the rain we would have plowed that day. On three and four on a single bottom plow the draft is centered on the team of course, way into the land. The draft on the plow is centered in the share a few inces in from the landside. Draw a line from one to the other and where it passes over the horizontal hitch is where you hitch the evener. Excellent plow.

Donn, you’re a mule man. Four for $25. Could you go wrong. Very peculiar experience watching horses go so cheaply. $2500. Would have filled a good stock trailer. And andy, thanks for the great offer. We come by new castle on i-80 and I think it was there somewhere that we snapped an axle on the horse trailer one year.

[mitchmaine]

@jac 30110 wrote:

Hey Mitch glad you had a good trip.. those horse prices sound like a sad reflection on the state of things.. same over here.. great if you want to buy but not so great in the overall picture.. is that the cultivator that was the result of imput from here at DAP ??? sounds like it will be an awesome piece of kit..John

thanks john, i went back in the equipment section and found a thread by erika about putting ideas together for that cultivator. forgot about that, but it puts alot of things in order so to speak. i forgot to say they were also working on mounting a single row planter on the unit.

hey ed, i’d like to have seen you with a couple of those horses. i even saw a match for my single out there. odds are good with enough horses for sale. the spring sale out there is getting pretty big now. five days, i think. equipment day, perch and belgians each have their own sale days and crosses next and a free-for all on saturday. saturday horses aren’t even in the catalog and there are still 6-700 big horses in the book. lots to choose from.

[mitchmaine]

hey jim, that sounds like dougie leavitt. he used his prosthesis (spelling?) to cut wood with and then just pitch it in his pickup and go without. one evening headed home i saw his arm laying in the tar road, so i picked it up and threw it in back with my saws and delivered it to his woodyard the next day. that is one tough old bird. when the rest of us get whingin’, we should remember doug and get over it and back to work. thanks for that one, jim. give doug my best, tell him i’m thinking about him, and see if he still remembers us. mitch

[mitchmaine]

thanks vicki, but it wasn’t that calm out there. i’d like to pretend that i even had a plan, but nope, i was just lucky. that said, i’ve only had that horse for under two years, but we’ve done alot of work together, and itg surprised me how much she let me do without fighting it. and the last couple days have been better than ever, and its been making me wonder if driving a single horse wouldn’t be a much wiser way to start a beginning teamster. its just the two of you and they really listen to you and have no partner to read for conflicting signals. i may be biased because i started with a single. a horse that was really smart. i thought at the time he was a little balky, but now in hindsight, i think he wouldn’t respond to a dumb command and patiently waited for me to come to the right decision and then responded. anyway, he set me on the right track, and the other day, i got a refreshed respect for the single horse and its been on my mind. again, thanks for the kind words and good advice. we all should have a plan b, or get away route ready. we do it unconsciously when we drop a tree or do something risky, and no sense not to fully think out each move with the horses. especially in a woodlot.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

@Rod 29959 wrote:

Thankfully it turned out ok. Do you ever get the feeling that someone is watching out for you?

you have a guardian angel too. i knew it. god bless them guardian angels, you, and all the rest out there listening. we have to kinda look out after each other too, don’t we? best wishes, mitch

[mitchmaine]

danger, danger carl. its an insidious machine sitting there waiting to take over your life. first its pushing up the log pile, then its twitching out that big oak log you’ve been worring about, then its everything. i’m trying to be funny, of course, but i did the same thing and got run over with machinery.
looking back, i think i never made as much money with the horses, but i can show how at any particular time, i would have kept as much money because of lack of machine costs.
there was an old saying about running a crawler. you bolt a coffee can to the cowling and paint a stripe on the tracks of the dozer and each time you see the paint stripe go by, you throw a quarter in the coffee can so you can have enough money in the spring when you have to repin and bush the tracks.
i’m not worried about you cause i think you know all this and like your horses enough to win the battle, but thought it should be said. good luck with your machine, mitch

[mitchmaine]

youre right about that john. tripping in the brush and all i could manage to think was i lost this horse. she is a good horse robert, and thanks. shes very determined, may not have all the finess that my last twitch horse had but makes up for it in go. sure would miss her.

[mitchmaine]

we use straw, like big john, and like it alot. soaks up good and rots down good and makes good compost. and can be used to mulch the crops.
i was thinking that because i like it so, and if we didn’t take grain off, i’d still sow an acre, and take it off before the grain hardened so it wouldn’t sprout. oats really like to grow up here, and can be a pain in the garden if you don’t want them.

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