[mitchmaine]

hey robert. thanks for the kindness. all week long, we are following the guesses. weatherman aren’t ever right, but if they get it this time, the path for sunday morning is literally right down the driveway. we have been putting everything a hundred pounds or less in the barn, but there isn’t any saying the barn will still be there. up here its wind to the east and water to the west of the hurricanes, both when it jumps in your lap. cross your fingers and talk to ya later. mitch

[mitchmaine]

oregon.
vale, oregon. whoodathunk????????????????? ten or twelve days shy of pendleton. go nick.

[mitchmaine]

sorry to hear about that. sometimes, i think its just about not having a shared language. when i first had kids, most of my good friends were still into having good times. and they expected us to keep up. couldn’t understand a word you were saying about having kids, cause they had nothing to relate to.
same with keeping and working horses. when you get around to talking about it with friends who ask, the stuff you are saying means nothing because there is no background or shared experience to talk about, and it goes pretty flat pretty quick. so its easy for someone to write you off as a nut, cause you do it differently and they don’t get it.
if you do what you really love to do, as well as you can, nobody can fault you for that. carry on. mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey donn, i know what you mean about toughmowing. eight or ten deer have been bedding down in that hay and browsing the swale grass hard. looks like a putting green insome places. must be something there they like better than the second crop close by.
anyway my horse mower gets caught up in that lodged grass some easy and its more like ripping than mowing. the mowerconditioner hardly does any better but gives the horses a break. once it is cut it makes in a day.

[mitchmaine]

hi ed,
i agree with tom. we never put out that many horses together but whatever the count, new horses always have to do the dance. we soften the blow a little by separating them by a fence for a few days so they can blow and squeel at each other, but sooner or later they have to go in together and sort it out. top dog wins and its all settled.
when you finally get to the point where you can harness and drive the new horse and feel confidant enough to hook them with their opponant, i’ve found that once they are hooked and work together in harness, all disputes are settled. mares and geldings, anyways. mitch

[mitchmaine]

yeah geoff, they were hoping to make the parade. lotta potholes left between here and there, wish them luck.
they do go near boise dave and out of idaho near ontario some place mitch

[mitchmaine]

the boys made it west of pocatello. the plan is to get into pendleton by mid september. the mules, harness and wagons will then be up for sale if anyone is interested.

[mitchmaine]

Back when I made the leap from horses to skidder, the machine was still just a mechanical horse. Even though yarding was so much easier, the logger still had to cut, pile and do his yardwork. Pulp was still four feet and boltwood 51”, and pallet and sawlogs. But you could still expect to cut 3 or 4 times as much wood in the same time. That said it would be expected that you would make 3 or 4 times the money, and you did, but you wouldn’t keep that money. A skidder cost lots of money to buy, fuel, run and maintain. Way more than the horses. Animals were still a viable choice . there were two pulpmills, three sawmills, two trapstock mills and dozens of firewood dealers within twelve miles of the house.
One sawmill remains. The rest are gone, and the wood around here gets chipped or shipped treelength to mills and sorting yards north of here. The horse is now expected to be the machine (like horse progress days pulling corn choppers and balers) and yard tree length wood. So we try to invent methods of moving long wood to accommodate the wood industry and compete for pulp and log prices designed around whole tree chippers. That’s how I see it from my perspective. And I don’t know how or if it fits in well with our discussion here, but I think it goes to ethans first question. There is a lot of good wood growing here in this state, and we chip it, ship it and give it away in the process.
There were once two or three wooden boatbuilders in everytown on the coast. Now you can count them on ten fingers. Horselogging would be a good living if there was someone out there who wanted to buy wood.
Sorry, Just rambling away here, but I feel better already. Thanks for listening. mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey tom, i’m no forester, but i have cut some wood. i owned skidders and horses both and used them. i think if you compared a really good skidder operator with a poor horselogger you might find a comparison, but an average skidder operator against an average horselogger has to be back about the tools. no way can a man running a 7 ton tractor pulling 3 ton of tree length wood up out of gullies and across wet runs and bending and scarring his way down out of a woodlot compete fairly with the same guy with a scoot and a team.
no matter how conscientious your logger is, he will have to try and push both sides of mud season as far as he can cause he has too. mud season never stopped horses. you can pile wood up to your hearts content and truck it next month. money in the bank.
sorry. i ain’t ticked off, i just see it different. mitch

[mitchmaine]

nick and rinker are about three days from the idaho line. coming in to montpelier?
they just finished some hell on earth place called rocky ridge and lost their pup wagon. the wheel finally collapsed on it. and third set of shoes worn down paper thin til you can twist them in your hands.
odd feeling talking with someone traveling the oregon trail by cell phone and posting it on computer. he could hop in a truck and in 30 hours be back where he was standing last may.

[mitchmaine]

perhaps the bow is the weaklink, wittingly or unwittingly designed into the system to fail and protect the yoke from snapping. alot easier to bend a bow than shape a yoke.
seems to me the yoke is trying hard as it can under a load to stay on the same plane as the chain, fairly horizontal with the beasts shoulders and necks under the yoke and when the rock and hardplace converge, and something has to give and it ain’t gonna be the chain……….

[mitchmaine]

to be fair, fabian, cause tillers says something does that make it so????? the first thought i had was why does a 2″peice of round stock cranked around 180 degrees under wicked strain performing twice the work that a 5 or six inch straight grained log? that doesn’t make sense especially when some yokes don’t even require bows. no disrespect to tillers but i’d have to hear some more talk on the matter.

[mitchmaine]

donn,
i hope i didn’t sound like i was making light of this harnessing cause i wasn’t. the point i was trying to make probably not too well was the method of harnessing wasn’t as important to nme as results. making sure that when we are finished the horses are heads up with snug traces and they aren’t banging their knees on the yoke and so on.
when i spin a horse to a tree, the lines are between my thumb and forefinger and the tree is balancede in the last fingers and if need be i can drop it pretty quick and still have the lines. if i nsound haphazard about that i don’t mean it cause its pretty important to haqve a hold of your horse. you should have hold of nyour horse with your voice too, right? although easier said than done.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

usually when you are twitching wood single with a horse, when you spin at the log you have(or i have) the single tree and slack lines in the same hand. and with voice commands the horse gets the system after a spell and steps back the last couple steps to hook.
that same horse in a team will step back with a pull on the tug and your voice pretty easily, and when he does, your leg behind the evener puts out alot of leverage and hooking is a snap. i’m with carl on that one, but hooking is probably one of those things that you have to find the way that suits you and feels best. probably alot of ways to skin that cat.

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff,
with d-ring, it can be snug or tight between yoke and evener, and still have no strain from britchen on horses. they are loose, so to speak, with the weight of the pole on their jacksaddles. nice system.
i agree with carl about the straight yoke. there is a neckyoke for d-ring that looks like an evener, that doesn’t use jockey yokes. it pivots and breaks to each horse at there heads just like the evener does at their tails. heavier than the jockey yokes but work well and are quite common around here.

mitch

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