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The New

horse-powered
farm
Tools and sysTems for The small-scale susTainable markeT Grower

Stephen LeSLie
Foreword by Lynn Miller

Foreword

Forty years ago, in North America, a small handful of people kept alive the magical traditions and mysterious craft of the highest form of true animal power. With a tip of the hat to the breeders who worked to sustain the show rings for draft horses, draft mules, and oxenthose of us devoted to the working-animal craft owe our deepest gratitude to the individuals who persisted in the application of this motive power source. Moms and Pops in quiet lonely corners of the world. People who, in spite of ridicule and cultural rejection, kept returning day in and day out to the back roads, the forests and woodlots, the city carriage trade, and to the farm fields. People who understood inherently that they had to go deep within the craft in order to persist, because back then there was no support system for this way of working. And by deep I mean they had to learn how to repair their own harness, they had to completely understand the importance of good balance, proper leverage, and correct draft as it applied to comfort and efficiencies for working animals, they had to know what to feed, when to feed, and how to feed, they had to be able to recognize the earliest signs of a bruised or ailing animaland, arguably, most important, they had to understand, feel, and ingrain themselves into a balanced, elegant working relationship with the animal. Weve covered a lot of ground these last four decades. Today, companies are making new animal-powered implements with continuing research and development into incredible innovations. Harness shops have grown dramatically in number and service with all manner of advances in material and design. New treatments and pharmaceuticals are directed toward working-animal ailments and infirmities. Videos, training aids, books, and periodicals are available. Workshops, clinics, and demonstrations are scattered all across the landscape. Clubs, associations, and events have cropped up in all regions. All of it clear evidence of the growth and evolution of a widespread community of support for the animal-powered world.

Quite a contrast to 1970 when there were a spare handful of cottage businesses for harness and implements, most within Amish communities. Back then the sustenance of working animals ofttimes required a keen understanding of the peculiar and troubling maladies that stemmed directly from long, hard days of work combined with nutritional imbalances and perhaps ignored yet treatable symptoms. Folk medicine remedies were all one had. When I started out with work horses on my farm in 1971, finding veterinarian help that understood our specific conditions was a frightening challenge. The absence of that knowledge resulted, I now know, in the preventable agony and loss of exceptional horses. The person who sets out today to put harnessed animals to good use has tremendous advantage from this new community of support. Yes, weve seen many positive advances, some remarkable, in this resurgent interest in animal power. Yet weve also been present for the painful, awkward, and, might I suggest, unnecessary reinvention of a timehonored craft. How could that be? How, in the matter of a couple of decades, could an entire culture erase collective knowledge of a way of working so intrinsic to rural society? It might be useful to understand that the work horses and mules, in North America, were not phased out, they were pushed out. They were not deemed to be inefficient or inappropriate, they were deemed to be in the way of industry and a corporate notion of progress. Before, during, and after World War II, our governments, in unabashed collusion with industry, effected the transport and slaughter of millions of useful draft animals just as fast as they could make it happen. If you were a farmer during that period you were pummeled with advertisements, sales pitches, and local-orchestrated ridicule until you agreed to trade in your work animals for a tractor with a mortgage. That was it, the cusp, the very moment in history when we sold our self-reliance and working identity to

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The New Horse-Powered Farm

the devil. It was commerce-driven cultural cleansing. With the work animals went the biodiversity of plants and animals, elegant multiyear crop rotations, the rich fabric of small-town America, the top soil, the spiritual and economic solvency of a nation, and the knowledge. A few of us still around have the glorious and difficult distinction of having been shown how to work horses and mules. We had mentors who made no excuses about the fact that they had no time to explain why you did things a certain way, you just did. If you were fortunate, time and experience would ease you some answers to those loftier questions. Meanwhile, if you did as you were shown, you might one day stand alongside your mentors in a group portrait and look every bit the part. Today, because impatience demands foolishness and because most of our young people have had to raise themselves, we see many people new to draft animals insisting on the risky business of recreating the system and relationships from scratch. In this new volume by Stephen Leslie, he has gathered together many of the thoughts and experiences of his peers, primarily from the Northeast. Some of these practitioners have done amazing successful work finding their own way, while others have come by their skill through mentorship. There is real constructive value in being able to compare these realities side by side. A word from inside looking out: In modern equine circles a lot has been made of the philosophy that we need to train our animals properly so that we may come to fully trust them. While in more accurate truth what must happen if people are to return to seamless proficiency with working animals, each needs in their own way to come to the assurance that they trust that they know their animals. And this result comes more from close proximity and long hours of successful working partnership. Working from within, working from the deepest position, thats what makes of a craftsman an effective and masterful magician. And please be assured that with the world of working horses and mules in harness you are dealing with a craft that, when mastered, allows daily, as the work is done, for purest magic. When that state is attained, it contains those elements that hold and build on safety. When

safety slips away, when terror and/or destruction insert themselves in that working world, the magic is gone, the pleasures and efficiencies evaporate. At the risk of cultural distraction, I offer that entry into this potentially magical world of working animals is entry into a world of the best spiritual harmonies humans have ever knownharmonies ready to add luster to a modern life of choice in work. Why would anyone of the twenty-first century choose to revert to farming with horses? Today a city kid somehow finds herself or himself behind a big old mule, directing its steps as a light wood-and-steel apparatus scratches the dirt between rows of heirloomvariety bean plants, upending new weeds and raking that shaded organic row-lane to a fine and intentional pattern. One part nostalgia? One part fashionable? One part disjointed? Not at all. Its three parts of a whole new concept for agriculture. A view, in one specialized slice, of how a thinking, fully franchised segment of the developing world is electing to redirect farming toward craft, stewardship, and the regenerative way. People of all ages, with the means and intelligence to choose an agrarian-based right-livelihood, are combing the cultural landscape for good information on alternative approaches to growing food and fiber. And they want to do it while rebuilding biodiversity. The repopulation of the countryside with good, curious, smart new farmers is happening right now. And those folks are fortunate that in this day and age the methods, technologies, and seed stock are becoming ever more accessible, various, and vital. The new farmers are drawn to this life and work because it reconnects them to a way of working that is healthful, satisfying, invigorating, and purposeful. If it can be said that the fast-paced modern life is alienating for most folks, then the new craft-based natural farming offers realignment. It aligns us with natural rhythms, biological percussions, weather tonalities, and earned rewards. When approached with gratitude aforethought, it makes us feel good at most every turn. There are plenty of strong personal reasons to pursue a life of good farming, especially today in the early twenty-first century. Its those pieces of the why of it that will continue to bring new people forward.

Foreword

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But it can be challenging for those who come to this vocation with no experience or background. Challenging because, for over half a century, the standard operating procedure for agriculture was to see and apply it as agribusiness, as industrial process, as chemically and technologically intensive, as capital intensive, as one part of a vertically integrated corporate ladder. Odd that over time we would collectively accept the misplaced notion of this industrial model of farming as inevitable and essential. Odder still that we would also nod agreement to the idea that the best education would bring us to this conclusion. Odd because today we feel how it is that a thirst for knowledge, and a collective desire to survive as a species, has brought questioning intellects to the puzzle of how humans might continue to produce greater quantities of food while protecting and reinvigorating nature and planet Earth. We know now that the tide has turned and that industrial agriculture is choking itself to death. We know now that what we need are millions more small independent farmers worldwide. Farmers who bring a gardeners heart and spirit to their work. We know now that there is a way forward and small farms are the answer. But how will all of these new farmers find their way? How will they learn the work? Where will they go to find the tools, the seeds, and the community of like-minded souls? As of today, there are but a few good conventional schools where people might go to learn the craft of farming. But happily there are alternative sources of

information toward a vocational goal of good farming. Books, publications, organizations, workshops, clinics, and educational farm tours abound. They are an indicator of how strong and purposeful this movement is. A movement that owes no political allegiance. It is a movement that springs from our time, our environmental circumstance, the hunger of so many, and from the very ground. Yet, strong though it is, it still requires that those who are new to this vocation find information they can trust, apply, and build upon. That is why I am pleased to applaud Stephen Leslies important new book, a volume that combines information about good farming and working with animals. This volume moves animal power forward yet another step. If you think that working animals in harness is for you, I encourage you to gather all the information you can up close, information from any and all sources, but most important, information from actual thinking, feeling, working people who represent what you want to do and who you want to be. In this relay race we call life, there is that fragile moment of the handoff, a moment we must never lose sight of. Those setting out on new adventures do have a choice whom to take the baton from. And those of us tidying up long useful lives have a choice whom we might hand off to. I implore you either way to add magic into your considerations.

Lynn R. Miller January, 2013

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