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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Found at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-12-farming-horses_x.htm

Horse-and-plow farming makes comeback in U.S.

SISTERS, Ore. (AP) — If the thought of a farmer patiently working his field 
behind a plow and horses floods you with pangs of nostalgia, take heart. 
It's on the rebound.
		Susanne Burkhart, left, plows furrows as Neal MacCool leads a team of 
quarterhorse mules in Rock Creek, Ore. 	
By Don Ryan, AP

Ol' Dobbin hasn't run the tractors out of the fields yet, but increasingly, 
owners of small farmers are finding horse-powered agriculture to be a 
workable option to mechanization, financially and in other ways.

Lynn Miller, whose quarterly Small Farmer's Journal caters to horse-farming 
and tracks it closely, figures there are about 400,000 people in America 
who depend in some measure on animal power for farming, logging and other 
livelihoods, and he says the number is on the rise.

While many are Amish farmers in Iowa and Pennsylvania who shun 
mechanization, many more are not, and across more and more of America the 
sputter and chug of a diesel tractor is being replaced by soft hoofbeats.

Farmers turning to horses say their decision is justified by the bottom 
line. They cite soaring fuel prices, the fact that horses can be more 
economical on some scales, and the ability of the animals to reproduce 
their own replacements. They also say the animals are better for the soil 
and can be used in wet weather when a tractor often cannot.

Miller, who farms with horses on his own ranch, said the practice began 
spreading beyond Amish communities about 20 years ago.

"When I started 31 years ago there were no companies making equipment for 
animal-powered agriculture," he said in his office in this Central Oregon 
town in the shade of the Cascade Range. "Fifteen years ago I could count 
them. Today I have no idea how many there are, and that tells me that 
(farming with horses) is growing."

So, he said, are small farms and the income they produce.

"A lot of middle-age people go into it part-time or headfirst," he said. 
"They get some land and four horses and give it a try."

He said some find they are not cut out for it but estimated that 60% to 70% 
of those who try stay with it.

"It takes a certain personality. It's a craft, not a science."

By working hard, he said, a farmer with horses can earn triple or more the 
earnings per acre than one farmed by agribusiness.

Miller's magazine has about 18,000 subscribers in 72 countries, and he has 
a mailing list of about 65,000 for his other journals and books centering 
on traditional farming techniques and old data from parts catalogues, some 
of them resurrected from a century ago or more.

Most subscribers, even in the Third World, don't seem trapped into using 
animal power. "For most of them it is a matter of choice," he said. "They 
see it as a viable option."

His catalogue includes reprints of the 1864 book Ten Acres Enough, and its 
advice is still good, Miller said. An addendum modernizes some of it, but 
the original preface says the book, aptly adapted, "will offer solutions to 
most of the problems you are likely to encounter" while chasing the 
Jeffersonian ideal of the small farm.

"You are talking about the quintessential agrarian philosophy," said 
Miller, who uses horses to harvest hay and other crops on his ranch of more 
than 2,000 acres. "It's pure agricultural democratic capitalism."

Ron VanGrunsven farms about 50 acres with horses near Council, Idaho and 
has used them for years there and in Oregon's Willamette Valley.

"They're more economical," he said. "They raise their own replacements, you 
can train them yourself and raise their feed."

A mare can produce a foal every year or so, and Miller says that properly 
trained, one can bring about $2,000 after two years.

A plow horse usually lasts 16 or 18 years, he said at a recent annual 
horse-plowing demonstration near Portland. He said he looks after his 
stable of nine carefully and that veterinarian bills rarely total $200 a year.

VanGrunsven said a two-horse team and a farmer can plow about an acre and a 
half a day if the ground is right and that an acre usually produces more 
than enough hay to feed a horse for a year.

"Most of my equipment is not new," said VanGrunsven. "It is from the 1930s 
or earlier. It has been repaired and cleaned up. There are people who make 
their living doing that.

"The older things were designed so they could be fixed if they broke. When 
newer things break they have to be replaced." A farmer with a forge and 
anvil can usually mend older things, he said.

"When gas prices went up we had to laugh," said his wife, Anita. "If a bad 
international situation comes along, we can still farm."

Miller's magazine is a look at the past with an eye to the future.

A recent issue contained articles on "Russell's Mississippi Work Horse 
Workshop," "How to Select a Sound Horse," (there's more to it than you 
might think) and profiles of farms and the farmers who work them with horses.

Back issues run the gamut from buying and designing a small farm, diarrhea 
in foals, the benefits of small farming, medicating livestock, the 
histories of various lineages, horse farming in other countries, learning 
to work with horses and more.

Many illustrations are plucked from guides a century or more old, and 
haven't changed, or can be altered to include more modern equipment.

Horse farming was common until the end of World War II, Miller said, when 
the government and manufacturers started promoting mechanization to soak up 
the surplus industrial capacity.

Horses could often be used as downpayments for tractors, "and they went to 
the glue factories by the hundreds of thousands," he said.

He credits the gradual shift back to horses in part to a sense of 
alienation and a desire for craft-oriented work and farming on a human scale.

"I admit I'm biased in favor of animal-powered agriculture," Miller said. 
"I know it works."

He said only a few years ago many thought the return of horse-farming was 
"cute," or nostalgic.

"But more people are sticking out their necks and saying it is also a way 
of the future," he said.