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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Horse farming making a comeback
  • Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 08:27:05 -0700

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.






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