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["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

> > >Draft animals may be romantic and all that but to properly use
> > them with out injuring takes more training on the part of the teamster
> than the team.
> >
> 
> Essentially this is true, but far more people are injured by tractors than
> horses and far worse injuries.  None the less much of draft animal work in
> not intuitive to us children of the mechanical world.  It DOES take a bit
> of training and knowledge.

I was referring to injuring the animals.  Tractors and draft animals can and
do kill and maim, proper training, experience, and using your head is
important in both cases.

My father grew up farming with horses and mules.  My grandfather kept a team
until his death from an auto accident in 1950.  (It was not the car that was
the problem, he refused to see a doctor over his diabetes and went into
shock while driving and hit a bridge.) My grandfather also had a steam
engine to power a sawmill and a threshing machine.  He had an IHC 10-20 for
plowing and used the horses for cultivation.

When we took over the farm in 1950 the first thing my father did was buy an
old well worn John Deere B.  It was a real POS so was soon followed by a new
Ferguson 30 which my brother and I wore out over the next many years.  The
JD lasted another year and was replaced by a new MM UBUD special.

He had many tales of the problems of working horses and was more than glad
to farm with tractors.  He and his friends at the VFW would sit around and
alternate between talking about the war and complaining about horse farming.

I was first put on a tractor when I was about seven, something my mother
still fusses about.  From then until I left the farm I spent many hours on
farms tractors and crawler tractors.  Good weather was spent operating, bad
weather was spent fixing.

I guess mechanical aptitude is part of the family.  My youngest son runs an
automotive parts house in North Carolina and my oldest is a technical
director for an ad agency for Mitsubishi cars and write books on modifying
cars.

Don Bowen  KI6DIU
New ruralize pages, follow the link off http://www.ruralize.com
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html