On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 8:12 PM, <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:
>
> There IS a difference between keeping horses and mules with mules being
> easier. But that difference diminishes with the distance from the
> agribusiness
> model and on a very subsistence operation it nearly disappears altogether.
My grandmother (mother's mother, of course), who farmed with horses,
thought that my father had mules because they were so hard to kill
that he couldn't kill them. That wasn't totally unfair. It wasn't a
matter of neglect; Dad came to farming in his 20s, and while he loved
it, he wasn't a natural with animals.