Description

Stories in this issue:

• Mower Rendezvous: DAPNET and Essex Farm held a workshop to rebuild horse-drawn mowers as well as learn about repair and maintenance. With much expertise in the building they disassembled, replaced, adjusted, refit, cleaned, and reassembled mowers (McCormick #7 & #9 as well as a Frost and Wood from Canada
• Kiwi Clydes: Meryl Friets headed to New Zealand after college to spend two months at Erewhon Station, a working cattle, sheep and deer farm situated at the top of Rangitata Gorge. She shares her amazing experiences working with Clydesdales at the farm who are descendants of the original horses brought from Scotland in 1911. The horses are used for much work on the farm. Read about how they are raised, trained and worked.
• Getting Started with a Team:  Expert draft horse farmer, Stephen Leslie, in a Q&A format, teaches us about starting a draft horse team trained for work. From choosing a breed, age, size, matching for a team, shoeing, feeding, logging, he covers a lot of topics. He also presents a “starter kit” of equipment he recommends for a draft powered market farmer.
• Green Forests Work!: Karen Kirsch takes us on a tour of reclaimed surface mining land in Kentucky. The property we visit is being restored by the Great Forests Work organization. After giving us a short primer on cool mining history, Karen explains why these lands have been difficult to reforest and how the organization is succeeding in bringing them back.
• Water Quantity & Quality: Ralph Rice discusses water sources for your farm operation and livestock feeding as well as gardens irrigation. He discusses the benefits of farm Pond cisterns, tanks or barrels. He then discusses the importance of water quality both on your farm and in the run off from your farm. The way he takes care of both of these issues is by composting manure the methods of which he shares with us
• Old Barn – New Life: enifer Morrissey reports on the restoration of the log based, gambrel roof barn at Jack Creek Ranch in North Park Colorado. This is the first installment and describes in detail the installation of a new foundation and concrete floor.
• Creature Comfort: Ralph Rice shares how he provides the essentials for his livestock: shelter from wind, shade from sun and fresh feed and water. He does this in many ways and the animals choose the ones they prefer. Barns are one way but animals tend to prefer to be out of doors using trees and sheds for shade, fencerows, logs etc. for windbreaks. Ralph tells us how he provides all of these options and more.
• Horse Logging Business: Animal Powered logger Brad Johnson gives us a list of things to consider when starting such a business. These include things from time management minimum output, efficiency vs. speed, consideration of yours and your horses limits, market analysis, listen to elder horse loggers and a lot more excellent advice
• Spectacular: Coverage of the first North American Suffolk Spectacular includes many great pictures of the beautiful animals.
• Mule Plowing Record: The Middle Tennessee Mule Skinners club set a world record on September 29, 2018 and we were there to record it. This record was for 95 mules plowing simultaneously for at least one minute.
• Desert Southwest 1913: Jenifer Morrissey takes us along on another of her great-great grandparents’ journeys, this one to Southern California, New Mexico and Arizona in 1913. Histories of agriculture, particularly early Arizona and the California Imperial valley are described enhanced by snippets from their diaries.
• The Value of a Woodlot: Ralph discusses the benefits of his woodlot. Information he discusses includes planning, financials, use (timber, syrup, fuel, etc) access roads, upkeep, maintenance, and selective harvesting.