[dominiquer60]

Jenifer,

I am glad to see you and Peanut working together, it has been nice to see you progress together.
This coming weekend is the Maine Organic Farmer/Gardener Assoc. workshop on low impact forestry. I have no idea if it is too late to sign up. There is an intensive chainsaw course, but it fills early, I hope to sign up early enough for it next year. In the mean time I am sure I will be able to get a lot out of this coming weekend (actually Fri/Sat) even if I never touch a chainsaw.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

I have used similar techniques that are being discussed here with great success. I just wanted to add that you can transition to a verbal command such as “over” or we used to use a kissing sound. A cluck was always a command to move forward, and a kissing noise was asking for a lateral movement, such as moving over on the cross ties, moving sideways to the mounting block, or sidepassing while working a gate while mounted. You can get them to the point that you don’t have to touch them at all. Now that I think about, it the old mare would respond to a small kissing noise with a slight reaction and a longer more aggressive kissing noise with bigger sideways steps until a whoa let her know where to plant her feet. I am sure that there are many variations of verbal commands for moving a horse over, this is the one that we used.

[dominiquer60]

It appears that DAP is 11 months young today. Carl has done a great job getting this party started. Thank you Carl for fronting the initial expenses of creating this much appreciated site.

What can we do as a group of over 440 members and many more lurkers, to see that we can continue to have this line of communication in the future? I know Carl, that it would be hard to compensate you for all of your time as an administrator, but is there a dollar amount that we can use as a goal to raise to cover the cost of the first 12 months of DAP’s operation? How much have we put in the pot so far? It seems to me like a good idea to start the second year with the first year paid for. What amount would we have to raise this month in order to do this? How much is the second year going to cost? Our fundraising effort may go a little better knowing the numbers, Public radio here is always letting us know how much we raised and how close we are to finishing, it seems to help get the done.

We have discussed many good possibilities to raise funds for DAP. Perhaps we have been a little distracted, beyond good communication the best way to continue to grow and learn together is to make sure our bill is paid.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

Thank You Rod.

There have been quite a number of us, myself included, that have written statements that can be taken the wrong way, or have written content that should have stayed in our own heads. This is a well written set of guidelines and a good positive response to recent discussions. I would like to share two things that have worked for me a bit.

When responding to a post, I often like to write a post, save it and then edit it later. This works particularly well with a post that may contain emotional content. Once it’s off my chest I can come back to it with a little clearer vision of what I should do with the post, post it, edit it, or often just not use it. I find that this method has helped me explain myself better (of course there is always room for improvement) and has helped me avoid posts that don’t need to be seen by the public eye. It may seem a little wasteful writing something that never gets posted, but it is a little therapeutic and I learn something about myself every time, and to me, self improvement has value, so I will continue to practice this.

Another writting tool is already built into DAP, the “preview post” button. It seemed a little redundant at first, but seeing ones own text in a public viewing format can change the way that one perceives what they have just written. I have already used it six times since I clicked post reply. Try it if you haven’t used it before, it may shed a different light on your thoughts and word choices.

Thank you everybody for your contributions on this site, I look forward to our community continuing to learn and grow together.

Here’s to the future of draft animal power and DAP,

Erika

[dominiquer60]

There is always trouble to get into, you just need to know where to look, but I would be a little better prepared if I could survive a marathon.

Sometimes you hit a bump in the road.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWWPw3x0E0g&feature=related

And sometimes equipment fails.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d95WLQEERHw&feature=related

So sometimes trouble finds you when you’re not looking for it and you least expect it.

Sorry to those with dial-up, it a driving pair that hit a bump on a tight turn, tip the cart and run away. The other is a single horse who runs and kicks out of a failed breaststrap style harness, literally wiggles out and runs off with bridle and lines.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

I once saw John Lyons drive his App Stud at a demonstration. He borrowed the cart from some other folks, harnessed, hitched and drove like a pro, blinders and all (his horse happens to actually be blind). Everyone was wide eyed when he asked for a gallop and then a near sliding stop, he rolled back 180 and proceeded to lope figure eights with lead changes. It was a shock to many but his point was just because it is not asked for in competition doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. And some people enjoy the challenge of bringing their relationship with their animals to an out of the ordinary level.

A friend of mine sent her mare away to train her to a cart, we had done the ground work and he was in charge of dealing with her fear of carts (a fear of which we did not create). When we got her back she would stand quietly to be hitched, had a whoa, walk, 3 speeds of trot and a canter. He taught all of his animals to canter in harness (world champion pleasure diving and harness racers alike). His goal was to make any mistakes easy to handle, like breaking to the canter in the show ring. If a horse broke they knew how to smoothly drop down a gear without a fuss and hopefully the judge was looking the other direction and never noticed.

Perhaps these examples are not the best for use with draft animals but I can see the value in practicing the canter in harness, if you are inclined to do so. I can also see doing this for the drivers sake, especially when training the novice teamster. I can best relate to this via riding. When a novice rider is learning to ride a canter, this is a gait that the horse is comfortable with, but not the rider, it can be scary the first time, it is a whole different feel from the steady two beat trot. I know that it is scary for a novice driver to suddenly have the run away of the century and panic in such a new situation. It happened to me and I choked ahold of that poor horse and nearly flipped him over before he made an even stronger bolt into a tractor rut and launched me. He didn’t even run home, he ran at least a mile and a half through 3 fields until he ran so hard he bled from his nostrils. Perhaps if I had been more comfortable and balanced at a faster pace, we could have been able to steer around the rut and eventually slow down to a trot aways past the heifer barn (apparently cattle were a new thing for him). If I had the chance to practice I would try the canter in harness just so I was more comfortable with that sensation should the unfortunate runaway happen again.

An alternative would be to get a position as a navigator on a combined driving marathon vehicle, that would take the spook out of me. Below are a couple of links for those with the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viYUdEjVqTE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMlCbdEv94Y&feature=related

Erika

[dominiquer60]

That readily available nitrogen fraction is highly volatile, you can smell it, and if you can smell it that means that you are loosing it to the atmosphere. One approach is to spread the compost and work it in right away to capture the volatile nitrogen in the soil and not the atmosphere. If you do this shortly before working the soil for your oats mix it can help maximize the amount of nitrogen available for that new crop. A soil test can be a valuable tool to help determine how much compost your soil could use. I am sure that there is more than one way to skin this cat. Good Luck.

[dominiquer60]

So as you may have read in the beginning of this thread, I was trying to become informed about a topic that the members of my county Farm Bureau are not attuned to. I got some info from this thread and ran with it in a document that I sent to someone who would be at the meeting (I was visiting friends in VT at the time). A little more backround is that timber theft was a topic that the state FB office had suggested as a policy topic. Policy gets voted on at a county level and then a state level, and supposedly what ever the outcome is FB lobbies for or against what ever policies we decide upon (at least that is how is is supposed to work). So the leaders of my county, after seeing all the effort that I went through to inform our county on a few important topics, decided to only focus on issues of local importance, and not delve into what the state sees as upcoming issues in the next year.

So there you have it, they were glad to see that I had done some research, but they didn’t want to hear about it.

Thank you all for your time, at least I learned something and hopefully a few others that have read this thread also.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

A few thought related to frosted grazing.

I suspect that horses which have adapted to their natural environment (wild horses) or a well simulated natural environment (Neil’s pastures) and have been bred for such are not prone to problems with frosted grass. I would suspect that horses and ponies that have adverse reactions to frosted grass are of poorer genetics in terms of being easy keepers.

I really don’t mean to offend anyone by this, but strictly from a evolutionary sense, the equines that react are likely to have been bred for artificial human wants rather than survival of the fittest needs. Again no offense, Jen, your mini has a family tree that humans have tinkered with to the point such an animal cannot survive in the environment that it was originally intended to. Minis are bred mainly for the characteristic of being small. The intolerance of frosted grass sugars was either ignored or unrealized due to artificial management off grass pastures. It is not your mini’s fault, its just that breeding for year round pasture grazing was not a priority when some one was trying to breed small cute horses.

Horses are not the only animals that we have effected in this manner. Modern medicine and technology have taken us from “survival of the fittest” to a cushy world (for industrialized countries anyway) where the weak survive and breed, causing more humans to have ailments. We treat these people and low and behold we wonder why there are so many chronically sick people in our world today, because we keep tampering with nature. We are not all meant to survive to old age, look at the average life expectancy of humans only 100 years ago, we are living too long.

Given my own family, My brother could have died from Asthma when he was a kid, but thanks to modern medicine, today he is a talented auto mechanic. However my brother and I may have never come to be, my father had polio when he was seven, and again, the doctors saved him. There is a good chance that 100 years ago I would not exist, 200 years ago highly unlikely.

I think that this thread may have brought up a good point about breeding programs. As caretakers of equines, cattle and all other livestock and poultry, we really need to ask ourselves what our goals are before we let the stud in with the ladies. Do we want an animal that can survive in a natural setting, are we willing to manage an animal in an artificial setting if we breed for enhanced (unnatural) characteristics such as size and speed. If your goals include having a low maintenance animal that can live in a pasture year round, you best make sure that the parents can do so before you let them breed.

It seems that many of us on this site have the goals of living as sustainably as possible or comfortable. I think that part of making sure that we and others can make it with animals and animal power is to be responsible and breed quality stock. If it doesn’t meet your needs don’t breed it.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

Your welcome Kristen, but really it was equisearch.com (not .net), and a couple minutes of my time. They are a great resource for quick searches about saddle horses, health and nutrition. That site should get 98% of the credit. I am sure that one could find info on grazing after frosts as well.
Erika

[dominiquer60]

Roaring is the result of muscle atrophy in the larynx caused by nerve degeneration. Apparently that nerve takes the long route to the muscle and is a weak link due to it’s length. Surgery to suture the interfering flap out of the way is very technical and involves general anesthesia = not cheap. The surgery is not fool proof and the risk of food and water entering the windpipe after surgery is high. Roarers do best when worked slow and steady and should be kept fit. Fit the job to the animal and not the animal to the job, its a little like shoeing I guess.

[dominiquer60]

Laryngeal Hemiplegia: Partial paralysis of the larynx causing difficulty in breathing and a characteristic noise, known as roaring as the horse breathes.

This is from the equisearch glossary, it is a permanent condition, but as long as you don’t expect an animal with this condition to set any new land speed records, they can be good workers.

Kristen and I talked about this horse at NEAPFD, he sounds like a very nice horse. A handicapped riding program that I know of would love to buy him but he is too tall by a good hand or so. I would buy him but it wouldn’t make sense for me to have a large animal without owning property first. I hope you find him a good home Kristen, and I hope there is a Bob out there for me when I finally do land a place to call home.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

I am finally catching up on my DAP reading after this no internet work week. Here are a few thoughts that came to mind while reading all of this great discussion.

-it would be great if everyone that posts a for sale thread or want ad gave a little for the cause, don’t make it mandatory, but have a little reminder. If I post an add to sell hens in the local classified it would cost me at least $10 for only two weeks, but it would reach thousands of readers. DAP provides unlimited viewing of the thread and targets a specific group of inidividuals.

-We could follow SFJ’s lead and have a directory of DAP related resources. It could be organized into a few categories and a limited amount of info could be posted for each listing. DAP could charge a reasonable annual fee or a one time fee and charge a little to update annually. I have no idea what it would cost to have such a service, but if it were reasonable it would be a nice addition to the site (my mind pictures a really neat interactive google map that shows the location of all the farms, retailers, trainers, service providers, etc, but I am sure that would be too costly).

-I like the idea of keeping larger Ads somewhat low key. I don’t want to see a flashing google box on DAP. If someone wanted to place a more detailed and flashy ad (color/logos) and pay for it, I think that it is a dis-service to hide it in a thread. Can we think of someplace to feature larger ads and make the larger contributions that they would require worth it for the advertiser?

-If we utilized a combination of the above and still came up short, then Jennifer can step in with “Operation DAP Fundrive” and guilt the pants off of us. They can be very effective, the Local station here can get $800,000 in 6 days. I am fairly certain that we don’t have that in us. If someone could keep updating the site everyday with a total raised and how much of the goal we have left, I am sure that people will pull together and do what they can to keep this flame alive.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

Go for it Jen! We may know the alphabet and our times tables, but trainers/teachers have an efficient way of teaching them to youngsters. Even Professionals seek help, you can’t tell me that even the most mature of teamsters at the NEAPFD didn’t walk away from that event without taking away a little new knowledge home. Another example is a friend of mine, she was at the 1992 Olympics with her eventing mare, she trains a lot of horses year round. She makes sure to stay at her best by taking lessons from other professionals, even Olympians need the keen eye of someone on the ground that can see the whole picture. There is nothing wrong with sending the youngster away to someone with a good reputation, they get it done safer, better and more efficiently than we could.

[dominiquer60]

Neil,

With so many horses and acres, your operation is clearly not a one man show.
Where do you find all the help? In the Northeast part of the US, it is increasingly difficult to find good help, especially good legal help, at least from the prospective of a small NY veggie farmer. I am just curious to see if you have similar problems in Canada.

Erika

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