[dominiquer60]

Work will be done with horses and oxen, and there will be 2 tour times. 9:30 to 11:30 and 1:00 to 3:00.

Erika

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[dominiquer60]

Nice to see a woman teamster at it, thanks for the share.
erika

[dominiquer60]

I am sorry for your loss Donn, and happy for your 2 mules in the oven.

[dominiquer60]

I can see all the posts now, thanks for getting this taken care of.

[dominiquer60]

I look forward to more profiles in the future, good work everyone.

[dominiquer60]

I have been having trouble viewing posts too. Someone should contact Gabe

[dominiquer60]

Jay, I wish we were a lot closer, it sounds like fun. As far as cover crops go, the longer you wait the less biomass you will get from oats and peas. Winter rye, spelt or triticale can be planted into early Oct, but the sooner you plant it the better the chances of wintering over well. You can mix any of these with hairy or chickling vetch. If you can’t find these seeds locally, Johnny’s Select Seeds offers them, they are a little pricy but for the amount that you need it won’t be much and a better than no cover crops at all.
Best of luck,
Erika

[dominiquer60]

Where are you in the valley, there is a big distance between Corinth, NY and NYC. I may know of some equipment (in need of work) in Argyle.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

From what I know Oxen in Harness were common out in the Great Plains of the USA and Canada. There are quite a few examples if you search. There are also a lot of facebook pictures and conversation about the subject on the Ox pages. It may have been because altering a harness to meet an Ox’s needs was easier than finding the right stick of wood to make a yoke. For me the yoke is easy, but that is what I am used to.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

We don’t use butt ropes, but I get why folks do use them. They would probably do some good when the bugs are bad and the horses start stomping and spread away from the pole while we are adjusting a cultivating sweep in the middle of the fall cabbage. Anything can happen when the unexpected happens, like breaking an evener and butt rope.

When training cattle, we use commands to set them in towards the pole or each other “put in” and to move away from the pole “put out” (commands may vary). With horses I don’t see a reason to teach them them “put out”, but “put in” is a great command to teach any horse in harness. It works best when horses work consistently as an off or near horse, as it means different directions to each animal depending on the side they work on. When they understand the command, it works great to keep them backing straight to a pole, sets them in when they get dangerously close to a row of young carrots, or when hitching and one swings their hind end out to get a better look at the guy shooting pigeons off the roof. It is less physical than the butt rope, but a handy command for a handy pair of horses or cattle.

I think that the “cheater rope” at fairs is shunned because of the reasons that Donn and Tendersoles have stated, a teamster can teach animals to stay together when backing, or to “put in” when a wandering hoof gets dangerously close to a traffic cone with a ball balanced on it (loss of points when a ball drops or a cone moves). At the fairs, the butt rope is seen as a lack of skill rather than needed for safety. These competitions are tests of teamster skills, the thought is if you can get around a tight but safe course with out the aid of a rope, you are likely to have better control of your animals in a real world farm/forest situation. I am not saying this to belittle anyone here, you are all good competent teamsters, this I know. Having competed in some of these fair classes, it does come down to splitting hairs. The person ground driving that backs their horses with no butt rope through a 90 degree turn without upsetting any cones, either has a good working relationship with their animals or is really lucky at that moment. Seconds count and cones touched are penalties, all time and penalties equal, it is <span style=”text-decoration:underline;”>perceived</span> that the teamster with the butt rope is less skilled that the one without. Again I am not trying to imply that anyone here lacks skills or should be unsafe. In the real world (outside of fenced arenas full of traffic cones), there are lots of other factors that go into using a butt rope, safety, training a green horse, efficiency, etc. Fair classes cannot duplicate the complexity of the situations that we find our selves in on a regular basis.

George I am glad that your incident ended without injury. Your story is a great reminder for us to check equipment often and to not take it for granted, it can be easy to do when we get busy with life.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

Yoder’s Plow shop in Ohio makes after market parts. I will post their info when I find it.

[dominiquer60]

We don’t have great pastures because the dairy and beef take priority with this family, but we are trying to improve what we have. We graze at night, the sun is gone, the flies are not bad and that lets us use the horses in the morning and evening. We mostly us the horses in the evening because a lot of other chores like unloading hay and such happen in the morning. I would prefer to graze in the morning when sugars are lowest, but this doesn’t always happen. Also sometimes when the weeds are large I will cultivate during the heat of the day and give the horses lots of rest in the shade. I am not sure this helps, but it is what we do.

Erika

[dominiquer60]

Is the workshop filling up, do we need to spread the word more?
Erika

[dominiquer60]

I can’t tell you much about the mower, but those horses look much more relaxed than the last time I saw them on a mower. Good work achieving your goal, best wishes fine tuning the team and mower. Time and steady leadership should make them a solid team to mow with.

• This reply was modified 11 years ago by dominiquer60.

[dominiquer60]

We are going to cut in the morning even if raining. We hate to take the risk, but we hate to see is go by, with 100 acres we should get enough decent feed for ourselves. We have cut twice so far with 700 safe in the loft. The crop has been very light and varies a lot field to field and within the fields. The last 2 fields generally make 3 loads stacked well above the top of the wagon, this year they only brought 2 loads, not quite full to the top of the wagon.

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