[mitchmaine]

We should debate this d-ring harness thing a bit. I read the link and don’t agree with the writer fully. Under a load, both tugs, front and rear, and ring are in alignment pulling at a direct angle to the hame, regardless of height. I was told the harness was developed in the woods for woods work. Its heavy. And meant to be on a pole. Teams pulling heavy sleds loaded with logs over frozen ice and snow, depending on holding back the load as much as pulling it. The ring was a cross, where the strainthrough the traces to the load, crossed the hold back from the britchin to the neck yoke. In tension both ways, the weight of the pole was taken off the necks, but had to go somewhere, so was taken up in the britchin. I have it and use it, but I think it’s too much harness for farming or even twitching. Part of its appeal is when (not if) you broke a tug, you just cut it out and riveted in another, done, back to work. The drawback is its heavy for you and the horse. Paul birdsall has a great system for old men and young women and d-ring harness, where his harness comes apart in pieces for assembly. I think the hames, back straps and britchin is one bit and tugs another. makes it much easier to put on. Anyway, please jump in here, anyone, in praise of this great harness, cause I must just be missing the point and would love to debate it.

[mitchmaine]

geoff, fedco seeds up here in maine has red fife. could be pricey, but getable. i planted a acre of glenn and it came good. but shorter than i thought it oughta. still in the dough stage. waiting.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

geoff, the news last night had a story about farm markets here in maine. we have ninety of them now, up 15% from the year before. with an average of two dozen vendors. one market is 250 years old. talking up local grown and that. has to be reaction to this bill and others like it. we threw out nais a few years back.
public opinion is a strong tool. television is the way to get to it. write letters and keep talking.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

i grew up in a ramblin ten room farmhouse. we heated with wood and it was just like trying to heat a lobster trap. it had 200 years of stuff in it. i think its the stuff, not the size of the house that counts. if you can live without too much stuff, i small house would work out just right. cozy always sounded like a good word to me. never got a chance to try it out yet.

[mitchmaine]

we had victory gardens during world war ll that helped feed the population. would that be illegal to do again?
i think we should all contact our own congress people and urge them to propose legislation making it a requirement and responsability for all people with a lawn to grow some of their own food and have 6 hens.
i’ve talked too much about this one already. must hit a sore spot. sorry for running on.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey erika, it seems that the legal argument is about whether we actually have the right to food? does this sound absurd to you? does to me. nothing surprises me too much anymore. sorry. mitch

[mitchmaine]

this is a good one to contact your congressman about. it seems to reinclude nais. it also seems to make growing, cleaning, saving and trading seeds to be a violation of maritime law. homeland security again. one thing interesting, seems nothing in the new bill can interfere with treaties made already to world trade org. and also seems to be created by a monsanto representative. who’d a thunk.

[mitchmaine]

i don’t want to barge in either, but oldkat’s right. we had a field on this farm i used to work on when i was a kid. it was called the finger field. cause the man i worked for got down off his mower to clean off the bar and forgot to take it out of gear. the horses stepped ahead to take a bite of grass and snip. off went his middle finger. he never let us forget it. you couldn’t get off a tractor with it running. he had lots of rules. more than he had fingers. but you can’t be too careful anytime can you? stay safe.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

the amish use four or five stubs and remove their swarthboard. i tried using four stubguards and it seems to work well. hay never balls up there. i left the grassboard right where it was. but it works good for them. one amishman told me he thought hay didn’t dry well out there.

[mitchmaine]

hey dave, montville, appleton, union. your surronded by ’em. good to know your there. best o’ luck, mitch

[mitchmaine]

exactly taylor, i man could move five feet of wood easy on bare ground and a cord on ice with a scoot. no way could you twitch and keep up that rate after 100 yards.

[mitchmaine]

hey taylor, back in the 70’s they started buying 8′ wood. but before that and after for a while 4′ wood was how you sold it. bolts and logs aside. treelength wood wasn’t even a term. the horse and the crawler tractor were comparable at work, but when the rubber tired skidder came out in the 60’s yarding wood changed overnight.
they called it stump chopping around here and you could cut a whole woodlot without yarding in the fall. you would have to pile your wood for scaling and payment. but if you were yarding too you just made a rick and counted in the yard. thats my memory.

i liked to cut four foot wood. easy to handle, and easy to scale. you might be able to move some firewood, but folks around here are used to buying it fit to size now and the processers buy it tree length so…….

mitch

[mitchmaine]

hi leslie,
in any tractor dealership, they sell a generic implement jack/stand. its a screw jack and has a lot of vertical lift. you might be able to fasten it to your mower, and when you hook to your horse, back the jack down, pull a pin and separate it from your mower so you don’t have to lug it around with you. then when you finish your mowing, hook it back on and crank it up and take the weight off your horse, and hold the mower til next time. you might be able to block it up too taking some of the weight off the jack if you don’t use it for long periods. might be worth a try. good luck with it.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey carl, nice looking job. how big is the woodlot, and area to be thinned. how much do you expect it to cut? looks nice and open from the pictures. good luck, and hey to brad. mitch

[mitchmaine]

bivol, i love your storys. and i think you are a natural for telling them, and should keep it up.
like your story, the english came here to maine to start a colony in 1607. it failed. but one thing that happened was they built a ship here on the banks of the kennebec river that they sailed back to england in and back and forth to jamestown, virginia many times. i think it might have been called the virginia. not sure. anyway it was just another ship to them and it rotted on the banking somewhere and was forgotten. but people from here didn’t forget cause it was the first ship built in the new world by europeans and they still build ships near the same spot. blah, blah blah.
anyway to the point. they decided to rebuild the ship along its same lines to commemerate the 400th anniversary. great. except they argued too much, didn’t have 4 years to do it, and couldn’t raise the $7,000,000. required to do the job.
those men did it in one summer with hand tools, and we couldn,t do it in four years with all the tools known to man. i guess you have to be stranded 4000 miles from home, or have whatever oldtimers seem to have that we can never understand. i don’t know but your story reminded me of that one so i thought i’d share one. thanks, mitch

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