[mitchmaine]

carl, i found your website. took a little doing but i got it, and found your poem about your old logger. and the one about bobsledding. i didn’t know you were a poet, but i should have guessed. the post above is almost a poem. great stuff. don’t know anything about poetry, but i liked yours.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

i like your crew, carl. some things never change, do they? life is good.

[mitchmaine]

hi carl, if you can cut and yard 4 cords of wood with a pair of horses each day, i’d call that a good days work.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

hey john, welcome home. let’s see, at 8 mph, that’s an acre per hour per foot of header length. or a shy 30 acres per hour. you could harvest my grain in about 15 or 20 minutes. takes me a couple days. i’d like to try that rig out for the afternoon. sounds like a lot of fun. watch out and don’t get drawn in by the darkside. best o’ luck, mitchl

[mitchmaine]

hey carl, i picked up some harness like that in a pile of gear i bought once. it was four ring with the tugs and spider gone, and the guy hooked chain in for tugs and passed them through canvas fire hose to protect the horse. never tried it out tho’. light and easy to use, i think.
somebody pointed out the long hitch. i think i might have shortened them up a few links.
i feel bad pickin’ this man apart without him able to defend himself. especially when he’s doing such a handy job with his horses. that must be the price you pay when you put yourself out there on cyberspace.
nice quiet team tho’, ain’t they?
mitch

[mitchmaine]

people are going to be so amazed by the cart and the workmanship, no one will miss the horse just yet. nice job. did you laminate the shaft ends? will you letter the sides? great looking job. after that much work, it must have took some courage hooking up and trying it out. one more time, good looking job.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

i noticed the britchin too, carl. heck, you could put another horse in there. not that they needed it but you gotta wonder………..

[mitchmaine]

everyone around here raves about this one strand fence, nose high, and electric. it seems that you drape tin foil over the wire and coat it with peanut butter every 20′ or so. seems to get great results, but can’t swear to it, cause i’m a hunter. marshal’s right. one or two victims and they disappear pretty fast.

[mitchmaine]

andy, you can walk that perimeter and leave your own mark, too. deer don’t like people anymore than they like dogs.

mitch

[mitchmaine]

i’m in for two pair.

[mitchmaine]

well said, tim. another point mentioned many times, but still important to remember, is that the beast has its own brain, and while you are busy trying to figure it out, it is doing the same thing. there’s a million of them and a million of us, making the number of combinations so great, that writing the book is pretty clearly impossible. or predicting the problem, treatment, and outcome tough anyway. arm yourself with as many tools as you can and treat each situation differently. best case, if you haven’t drove or handled animals too much, buy one or two that are so broke the amishman’s 10 year old kid drives them. wait, that kid has more experience than most of us. change that to your 10 year old kid.

[mitchmaine]

read every word you can find, and listen to everyone saying anything they will about whatever subject you are interested in. when something makes sense, try it. if it works, do it. anything else, forget it and move on.
mitch

[mitchmaine]

matt, we had crow tar for our cornseed. it was an oil. our beans are dry beans, yellow eye, not treated, straight out of the bin. wondering,joshua, if all beans might have a similar trait. fixing nitrogen, maybe? don’t know. but i thought of drilling them once and not having to cultivate. one swipe up the side of the field next year as an experiment, maybe. thanks for the replies, mitch

[mitchmaine]

developing 20 – 30 horsepower and using that same power efficiently is two separate things, isn’t it? it’s not hard for me to imagine a truck with smooth tires trying to pull something up a steep loose surface, spinning once or twice and fighting it’s own ruts, verses an animal hooked to the same load on the same grade adjusting it’s footing to accomodate the troubles as it went and having an easier time of it.
2″ of frozen ice and snow cripples a tractor where our barefoot horses go fairly easy.

[mitchmaine]

lots of local barns and now museums feature cattle stocks for shoeing. they differed from horses in size and shape. one difference being the rear legs were drawn straight back and lashed to a pole.some were on hinges and swung in after the steer was in the headgate. some horses were shod in stocks where all steers and oxen were. the anatomicalproblem might have been with the farrier being able to hold the steer and work at the same time. first time i ever saw a dairy cow thrown on a hydrualic table for trimming was about thirty years ago. that was slick. did 40 cows in about four hours with a 9″ grinder.

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