White Christmas

It almost didn’t happen but we got snow at the last minute and enjoyed a white Christmas this year. The day before Xmas it snowed just enough so I needed to plow. This was a very travel intensive Christmas for us this year. We all were going to different families on Saturday Sunday or Monday but Today (Tuesday) we will all finally be home and be able to celebrate together. Here is a picture of as close to a one horse open sleigh as we can get at this time.

Paulette and Mack taking tank out for a ride in the snow.

The Team

It was a great weekend. We picked Tank up at Wayne's house on Friday night and both he (Tank) and Arnie were busy all weekend. Paulette, Ben and Emma all rode Tank on Saturday and Paulette had a great trail ride with Arnie on Sunday. Arnie is still not sure about all the scary things in the world and he and I are working on getting him used to them. He took me on a little high speed ride Saturday morning when he got scared trying to pass another horse, a dog and a couple trucks when we were driving in the fore cart down our road. he calmed down and we went right back and drove the road again so he could see that it was no big deal. Arnie is not yet 4 years old and very green, he needs time to learn to trust us and realize the world is not so scary. Tank is another story. tank is 9 years old and has been used to pull a wagon for years. Sunday, after adjusting the harness out to as big as it gets, I worked Tank gradually from ground driving to dragging his trace chains to pulling a tire then to the fore cart finally hooking the snow machine trailer to the cart, putting a couple kids on the trailer and bouncing down the back skidder road. He was Great!! i was so pleased that he took all this in stride. I really wanted to have a horse that I would be able to get right to work with and it looks like Tank is going to be perfect for that.

Next step to Sustainability

One of our biggest farm goals is to run it sustainably. The other big goal is to actually turn a profit. This summer Paulette and I started wondering if using horses, instead of a tractor, could decrease our overhead and get us closer to our goal. Yes I know horses are not cheap and you have to feed them even when you are not using them but they run on something we grow here (grass) and they produce something we need very much (fertilizer) also they will not be "parked" to often so it is not like we will be feeding them for nothing.
Fuel for engines is not getting any cheaper neither are the parts needed to keep them going. We have one tractor and if it continues to get used the way it has been we will be needing to buy a replacement in a couple years. After some research we decided to make this next step

Besides using the horses for work we wanted to be able to ride them as well. Paulette really missed trail riding. While her horse Libby was a really nice dressage horse she was not the kind of horse that could be just ridden around for pleasure. Paulette decided to sell Libby, and buy a working hose that she could just jump on and go for a ride without the worries of riding a high energy warm-blood. After looking at different horses and talking to people about what we want to do we decided on getting a couple Haflingers. Haflingers are a very hardy draft pony. They are a versatile breed that the Amish use regularly and are know to be very easy keepers. during our research we got to know a teamster named Wayne that uses Haflingers and he agreed to sell us a 3 year old named Arnie. Our goal was to have a team but we were having a real hard time finding what we were looking for in our area, Paulette found a few nice looking teams but they were 5 or 6 hundred miles a way.

Arnie came home last weekend and Paulette and I have been working with him almost every day since. It is almost comical as one of use is getting done working with Arnie the other one is standing there with their "stuff" too get the pony and do their thing.




Yesterday Wayne called to tell us a friend of his had a nice pony for sale and he could hook it next to one of his horses if we wanted to come over and try him. We agreed and this morning we went to Wayne's to check it out. Short story is we now have the second pony for our team. Tank is the horse on the right.




Paulette has been enjoying working with Arnie and will be seeing how tank rides very soon. This winter I will be using them to pull logs up from the woods for firewood and in the spring we plan on using them for everything from spreading manure, planting a very large market garden, road grading and a lot of trail riding