Getting ready to plant spring Oats

This weekend was really nice. Saturday I spent working the ponies and Mack is up for the next week. It is nice to see Mack fall right back into his routine. Saturday night we all spent hanging out and joking around and Sunday he and I spent tuning up the go-kart, with a long break for Easter dinner -- Paulette made a really nice pot roast.
I spent most of the day Saturday fixing the disc harrow and running a first pass over the acre plot where we are planting spring oats.

Here are some pictures of the ponies at work and some of the repair work I made on the old harrow.

http://s1266.photobucket.com/albums/jj521/wayworn3/Discing%202012/

New (new to us) cook stove

We just finished putting in the cook stove that Paulette's parents found for us. It was truly a house warming present. We are REALLY enjoying it. Here are some pictures of the work. Paulette has since used it to cook dinner a couple of times. It actually does a good job heating the house.

Very good day

I am very excited and wanted to share this with people. Here is a couple pictures of the progress I have made with the 2 Haflingers. A couple months ago these 2 guys did not know each other and I knew close to nothing about driving a team (still don’t but the learning curve is very steep). Tank (on the left side of the hitch) was very “hitchy” and, at 6’4”, I still had a hard time walking fast enough to keep up with him: as soon as you gave him slack in the lines he would keep cranking up the pace. Arnie (Arno) is barely 4yo and was green broke to drive. He was, is, pretty jumpy about things and his and my first experience working together consisted with him dragging me 100’ by his mouth when I tried having him drag a tire down the gravel road. I quickly saw the error in my ways and went to building up from just ground driving in a round pen to eventually dragging that tire all around. Now Arnie is MUCH more comfortable with noise behind him and I think I am better at introducing new noises to him. I worked with Tank to get him to be more responsive to the bit, I think what helped the most was concentrating on communicating with him with only the bit (I read some things in “Farming with Horses” that really helped).
A couple weeks ago I ground drove them together in the round pen and gradually built them up to dragging a tire together. I set them up with a yoke and a butt chain. With the help of Paulette I opened up a panel on the round pen and drove them out into the GREAT BIG WORLD!! All I could think about was how easy Arnie pulled me when he spooked, I had no hope holding these guys if they decided to run. Paulette had a lead rope on Arnie’s halter and we all walked around the outside of the pen and across the field a couple times. The next day we hooked them to the forecart. With Paulette on a lead rope we successfully made a couple laps around the field. It was not a well oiled machine if you know what I mean. Tank was way out front and I could not get him slowed down, Arnie continued to wiggle all over the place, it appeared to me they were as nervouse as I was. Let me say I had so many things in my head I was trying to keep strait; I am sure I was 90% of the problem. How is it that something that most people would see as boring can border on terrifying?
Yesterday i decided I wanted to have them pull the stone boat with the water buckets to the barn, by my self. I ground drove Arnie around a little, hooked the 2 together, with a butt chain and a yoke, ground drove them around, dragged the evener and finally hooked to the stone boat and hauled the water to the barn – we took a couple laps around the field on our way to the barn. They stood really well while being hooked as well as when loading the water buckets, didn’t
spook at the stone boat breaking the ¼” ice crust all the way as we went across the field; what made me smile the most was Tank was staying aligned with Arnie, I felt like he was taking pace control from light pressure of the bit. I have to say I am very pleased and feel like, with work, these 2 will be nice ponies to work with.


















Arnie and Tank tied to the barn waiting for me to unload the water buckets.

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

Some more pictures

Here are some pictures I have taken over the last few months.


We got about 1 1/2 feet of snow from that storm last month.

Ben and Emma made a pumpkin snow man, I guess it was there way of protesting the snow :-)

Here is Morgan holding the flock on a big patch of clover. Sheep can bloat from eating to much clover at a time so I would have Morgan hold the flock in the clover for an hour or so every day until it was well grazed down. Morgan is a great dog. I tell Paulette I would not have sheep if I had to do it without the help of dogs like Morgan, Midge and Dante.

Here is the Lucy's drive road crew. I fenced the flock along the road I maintain to clear back the brush. When they were done I could get in there and cut out the big trunks. This area is completely
open now.

The ewes would get pretty high on the bushes and the little lambs would wiggle inside and get the leaves the ewes could not. Sorry I don't have an after shot, I will try and post one.

This is a very old orchard that never really used pesticides. I have gotten permission to graze the sheep there. It is a really pretty spot with the apple trees and the sheep laying under them eating drops.

I am making the first passes with the brush mower to clear a fence line.

The flock chewed a lot of the old growth down and then I mowed the entire pasture (about 10 acres). The grass came back really nice and I have the ewes back onto it right now (nov 8th).

BT hiding from the sun on a hot July day

Another shot of the sheep in the orchard.

Midge sure likes to have her belly scratched!

I hope everyone is doing well and are all set for winter. I still have plenty of work to do before the snow flies...well flies again. We are really enjoying life up here, this years garden was pretty much a success, the flock is healthy and we will be breeding around 20 ewes this winter so if all goes well we should have around 30 lambs racing around this spring.