Christmas ride

  After all the gift opening this morning, I decided to go for a ride on Bonnie.  It was a nice sunny cool day today; couldn't have asked for better.  I've been driving her so much lately that I figured  a little change of scenery would be nice.  What fun!

  Yesterday, Bonnie pulled her first piece of farm equipment (with me anyway).

It was a four foot spike tooth harrow that weighed about 80 pounds or so.  I was amazed at how easy she pulled it.  I tried dragging it myself and made it about 10 feet before I quit.  Horsepower is really amazing.  We ended up dragging the whole arena...

The drag marks weren't really pretty but I think that was more my driving than Bonnie's pulling.

Animal updates

  The biggest news is that we got a new cat from the animal shelter.  I've been going there for the last two months to see if anybody found our missing kitten, Liza.  I finally came to the realization that we probably aren't going to see her again so we decided to get another.  They had a beautiful seal point short haired kitten that was already spayed so we took the leap.

*E* loves her to death.  She plays just as much as Liza but isn't nearly as scratchy.  I think we're going to name her Holly since she joined our family at Christmas time.

She's got some pretty cool colors on her and is very affectionate.  I just hope that she's a good mouser for the homestead!

  Bonnie's training (and mine) is coming along well.  I drove her all last week in full harness and even took her out of the arena and around the stable grounds both days this weekend.

  I think she remembers her Amish training because she's sure making me look good.  I can get her harnessed up in about five minutes now and she hasn't been freaked out by the tug chains dragging on the ground behind her.  I need to make up some chain extensions so I can hitch up the single tree when it gets here.

I'm dying to hitch her up to the little harrow/drag that the stable uses to groom the arena.

  DW and I tried our hands at cheese making again last night.  Meijers had milk on sale so we bought a couple extra gallons.  Our original intention was to make soft farmer cheese but DW decided to take another shot at mozzerella.  We used whole milk that wasn't labeled as "ultra-pasteurized" but I suspect it was more pasteurized than they let on.  We used some expensive hoytey-toytey milk from Whole Foods last time so we figured we'd see what would happen with regular old grocery store milk.  The mozzerella flopped bad.  Ironically enough, it came out like a nice soft farmer cheese and is very tasty.  She also discovered that you can reheat the left over whey to just boiling and make ricotta.  It worked like a dream and we ended up with almost a pound and that means LASAGNA on Thursday...Yum.

Auction action

  I LOVE auctions!  Ebay is OK but there's nothing like being there, looking the competition in the eye and finding surprises every time you turn something over.  We had the opportunity to go to one yesterday.  It was a collection of mostly kitchenware and tools.  I needed a crock to increase the amout of Sauerkraut I can make at a time and it looked like lots of other interesting things were available as well.  The auction didn't disappoint and we ended up with this...

1)  A plain Jane white six gallon crock that we tracked down to Pfaltzgraff from the very worn mark on the bottom.  Doesn't have a lid but I figure I can make a nice wood one along with a kraut weight.

2)  Oak hall tree.  The coats are getting out of control with winter here.

3)  An old Rapid Washer.  I figure that this could come in handy as a backup on those off-grid days when little power is being produced.

4)  A butter crock with a nice homemade wood lid.  We're looking at trying our hands at butter now that DW has broken the cheese barrier.

5)  A hand crank apple pealer and some kind of neat small pulp press.  Not sure what we'll do with the press but we go through lots of apples around here.

6)  A stairway basket.  A ton of other baskets went for lots of cash but this was one of the last and we got it for a song.

7)  An old hand corn planter.  I definitely want to do this by horse but it may be a while before I get a planter (and a second horse).  This will have to do for now.

8)  A harness repair vice.  It needs some of the leg cross-braces replaced but all in all it's an awesome piece of work.

9)  A beam auger and two bits.  Not sure if I'll ever do any post and beam construction but it is on my list of things to do before I die.

10)  Some miscellaneous items in a box lot including these strange things...

I'm not sure what they are but judging by all of the leather working tools that were there, I would say that they are leather forms or molds of some sort.  If anyone can ID them please let me know.
  Of course *E* was irresistably drawn to the auger...

It was fun to watch him play with it until he started sticking his fingers in the gears.  The auger was banished to the basement immediately before the screaming commenced.
  All in all it was a great time.  Some of the stuff will need a little love to put it back into useable condition but, Hey, that's half the fun!

  The other big thing happening around here is Bonnie's training.  I've been working with taking her horse collar on and off.  Usually she's sort of a stinker the first time and then relaxes.  Today, she let me do it almost immediately and was letting me take it on and off like she was an old pro.  I decided to take a chance and Voila...

She let me put the whole harness on her.  I was really rusty since I haven't done it since my April horse farming workshop.  The harness was adjusted for a much smaller horse so it was pretty slow going while I got everything reset.  She stood there absolutely still and patiently let me do my thing.  I couldn't believe it!  I walked her around on the lead rope for about 20 minutes or so.  She was a little spooky at first because the two bottom spreader rings on the hames were jingling like crazy but after a few times around the yard she calmed right down.  I got her driving lines in yesterday so we'll be ready to go with ground driving as soon as she wears the harness a few more days.  This was a very big deal to me...so much planning and working and studying to get to this point.  It's really something special taking an actual step toward one of my life's goals.  I wonder what cubicle people are doing today?!!

Horse collar intro

  Made some major progress with Bonnie's training today.  I laid out her new horse collar and harness on the hitching post in front of the stable and walked her past it a few times to introduce her to it.  I made sure to let her sniff and look at the pieces as much as she wanted.  I put her into the round pen and slowly brought the horse collar up to her face.  She shied away so I slowly touched her face with it and brought it up over her head.  The collar hung up on her eye ridges so I had to turn it upside-down to clear.  It took about 20 minutes but she finally accepted it.  I found that she closes her eyes when it's her time to let me put it over her head.

The collar is a little big even though it's adjusted down to its minimum size.  I'm going to have to get a collar pad to keep her from getting blisters.
  I took the collar back over her head with very little resistance and walked her around the yard and back to the pen.  We repeated the procedure and this time it took about five minutes.

I pulled the collar and walked her around one more time and repeated the collar exercise a third time.  This time it only took about two minutes.  This was outstanding progress so I decided to call it quits for the day.  I like to keep training at a half hour to keep Bonnie from getting bored or frustrated and I always stop with a success because I think that the last thing she does is what she remembers best.

  I had some more time to kill so I tied her up to the hitching post again and worked on cleaning the harness up.

I figured that hearing the harness buckles jingle as I was cleaning would help to get her used to being around it.  I was told that she had been trained to drive by the Amish so I held some outside hope that this would all come right back to her.  Unfortunately, it didn't but I couldn't be happier with how everything went today.

A nice spring day

  I worked on our 100+ year old horse cart today.  The main leaves in the springs needed to be changed due to the previous owner welding in two inch extensions.  I had them made this summer at E & H Spring Shop in eastern Ohio.  They did an outstanding job and charged me about half of what I was expecting to pay.  I'm just getting around to installing them; such a procrastinator!

The two top springs are the new ones.  The workmanship was top-notch but there was one small issue.  The width of the 100 year old spring is not a standard size for the stock produce today.  I either had to go larger or smaller.  I told the guys at E&H to go larger and I would file the extra 1/8" off of the eyes and mounting pad.  I went out to the storage bin and got a piece off the cart to use as a size gauge to see how far I had to file.

The cart is looking all sad and droopy without the leaf springs on one side.  The spring work on the leaves and on the seat is absolutely beautiful.  I'll have to get a picture when I have them done.  I filed my little heart out and ended up finishing both eyes on one spring and got a good start on the mounting area.

Depending on how much I work with Bonnie tomorrow, I'm thinking that I should be able to get one side finished and repainted.  I only have to get a horse collar and a set of lines and I'll be ready to start ground driving Bonnie.  I think we're probably a long way off from hitching her to this heirloom though.

Horse fly

  Still recovering here from Thanksgiving.  DW and I split the cooking again and, as always, we had waaaay too much food.  We each made a pie from scratch; hers was pecan and mine was sweet potato.  It was hard to pick a favorite since they both came out great!  She is finally over her plague so we had extra to be thankful for, especially since nobody else caught it.

  I spent today out riding our draft-cross Bonnie.  It's been raining so much here lately that I haven't got to work with her that much.  Bonnie is for all intents and purposes still green due to her young age and lack of work for the last couple of years.  If I don't get her out for a ride or at least get her into the round pen she turns into a real handful.  Today was the second day in a row that we were able to go trail riding.  She was very well behaved and I guess I got lulled into a false sense of complacency with her.  Toward the end of the ride we were trotting along the back fence of an adjoining horse farm.  There were two horses standing ahead of us and as we approached them, they spooked.  Bonnie spooked in the opposite direction so fast that I didn't even really know what happened.  All I remember was looking down at all the pretty green grass going by underneath me and then I was on the ground.  Thankfully, I think my parachute training kicked in from Naval aircrew school and I made a nice rolling landing and got up without a scratch.  Bonnie trotted off and I found her eating grass next to the fence by the stable.  She looked up at me with that innocent draft horse look like she was asking "where you been?".  I rounded her up and rode her back over to the spot so she could see that there was nothing scary over there.  No harm no foul...it really was my fault anyway.  This is the first time I've ever been thrown from a horse so lesson learned.

Here's a picture of *E* meeting Bonnie for the first time.  Enjoy!

Back In The Saddle Again

  What an awesome weekend!  I got to spend a lot of time with our new horse Bonnie and made quite a bit of progress with her.  This week has been a real test of patience as we have both been figuring out who is the "alpha" in our relationship.  I know that our little "herd of two" needs a leader and I intend for it to be me!  I've seen it the other way when the horse runs things and that's a disaster.  Up until this weekend, I've felt that I was in charge...but just barely.  This has been most evident when I had to catch her in the pasture.  There were a couple of days that I just couldn't even get close to her.  It seems like we turned a corner on Saturday with the help of one of the other horse owners at the stable.  She took Bonnie into the round pen and did some work with her.  It was really neat to watch Bonnie go from pure attitude to very cooperative.  The great part was that this lady not only kept up a running dialog of what was happening but then also let me try while she gave pointers from outside the pen.  There's nothing like a mentor to accelerate things!  I've worked a horse in a round pen before but I think that the person that told me what to do wasn't very knowledgeable either.  Their reasoning was "you just need to tire out the horse to make it easier to handle".

The results were nothing short of amazing.  I took her for our first ride in one of the small paddocks and it went great.  It's pretty obvious that she hasn't been ridden for a while but she warmed up nicely.  On Sunday, I whistled to her and she galloped across the pasture to meet me at the gate.  What a nice change!  I saddled her up and we took a few spins around the stable grounds.  She's a little spooky about water but it seemed like she got better through the day.  Riding back and forth across the yard got old pretty quick so we took off down the trails.  A beautiful day, leaves turning and the smells of autumn...I couldn't think of a nicer trail ride.

  I wish I had remembered to take some pics on the ride but I was just too absorbed in the experience; maybe next time.  We rode for about three or four miles and man was my hind end sore!  It's been about six years since I was in the saddle.  I also got out of bed this morning with very tired back muscles.  I imagine that this will get better as we ride more.

Just as an update to some earlier posts...
  Our homemade Sauerkraut hit four weeks old in its fermentation.  I didn't skim the scum off the top like I should have but I don't think it hurt it.  We had a little mold around the inside rim of the bean pot so we were just careful to avoid it when we dipped out the kraut.

I was pleasantly surprised with how it tasted.  It wasn't pucker your face off sour like the stuff you buy in the store.  It tasted a little like pickled cabbage with just enough sour in it to let you know it was there.  We only ended up with enough for about two meals so we just put it in the fridge instead of canning it.  We cooked some up with a kielbasa and it was a hit with the family.  As an extra added bonus, nobody keeled over from food poisoning.  We eat kraut once or twice a month so I think that it will be worth it to continue making it.  We need to keep an eye out for an old crock since the bean pot's shape is pretty hard to work with.
  Our other update is with the wool.  I started messing with combing yesterday and got some mixed results.  There is a real technique to this and I think I'm just starting to get the hang of it.  I ended up making three OK little roves but I have a long way to go!  I'll try to get some pics up soon.

Bonnie and Applesauce

  Mission Accomplished!  Bonnie came home yesterday.  I don't know who was more stressed, me or her.  Evidently she's only been trailered a couple of times in her life.  It took three of us to get her into the trailer using a bucket of grain, a butt rope and a lead rope.  She didn't act scared but she was really stubborn.  Her previous owners had me all freaked out, saying that we should only take her out in an extremely controlled environment with lots of hands.  We got her all buttoned up and hit the road.  I have got to get a tape on her to guesstimate how much she weighs.  I could really feel the difference in the truck and the trailer springs were creaking up a storm!  The trip home was pretty uneventful.  I stopped for gas when we were about 20 miles from home (couldn't resist $3.12) and opened the feed bunk door to talk to her.  She seemed cool as a cucumber so that went quite a way toward calming my jangled nerves down.  We got to the stable and I went to find the on-site caretaker to help me get her out.  I took the front and he took the back and what do you know?  Bonnie backed out of the trailer and stepped down just like she'd been doing it all her life.  We put her in the paddock with five other horses and what a sight!  All six of them were running around the pasture with Bonnie in the lead, getting to know each other.  She had her tail flagging like she thought she was an Arabian.  I've never seen a draft horse galloping at speed except for the jousts at Renaissance Festivals; what an awesome sight.  Now comes the fun part.  Horses have been missing from my life for a while due to my Naval career, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

  A couple of days ago, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things.  They had apples for sale at 49 cents/pound.  We couldn't resist that and bought about 10 pounds to make applesauce.  As we were picking out the apples, we talked with a lady that was doing the same thing.  She recommended freezing instead of canning since it's a lot easier and keeps better (as long as the power stays on).  We got home and started peeling our hearts out.  Luckily we had a little helper.

*E* was having a ball sucking on the apple cores.  He looked like a chipmunk with all of the bits in his cheeks.  I think apples are probably his favorite food in the whole world...takes after Dada I guess.  The sauce smelled INCREDIBLE while it was cooking.  Does anything smell more like fall than apples, cinnamon and cloves?  We ended up with four ziploc bags of chunky sauce and  it should taste great with some Kielbasa and our homemade kraut that's only a couple weeks away.

Back from Dak

  Hey all!  Got back yesterday morning after driving 24 hours straight from our homestead in North Dakota to Cinci  and dragging the horse trailer.  It was a pretty uneventful trip except for a tire blowout in Minneapolis...AGAIN.  I don't know what it is with this trailer and Minneapolis.  At least this time it happened during the day and only took ten minutes to fix.
 
  Our new flatbed trailer worked out well and we were able to get a lot of stuff moved out there.  My dad and I were able to run wires up from the batteries, through the wall and to the new fridge.  There was quite a bit of head scratching as we tried to figure out the 90ish year old structure of the house and its many lathe and plaster walls.  In the end, the refrigerator worked out great.
  Next we tackled the wood cookstove.  The original intention was to go for the corn stove but we couldn't find any corn that was ready to burn in the area.  The wood cookstove ended up being a better choice any way because, Duh, I was able to cook on it and I had quite a bit of seasoned wood ready to go.  Dad and I swept the chimney first and ended up taking about five or six pounds of coal soot (and one dead bird) out of it.  We got the old "Majestic" hooked up and fired her up.  The heat was nice since we had two nights below freezing and the rest not much higher than that.

The nice thing was that even though I brought my propane burner, I never fired it up.  I definitely had to plan ahead when it was time to cook since things took longer to heat and you really had to have different kinds of fire for different situations.

Somebody had painted the stove in the past and boy did it stink when the paint burned off.  I'm going to have to give it some good old fashioned stove black when I head back out there to bring back the finish.  The nickel trim had been painted gray somewhere back in this stove's past as well.  Happily, as I used it more and more, the paint started wearing off and the nickel started showing through.  It didn't look too bad but we'll have to see.

  I ended doing some work with the old horse teamster down the road.  He's 86 and needed some help getting some hay bales stacked in his loft.  He kept right up with me...pretty impressive.  I think that his farm and horses keep him young.  He had an old horse drawn McCormick #6 mower that I had looked at when we were there this summer so we ended up trading my work and a couple of bucks for the mower.

Here's what it looked like when I was finished with it.  Everything was froze on it but one wheel when I got it.  My dad has been using a 50:50 mix of acetone and power steering fluid to break stuck parts free for a while so I thought that I would give it a try.  Here's a picture of the gearbox before I started.

  I have to admit that this stuff is nothing short of a miracle.  After about six hours I had every piece lose and turning on the mower.  It has been sitting for about 50 or 60 years so I was really impressed.  This makes our fourth piece of horse drawn equipment, along with the fancy cart, dump rake and forecart, so we're on our way.

  And finally, there were deer everywhere!  The farmer behind us was combining his corn so I think he had the deer all stirred up that were hiding in his field.  We had some in the woods right out one of the south windows of  the house.

You have to look for them in the pic but they're there.  It was pretty neat!

Finally took the big step

  Today, we reached a major milestone in our ongoing attempt to develop traditional low tech alternative back-ups to the modern day conveniences we will be using on the farm.  All the stars lined up and we bought an Amish trained horse!

  Her name is Bonnie and she is a draft cross, half belgian, quarter percheron, and quarter standardbred; but  I think she just looks like a big boned standardbred.  She was trained to both ride and drive, although the current owners haven't had her under harness.  She is very gentle and was the husband's horse.  He confessed that he was very green but I didn't see him struggle at all with her.  It was a rainy day today so I didn't get to ride her a whole bunch but I did take her around the farmyard a few times and even got her up to a canter.  I really haven't been in the saddle for quite a few years so I was surprised how smooth she was for such a big horse.  Riding her is very basic since she only knows plough reining.  I ended up buying her with her bit and a very nice western saddle.  I wasn't looking forward to finding a draft saddle because they aren't all that common.  I'm looking forward to getting her back into driving so we can hitch her up to this...

  I bought this cart last year when I was living in Maryland.  It's from around 1903 and was made by the V. Lynn Carriage Company from Brooklyn, New York.  I actually found a little information about the company on the internet, which was pretty cool.  It's a tall two wheeled cart with an awesome suspension for unimproved roads.  Trucking it to Cincinnati on the back of my little Nissan was an adventure all by itself.  I truly had the cart before the horse!

  This past summer we also bought a John Deere horsedrawn hayrake for $50 at an auction in North Dakota.  It can be set up for either one or two horses.  Here's a picture of *C* riding on it being towed by the Cub.

  We used it when we mowed the farmyard in front of the chicken coop and grainary.  The grass and weeds were about four feet tall and thick as can be.  The rake is 12 feet across so it wasn't very efficient in this small area.  We ended up having to dump rake in big circles, which resulted in an interesting whorl pattern.

 
  So how is this horse going to act as our low tech back up?  We should be able to have her supplement/back up both our road vehicles and our tractors.  We live seven miles from a very small town which is pretty comfortably in range for a horsedrawn vehicle.  Now I just need to find a small bobsled or cutter for winter.  We can also use her in lieu of our three tractors for work around the farm, although we're definitely going to have to dig up some more horsedrawn equipment and a forecart.  The picture above shows our 1948 Farmall Cub.  We also have a 1938 Farmall F-20 and a 1926 McCormick-Deering 10-20.

  Sorry, I didn't have a picture of the 10-20.  Three antique tractors and a horse?  Nobody farms like that anymore.  You can't make it without a $150K tractor...or can you?  Our aim is subsistence first; any surplus will be considered for sale.  Once upon a time small farms operated under this principle and were very comfortable, albeit cash poor.  We also are going to try to keep it simple with hay being our main crop.  Our whole place is only 50 acres so we'll see if we can fly under the radar and operate on a cash or barter basis.  It would be crazy to try to compete with those gigantic monoculture operations!  We recently watched a very good movie called The Sweet Land.  It showed two farmers in the 1920's, one progressive and one conservative.  The progressive farmer ended up up to his eyeballs in debt and lost everything while the conservative farmer stayed within his means.  The banker kept trying to get him to borrow money to which the responsible farmer always answered "banking and farming don't mix".  I love that line and I think in the near future it's really going to apply.  Now I just need to find Bonnie a teammate...

Driving Drafts

  Thursday and Friday, I had the chance to chase a dream I've been carrying around for a long time.  I took the horse driving class offered at Turner Farms.  The thing that was most interesting to me was that it leaned more heavily toward the farm equipment aspect than driving wagons.  The farm has four beautiful Belgians and the instructor, Tim, was very good at explaining how everything worked.  He wasn't afraid to let us jump right in and get dirty.   

  We started out with harnessing Ruby up as a single and Phred and Sam up as a team.

This was my view for the last couple of days.  After ground driving for a while, we hitched up to a forecart.  This is a two wheeled rubber tired cart that has a hitch on the back so that you can hook light tractor type implements up behind the horses.  The first implement I got to pull was a rotary hoe.  We ran it through a muddy field to wear the horses out a little bit because they were so full of energy.  I was amazed that they could pull as well as they did.  I would have never taken a tractor into that field.  We then hitched up to a four gang disc and started discing up a field full of last year's turnips to help it dry up some.  We broke for lunch and the four of us students and the instructor got to know each other better.  I noticed that the four of us had something very interesting in common.  We're all pursuing as independent and self sufficient lives as possible and have a love of old traditional farming.  After lunch we hooked up to the manure spreader.  This is a wagon that has a conveyor belt on the floor that is ground driven by the wheels.  The belt leads back to a set of beaters that chop the manure up and fling it backwards in a huge rooster tail.

I pushed the spreader up to a fast trot, which in reflection was a little too quick since I felt a few little crumbs fly forward and hit me in the back of the neck!  Important lesson there!!  Last thing for the day was the walking plow.  This is the old timey walk behind plow that seems so easy when you see an experienced person working it but is a real bear to get a handle on for a rookie.

I took three turns down and back and have a new respect for how farmers used to plow their whole farm with these things.  It absolutely wiped me out!  I was able to keep a fairly straight line going down hill because I was able to see a landmark to aim for.  When we were going uphill, all I could see was horses' rears.  I plowed beautiful zig zag patterns all the way up the slope.  I'm thinking that it takes a lot of time to develop the touch on the handles to get the share digging the correct way.

  The second day, we harnessed up Ruby, Phred and Sam three abreast.  We hooked up to the disc again and finished the turnip field.

Two horse were impressive but three were absolutely amazing.  You had to take a break at the end of each row to let the horses rest.  It was really nice to sit and listen to the farm sounds and the horses and just enjoy the warm day.  Definitely a change from working a tractor.  When the field was done, we hooked all three horses up in a unicorn hitch.  This is two horses side-by-side with a single horse hitched in front of them as a lead.  We hitched them to a grain wagon and drove into town to have lunch at the pub.  The wagon was about 16 feet long and sat up pretty high.  It was a little hair raising because it took up most of the lane and we were sharing the road with a lot of cars.  It's tricky because the lead horse and the pair each have their own independent sets of lines to control them.  I wish I had taken a picture but the whole thing took so much of my attention that I forgot.  It was impressive!  I'd say that the whole rig was around 30 feet long.

  If you're ever in the Cincinnati area and you even have a remote interest in draft horses, I can't recommend this course enough.  Both Tim and the horses were very patient and all the folks on the farm were terrific.  Turner farm also offers all kinds of other courses in traditional farming, husbandry and homemaking.  All in all, I would have to say that this was about the most worthwhile $150 I've ever spent!

Horses And Stone

  Haven't written for a while since I've been stuck in something of a rut.  School was out for the boys twice last week due to snow and it kind of put a crimp in my work around the house.  Things are back to normal now and I'm moving forward on my projects (in between playing with *E*).
  The big thing that happened today is that I was confirmed for a horse driving/farming class in March.  I've wanted to do this for years and I finally have the time and opportunity.  Ultimately, I'd like to use work horses on our farmstead since they should dovetail nicely with our old tractors.  I'm looking into volunteering at Carriage Hill farm up in Dayton as well.  It recreates Ohio farm life from the 1880's and should give me even more opportunity to build time with work horses and old equipment.  I've been looking for a dapple gray Percheron and feel like I'm close to making the leap if the right deal comes along.  I bought a cart this fall in Maryland but have to get new main leaves in the spring packs fabricated.  The people I bought it from had two inch extensions welded in to raise the height.  Welding leaf springs isn't exactly the safest move and of course one broke when we were strapping it down to the back of my truck.



  I also received a set of old stone masonry tools today that I bought from Ebay.  I have a couple of others that I've collected over the years but this group included some stone drills, which is what really caught my eye.  I like the stone architecture that I saw during my visits to Europe and would like to try my hand at it, maybe on a small shed or fireplace.

I'm in the homestretch on the stationary motor cart.  It's coming out much better than I had hoped and I can't wait to see the whole thing come together!