A Few More Words About Farming With Workhorses

A few days ago I placed an article promoting farmwork with drafthorses. Sitting back, thinking about it I came to realize, that most of our readers might read this and think:

" What is this? I thought this is about sustainabilty, not turning back the hands of time?"

And, yes, one might indeed get that impression not knowing the current developments in this sector.

Let me enlighten you in this respect:

First lets go back in time and look at around 1950:

The increasing motorization of agriculture in the 1950's had fatal effects on the way farmers worked their fields. Due to the lack of spear parts for the until then commonly used horse drawing appliances more and more farmers were forced to retreat to the tratcor.

This led to the fact that practically for over 40 years no more horse drawing implements were built let alone improved and developed. The few horse-farmers finally still remaining for whatever reasons soon were to fall back to outdated technology and often worn devices. The mostly "rusty“and "antique"appearance offered lots of reasons for the emergence of the negative image of the workhorse and its manifesting as symbol for apparent backwardness.

If it wasn't for the Amish people who based on their religion continued the use of horses in the field the workhorse in the USA would be long gone today. The Amish kept rebuilding, using and improving the most usefull horse drawing devices. They even developed new implements and since the 1990's build them in their own shops.

Out of this a whole new industry emerged in the equine market and by now the USA proudly is able to present several thousand agricultural horse enterprises with the necessary equipment.

A fact not known to many of us !!

New horse machines and front car technology, the use of new materials, modern transmissions ec. make horse drawing appliances lighter and reduce the workload on horse and farmer.

I could go into more details at this point, but I believe in the power of images. So let the following pictures give you an outlook on the good things to come, when modern technologies and traditional farming practices are combined to reach a common goal:

Sustainability