Hitch Sale Wagon

Admin | January 31, 2012 | Comments Off

Hitch Sale Wagon

Hitch Sale Wagon

Soil degradation, erosion and soil compaction are real dangers as spring turns wet and muddy. The calves keep coming (we had a heifer calf at 6 this morning, April 7 2011) but the ground softens and the feeding with the tractor starts to carve up the roads and fields. (Fig. 1) Since one of our recreations is Combined Driving (more articles on that to come as the spring training starts) we have about 10 Standard Bred horses trained to drive and getting restless with the spring. Our veteran team of Ted and June are put into early training hauling hay to the cows. This preserves both the road ways which start to break up seriously and especially the fields. We feed in a 20 acre spring pasture but the highest, dry ground is only about 5 acres and running the tractor once a day can cause ruts, bogs and growth problems in the summer.

The First Hitch of the Year

This moves then into the oldest horse power alternative, horses. Once the snow has melted enough so that the risk of horses slipping on ice is greatly reduced then they can be put to use. However even an experienced team needs a little reminder of the task at hand so the first order of business is to take them into the arena and do some ground driving. (Fig. 2) As you can see the snow is still on the ground in the arena because it is right beside the south woods (Fig. 3) and gets lots of shade. After the ground driving, but still in the arena just in case they decide a run would be a good trick to play, they get hitched to the wagon and get used to pulling again. (Fig. 3)