Hey everyone, just wanted to say hi and thanks for all the interesting reading here on the forum. There seems to be a vast of knowledge here. I am 31 yrs old and thankfully me, my wife, and 14 mo old baby girl have been able to buy our own farm of 32 acres here and are looking to add either horses or mules to our operation at some point in the near future. We farm a little corn, a small vegetable garden, and cut a lil timber for a local mill. I've been studying anything and everything I can get my hands on and seeking anyone who'll listen and offer any advice on the subject. Unfortunately there's not as many mule or horse men around here any more as most have died out and it makes it tough for someone my age to find a mentor. My grandad farmed and logged with mules till the late 1980's and some of my earliest memories were plowing the garden with my grandad as a lil feller. He absolutely loved working those mules and often loved to talk about em. Now I wish I still had him around to seek advice from. I have several of the vids and books from the rural heritage site as well as others too and I humbly say that I have a descent understanding of harnesses and how to they work as well as basically how to harness an animal that's already been fitted; and beginners knowledge of handling a team; but I wanna learn more tricks of the trade and get in on some of the vast experience of others. I grew up farming and also owned a saddle horse so I am familiar with a few things of the such; keeping horses, adjusting most tractor implements etc etc. We work our farm now with a small tractor, and just wish to add the animals as more of a hobby and heritage thing. We love the animals and love watching em work. They'll have a top notch life here on our farm and we can work em pretty much all they wanna be worked doing odd jobs around our lil farm and doing some small logging jobs too. I wanna be as easy as possible on my first team be it mules or horses and gain all the information and education I can before taking on the animals. I don't wanna spoil or be hard on a good team simply by my ignorance or incompentance. I've decided that our first team should be an older well broke experienced team that can help teach me; and I really don't have a preference of breed, color, and/or horses over mules. I prefer a well broke, healthy, and willing animal over breed and colors although I do have a slight sweet spot for Belgians for some reason. We looked at a 16 yr old Belgian John mule team; but we re not thru with our barn just yet or fencing. We're still building. So we decided to wait; And I wanted to be more prepared for our first team before taking em on. Anyway, we re trying to wiggle our way into the draft world lil at a time and learn all we can. So any and all advice from you guys would help. And if there's anyone down this way or any of you know of anyone that could help us along, we'd appreciate all the help we could get. Heck, just a simple phone conversation helps a lot sometimes for me. Thanks for taking time to read this.
Zach