Rural Heritage Reading Room

Joe’s involvement in a community in Haiti leads him to fundraising for a chicken brooder center to be built by Haitians to help farmers in the countryside develop their own flocks.

(contacts for breed registries and regional draft clubs)

(please tell ‘em you saw it in Rural Heritage)

DAPNET and Essex Farm held a workshop to rebuild horse-drawn mowers as well as learn about repair and maintenance.  With much expertise in the building they disassembled, replaced, adjusted, refit, cleaned, and reassembled mowers (McCormick #7 & #9 as well as a Frost and Wood from Canada.  The participants learned much while enjoying the camaraderie that occurs when bringing draft animal people together!

Meryl Friets headed to New Zealand after college to spend two months at Erewhon Station, a working cattle, sheep and deer farm situated at the top of Rangitata Gorge.  She shares her amazing experiences working with Clydesdales at the farm who are descendants of the original horses brought from Scotland in 1911.  The horses are used for much work on the farm.  Read about how they are raised, trained and worked.  Stunning photographs enhance our understanding of the farm.

Expert draft horse farmer, Stephen Leslie, in a Q&A format, teaches us about starting a draft horse team trained for work.  From choosing a breed, age, size, matching for a team, shoeing, feeding, logging, he covers a lot of topics.  He also presents a “starter kit” of equipment he recommends for a draft powered market farmer.

Karen Kirsch takes us on a tour of reclaimed surface mining land in Kentucky. The property we visit is being restored by the Great Forests Work organization.  After giving us a short primer on cool mining history, Karen explains why these lands have been difficult to reforest and how the organization is succeeding in bringing them back.

Jenifer Morrissey reports on the restoration of the log based, gambrel roof barn at Jack Creek Ranch in North Park Colorado.  This is the first installment and describes in detail the installation of a new foundation and concrete floor.  Great photos take –step process.

Ralph Rice discusses water sources for your farm operation and livestock feeding as well as gardens irrigation.  He discusses the benefits of farm Pond cisterns, tanks or barrels.  He then discusses the importance of water quality both on your farm and in the run off from your farm. The way he takes care of both of these issues is my composting manure  the methods of which he shares with us.

Ralph Rice shares how he provides the essentials for his livestock: shelter from wind, shade from sun and fresh feed and water.  He does this in many ways and the animals choose the ones they prefer.  Barns are one way but animals tend to prefer to be out of doors using trees and sheds for shade, fencerows, logs etc.  for windbreaks.  Ralph tells us how he provides all of these options and more.

Animal Powered logger Brad Johnson gives us a list of things to consider when starting such a business.  These include things from time management minimum output, efficiency vs. speed, consideration of yours and your horses limits, market analysis, listen to elder horse loggers and a lot more excellent advice.

Coverage of the first North American Suffolk Spectacular includes many great pictures of the beautiful animals.

The Middle Tennessee Mule Skinners club set a world record on September 29, 2018 and we were there to record it.   This record was for 95 mules plowing simultaneously for at least one minute.  There are some great pictures of the action here!

Joe reviews the new offerings we have which include many Story Country Wisdom pamphlets, as well as some beautifully illustrated new children’s’ books.

Jenifer Morrissey takes us along on another of her great-great grandparents’  journeys, this one to Southern California, New Mexico and Arizona in 1913.  Histories of agriculture, particularly early Arizona and the California Imperial valley are described enhanced by snippets from their diaries.

A pictorial of this annual event full of Percherons, Shires, Belgians and more fills the pages.

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