What Does PROGRESS Mean?
Reflections while attending the tenth annual Horse Progress Days
by Gene Logsdon
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Autumn 2003

Over the past ten years, a rather surprising turn of events has occurred in agriculture and hardly anyone in mainstream farming realizes it. Instead of dying out as any historian might have expected it to do, horse farming has decided to stick around awhile to see just what might happen as the cost of land, labor and energy keeps soaring. Although no one involved wants to sound foolish by saying so right out loud, maybe the dinosaur of farming will not turn out to be the horse after all, but the 300 horsepower tractor. As Rob Dash, a well-known, heavy horse trainer from England, said to me at Horse Progress Days this year: “This isn’t all just about showing horses and playing games with them. Behind that is a feeling that we need to keep the interest in draft horses alive because the high costs of tractor farming just might make the horse a very practical consideration in the century ahead.”.

A research report from Ohio State University Extension agent Randy James, who works in the Amish country of Geauga County, Ohio, suggests as much. Net income on an Amish farm, James’ research concludes, can be ten times higher per acre than on a modern, high-tech farm. In other words, the tractor farmer has to farm at least ten times more acres to make the same money. As the price of land and land rentals continue to climb, the picture only gets worse for high input farming. Articles on this research appeared in many papers although some of us were saying the same thing fifteen years ago–in the Summer l986 issue of this magazine to be exact!–but mainstream agriculture thought it better to ignore that kind of news then. Now it can’t. Not when half of tractor farming’s income comes from subsidies. Not when natural gas prices are rising precipitously. Not when world oil supplies hang chaotically on the outcome of idiotic wars. Not when the only way to keep down machinery manufacturing costs is to import cheap steel that puts Americans out of work. Not when terrorism skulks the world. A friend of mine and a good farmer whose crops are routinely better than most of his neighbors’, says he lost $95,000 on a thousand acres last year (2002) and not entirely because of the drouth. There is no joy in saying it, even for a supporter of horse farming, but almost every financial and environmental report that hits the media these days leads a thinking person to wonder if the work horse just might be a good investment for the future after all.

Is that what is really behind the remarkable success of Horse Progress Days...plus pure stubborness? One of the reasons horse farming remains solvent and, in many cases, more profitable than conventional farming is that what you see at Horse Progress Days is not old-fashioned in the least, once past the basic fact of using horses for power rather than tractors. About twenty years ago, engineering wizards among Amish and other horse farming communities began to build what they called hitchcarts that were equipped with small, extremely efficient diesel engines and ingenious, hand operated hydraulic power units. These hitchcarts came with p.t.o. assemblies and three point hitches. Any piece of equipment made for a small to medium-sized tractor could then be attached to the hitchcart and at the same time could be pulled by horses with much less strain. Aiding and abetting the cause, manufacturers had already started to market a whole array of new small tractors and ATVs with just the sort of light attachments eminently suited for hitchcarts. Elmo Reed, the inventor and manufacturer of the Three Point Hitch Cart in Benton, Kentucky, told me with a chuckle back then: “Some of our customers are using recreational vehicles to pull our hitchcart on their little farms because it’s a whole lot cheaper than buying a farm tractor and they don’t know anything about horses.”

Because the old horsedrawn tools were wearing out, these same mechanical geniuses began equipping their shops with machining tools to turn out new parts. This led to making entirely new pieces of horsedrawn equipment. Along with Elmo Reed, there was Wayne Wengerd, Mose Erb, Alton Nisley and Jonas Miller in Holmes County, Ohio; Martin Smucker in Indiana, (these are the ones I knew and wrote about–there are plenty more) plus White Horse and I & J and others in Pennsylvania, and Charlie Pinney in England, all busy bringing horse farming into the twentieth and eventually the twenty-first centuries.

Watching keenly over this development was Maury Telleen, then publisher and editor of The Draft Horse Journal. He does not like for me to brag about him in the magazine he started, but life is tough all over, Maury, and sometimes you just have to suffer. He is one of the most astute men I know and I know a lot of men. (I know a few women who are more astute than he is, including Jeannine, his wife, but that’s another story.) He figured that writing and chronicling the breeding and showing of draft animals was not the whole story; he also needed to publicize what was going on in the breeding and showing of the equipment that draft animals were meant to pull. He began touring the countryside with an eye out for new developments. He took Wendell Berry with him when he could. Having a famous writer along who knew a lot about horses wouldn’t hurt the cause.

Two of the founders of Horse Progress Days, Maury Telleen (on the mike) and Elmer Lapp, provide commentary on the evolution of the event and its success.

It was on such a trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, while visiting with Elmer Lapp, an excellent horseman, and noting the explosion of new horse-drawn machinery in that area, that the “Big Idea”blossomed. Neither Maury nor Elmer want to take complete credit for it today, but when the idea presented itself, either at Elmer’s farm or at a meeting of the old Draft Horse & Mule Association of America in Indianapolis, both knew it was a winner. Maury looked at Elmer and posed a question. Why not a horse farming counterpart to conventional agriculture’s popular Farm Progress Days? We could call it “Horse Progress Days” he suggested. Why not indeed, replied Elmer. He volunteered his own farm as a site of the event.

And so Horse Progress Days came to pass in 1993. Ten years later, attending the event in Mt. Hope, Ohio, I could only marvel at what has happened. Elmer Lapp says about 4,000 people attended the first show. Now the number has more than doubled (to about 10,000). That’s not nearly the number that attends Farm Progress Days in Ohio, but all things considered, it is a very significant number. Most attendees are mainly interested in new ideas and machines to use in practical farming. A goodly sprinkling of tourists are there too, some just to look, some wondering if draft animals are something they might want to get involved in.

“I’m here mainly to look for ideas I can take back to Kenya,” said Eric Oganda who farms there with his father along with working for Kimilili Outreach Food Security Programme, a non-governmental organization seeking to diversify agricultural production in that country. He was accompanied by Macinga Gilbert, a young farmer from Uganda who is currently attending Alexandria University in Egypt. They were on a tour of the U.S., mainly to help change the image of Africa in the eyes of America. “Africa is a big continent with many nations, most of them peaceful and industrious,” said Mr. Oganda. “The fact that many Europeans are moving to Africa to live is some proof of that. Unfortunately, most of the world hears only negative news from Africa.”

“I suppose you have lots of workhorses in Kenya,” I prompted, putting my foot resolutely in my mouth.

Eric Oganda, who farms three acres of his father's farm in Kenya, demonstrates his skills with oxen at Horse Progress Days. He was attending the event to gather ideas from America's heavy horse industry that could be used to develop harness and equipment for donkeys, the standard draft animal in Kenya.

“No, we don’t use horses in our farming,” he said, relishing my astonishment. “Horses are too expensive.”

That revelation turned my whole view of Horse Progress Days on end, where it would teeter and sway for the entire two days of the gathering. The Kenyans farm with donkeys, thank you. Donkeys eat less which can be critical in drouth years. They also take the heat better and live longer.

“The problem is that donkeys can’t pull as much as horses,” said Mr. Oganda. “They have been used traditionally in our country more to carry than to pull. We have only rudimentary harness and equipment, very inefficient. I am mainly looking for harness ideas, and then ways to lighten the equipment that American horse farmers use so it w
ill be practical for donkeys.”

Like the Kenyans, Mr. Gilbert pointed out, the Ugandans use oxen too. Draft cows give a little milk, which can be important to a family’s economy. Both young men demonstrated their skills at plowing with oxen that day as part of the demonstration sponsored by Tillers International.

The dichotomy between horse showmanship and practical horse farming showed up in every aspect of Horse Progress Days. Terry Davis, a saddle, harness, and horse collar maker, who lives in Shropshire, England, has a reputation for turning out some of the finest leather work available and sells to clients in Europe and North America. Obviously much of the harness he makes is going to show up on the horses of the well-to-do show breeders. (According to Rob Dash, there are in fact, only a handful of authentic, working horse farms in all of England, another piece of information that kept my view of Horse Progress Days swaying precariously in the winds of change.) Of course, the Brits don’t have the advantage of a large and vibrant Amish population. But Mr. Davis is also involved in something that appears to excite him just as much as fine harness. Since 1990 he has focused his attention on horses actually involved in farming and transportation especially in Third World countries. “It is hard for us who live in industrial nations to realize that many of these people do not have the means or the knowledge to make even practical harness let alone equipment to pull with it,” he said, echoing Mr. Oganda from Kenya. Mr. Davis is a moving force in The Harness Development Agency which is dedicated to teaching and training farmers in these countries to establish their own harness-making tradition that can continue without outside help. “It is very satisfying work,” he says. Recently he has implemented a successful cart pad design currently being used to good effect in Mexico, and a detachable packsaddle panel for farmers in El Salvador.

Meanwhile, in America where more is always better, the development of bigger hitches and bigger hitchcarts and more ingenious uses of hydraulic power was everywhere evident at Horse Progress Days. Sometimes the progress is not sensational to look at but nonetheless extremely significant, as in the new deeply serrated, “tiger jaw” or “Super 7” knife blades for sickle bar mowers, made of metal alloys that keep the knives sharp for a much longer time. The Amish at the heart of it all are demonstrating what I call the advantage of avoiding formal education. Not having been unwittingly brainwashed into thinking that one must have college certification before one can do something, they just go ahead and figure out how to do it. I have watched the Amish in their sophisticated workshops and have little doubt that they could build a workable space shuttle if they wanted to. Not only are they making horse farming easier and faster for themselves, but they are making it more alluring to non-Amish farmers who are looking at the dead end of high input agriculture and saying, hey, I could farm profitably that way too.

Some fear that the success of the hitchcart technology might be its own undoing. Like the corn farmer who boasted that he was going to become the biggest grower in Ohio and in that pursuit worked himself right out of farming altogether, there is a feeling among more conservative horse farmers that the more progressive are getting too big for their hitches if not their britches. Even Maury Telleen and Elmer Lapp, the founders of Horse Progress Days, are a little uneasy about how much progress is really progress. So is Charlie Pinney, who manufactures horse drawn equipment in England. On his visit to an earlier Horse Progress Days, he extolled the Amish progress in technology but then mused in print about whether hitches and hitchcarts could get too big to be economical. On narrow English lanes, he pointed out, a 12 horse hitch would be impossible to maneuver. He also wondered aloud, writing in the English magazine, Heavy Horse World in the Spring 2001 issue, about “the apparent contradiction in using horses to pull tractor machines equipped with motors. At what point does it cease to be truly economical?” Elmer Lapp is blunter. “I am afraid that the hitches are getting too big for practical farming,” he says. “The hitchcarts are getting heavier and bigger too, so that the cost begins to compare with the cost of a tractor to replace the hitchcart. And the tractor is handier.” Mr. Lapp worries about the trend to bigness in breeding too. “I think we are breeding intelligence out of horses in favor of looks.”

Comments Maury Telleen: “I think we are getting too much of the ‘Gee Whiz, what will they think of next?’ in Horse Progress Days, and not enough of ‘hey, this is a neat machine and fits horse and mule farming like a glove’.” Then he turns customarily philosophical and adds: “This is not just Horse Progress Days but true of every part of our lives. It isn’t enough to be impressed anymore, we have to be AMAZED. I’m getting sick and tired of being amazed. Gee Whiz and his first cousin The Cutting Edge have retired millions from farming.”

I was reminded of a story I heard at Horse Progress Days, one of those anecdotes that begins with “no names, please.” In a certain Amish community, the woodworkers went to the bishop and complained that the farmers were progressing a little too fast and furious with hitchcart technology for the ideals of Amish religion. When the farmers heard of the complaint they went to the bishop too, and said that the next time the complaining woodworkers got in a big load of lumber, that they should be required to unload it with muscle power, not their battery-run tow motors. End of controversy. The Amish are facing the usual human condition: whether to accept the wisdom of moderation in all things or to keep growing like their tractor-driving competitors in farming until they cease to be profitable.

There is another aspect of Horse Progress Days that I think needs to be mentioned. While horse farmers improve their hitchcarts with an eye to competing with mainstream farming, I think that, like the tractor farmers, they are missing something significant. It is wonderful to see the horsemanship and skill in plowing contests, but so intent are horse farmers on this aspect of farming that some of them are overlooking the Great Alternative that now looms on the horizon. Grass farming. Pasture farming. Managed intensive grazing. Call it what you will, there is the distinct possibility that the future will perfect an animal husbandry where the plow, even the two bottom version, will be as obsolete in the more crowded areas of the United States like Holmes County, Ohio, as the 250 horsepower grain harvester. The perfection of grass farming that some livestock producers have mastered requires no annual soil cultivation and no annual harvest except for early summer haying and not necessarily even that. Amish farmer David Miller with his Shorthorn cattle, profiled in Farming magazine, is a good example of an accelerating trend. He doesn’t grow a stalk of corn on his farm. He owns no cultivation or grain harvesting tools. He doesn’t need souped-up versions of the hitchcart any more than he needs souped-up tractors. Even Amish dairymen, while holding fast to annual corn and the plow at the moment, are advancing into grass farming and reducing machine and fuel costs significantly. What if it turns out in this 21st century that plowing contests will end because plowing ends, and that the big hitches will be as obsolete as big tractors.

Ironically, grass farming is an ideal way to raise horses, one of nature’s most efficient grazing animals. Progress might mean lighter horses bred to thrive on year-round grazing, and used for clipping pastures, and pulling simple hitchcarts ahead of small hay balers or hay stackers.

As David Kline, dairyman and editor of Farming, titled his article on David Miller’s farm, progress may mean “beating plowshares into mowers.”

Gene, I’m going to take the liberty of explaining what I think my old friend, Elmer Lapp, meant when he said we were breeding intelligence out of draft horses in favor of looks.

Nobody breeds nitwits on purpose. but when you are looking for heads up, hyperactive, very animated colts and the bigger the better, you aren’t likely to get placid, easy going animals in the same hide. Note that I did NOT say lazy.

Right now, most drafters are being bred for the hitch horse model and the bigger the better. The buyers also want a very high stepping horse, which means a shorter stride. A horse that can “trot all day on a bushel basket” does not cover much ground but sure looks classy. That, in shorthand, is the pattern of today and it was determined not by our courts or elections but by the auction ring. Breeders will breed for what sells highest.

Historically, all our draft breeds (the cold bloods) were developed by the small tenant farmers of western Europe and Great Britain. They are sort of a product of NATO. Olden days NATO, when they were killing each other. Whether it be Great Britain, Belgium or France, it was small farms that were the nursery for our draft breeds. That meant that mama and the kids handled those brood mares and colts as well as dad. They literally lived and worked with their horses. You can bet they were not interested in keeping either nut cases or dead-heads any longer than they had to.

Now that is quite a different background than, say the Thoroughbreds. Different strokes for different folks and eventually, you get roughly what you breed for. And I think that is what is happening.

I don’t think Elmer meant that Equine IQ was inversely related to size. If so, Shetland Poinies would be geniuses and they aren’t. But I do think he is right in saying that the quest for size, along with a cocky temperament, is bound to result in some attitude problems. Especially, if you just want to mow and rake the hay with a horse that covers ground quickly with a minimum of wasted motion. And, of course, it is always nice if you don’t need scaffolding to harness them.