Christmas in Iowa

 It was a beautiful day to celebrate our family Christmas here in Iowa.

A snowstorm laid down the perfect background for our holiday festivities. We had a wonderful home-cooked meal (my wife grew up Mennonite and she can cook!) After we ate it was time to open the presents. My children all had some input into my novel "Under the Heavens" and they got their copies today.

After the gifts were opened we all headed into the barn for our annual reading of the Christmas story.

 My daughter read to us from Luke, Chapter 2

Karm and Coke ate hay, playing the part of animals in the nativity scene.
We have found this to be a meaningful tradition, something about being in a stable to read the story makes it seem so real.

Our grandchildren wanted to try out their new sleds and we all ended up having a great time watching and many of us took a turn at it too!

Clydesdale Horses

Clydesdale in show harness

       Clydesdale horses are beautiful! They were made famous by the Budweiser hitch, and for good reason, those Budweiser horses are amazing, unbelievable creatures. As with this horse pictured above, most Clydesdale horses are tri-colored, with lots of chrome (white markings.) This type of horse is bred up to pull a carriage or beer wagon and look fancy doing it.  I love that sight as much as anyone.  Because of all the recognition given to the Budweiser hitch, that is what comes to the average American's mind when someone speaks of draft horses.

Belgian horses

I have to say, this makes me feel a little irked on behalf of the horses that built America.

         This is a Percheron hitched with a Belgian

               a common sight on an Amish farm.       

      Percheron and Belgian horses are the faithful steeds that plowed our lands during the 17 and 1800s.  Even today, very few Clydesdale horses are used for farming in America. I know there are some but I personally have never seen a Clydesdale on an Amish farm. Yet, every time I tell someone in town, that I own draft horses, they always ask, "Clydesdales?"  When I tell them I have Percheron horses, most have never heard of them.
       Belgian horses are usually Chestnut or Sorrel in color. Ranging from what is called a blond to those that are almost dark red.

        Percheron horses are usually solid black or gray.  The grays start out black and slowly turn dapple, until they are almost white. This horse on the right shows off his dapple markings. This team of Amish horses below are almost white, yet, called grays.

My own Percheron horses, on the right, are the blacks. I like them the best, surprised?

I hope my Clydesdale owning friends are not offended by what I am saying here, Clydesdale horses are doing all of us draft horse people a favor, by keeping heavy horses in the media.

Karm and Coke

My team of Percheron mares

Do you enjoy horse pictures, visit   https://www.facebook.com/AmishHorses

Work Harness

        This is a drawing that was made for, Under the Heavens, but didn't get used so I thought I would share it on Amish Horses Blog.  It is a diagram about work harness and shows the names of harness parts. If you notice, the driving lines are crossed between horses. In this way the driver has a line to the right side of each horse in his right hand, and a line to the left side of the horse's bits in his left hand.

These horses have a strap under their tails called "butt breeching" by draft horsemen in Iowa. This strap is used when the horses are backing a load, or going downhill. The weight of the wagon pushes on this strap.

My own horses, here on the right, have on what we call "hip breeching." That strap is just above the tail and works just the same as the butt breeching.

Most Amish, in the Kalona area, use the hip breeching style on their work horses. The Amishmen that sold me horses and showed me how to work with a team all used this style. One of them said, "Horses like hip breeching better, they can get under a load and really push on it."  I am impressed at how much these guys notice with their horses. On many occasions I've heard comments about what horses "like" and I believe they know what their talking about. The man I bought Karma from told me that she loved her collar.

       Above, you can see the wagon tongue up between my horses. The piece crossing the tongue is a "double-tree" or "evener" (single tree for one horse.) You can see straps coming from the collar area, down toward the double-tree, these are called "tugs" or "traces." At the end of the tugs are heel chains, these are hooked to the double-tree. This is the mechanism for pulling a load with horses so they can share the work.

See the red pole between my horses? That is called a "neck yoke" and ties the front end of two horses together at the collar. My wagon tongue can be seen below the neck yoke, it slips into a ring on the neck yoke and is the connection between the breeching and the load, to hold it back, or to back it up.

In this picture you can see the front end of the tugs coming from the thickest part of the collar. The tug is attached to metal bars, called "hames" these hames lay in a grove in the collar. The collar is a comfortable leather oval that horses push against.

       Horses actually push loads by leaning into their collars.  We call it "pulling a wagon" because they are in front of the wagon, but they really are pushing.
       Harness in other regions of America are constructed slight differently, and in Europe work harness looks very different. This is typical Iowa work harness.

       I hope you enjoyed learning a little about harness and hitching horses. If you did, check out Amish Horses Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AmishHorses

Horse Pull

 Kalona Sale Barn

 Spring and Fall, Kalona Sale Barn has a draft horse sale.  It's a two day event; equipment and tack on Monday, teams of horses on Tuesday. With all those draft horse enthusiasts here in town, it only makes sense to have a horse pull on Monday evening.  I took a slug of pictures with my cell phone, so that I could share them with you.

Just watching a team get harnessed and ready is a fun experience.

 Our local Amish don't take part in this event or any contest for that matter.  You will see some Amish in these pictures; they are from other communities with slightly different rules.

Watching these super athletes compete is a big thrill for me. I enjoy seeing horses working and it is interesting to see the interaction between horses and humans.

Each teamster has a unique style and each horse seems to have its own pulling form. Some walk upright, others squat and dig, and others seem to almost hop.

 These pulling contests weed out poor handlers quickly. As the loads get bigger, teamwork is critical. Horses that work together well can pull more, and each teamster has a lot to do with that. First, in choosing two horses that compliment each other. Next, in training and conditioning, which takes patience and personal discipline. And finally, knowing how to stay calm during the heat of an exciting pull.  Horses can feel their handlers mood and usually reflect it, some more than others.

This was an exceptional pull, with the sled weight topping out over 12,000 pounds! At the end, there were three teams still in out of nine that entered. All three teams seemed to max out at the same weight and each of the three teams gave more than one try at pulling that last load.

A very important element of top quality horsemanship is knowing when to bow out of an event. If you make your horses try too often on a load they can't handle, they learn to doubt themselves, and give up sooner. Yet, making a successful second attempt on a load, can actually build confidence. Just like with people, we gain confidence from pushing ourselves to our full potential.




Some horses love to pull. Only that kind of horse can have any success at an event like this. Horses that don't enjoy it let you know quickly and wouldn't get far in a horse pull. Some of those horses make great pets and farm horses though. There are plenty of jobs on a farm for a draft horse that wouldn't make it in a pulling contest.

  

                                         I have a video of part of this pull on my Facebook page                                   https://www.facebook.com/AmishHorses

The Heavens

 My novel, Under the Heavens, is due out in December.

One focus of the book is skies.  About the experience of being on a farm for the first time and realizing how vast the heavens are. It changes your perspective.

 These pictures were taken on two separate occasions.  The first and third were in the morning when doing my chores.  The others were taken in the evening, when the sky didn't seem real.

You can see my horses have their morning hay dangling from their mouths.

Hues of purple mixed in with these blues add a water color feel to a photograph.  I am not a photographer, just a guy with a cell phone that loves a beautiful view.  My favorite photographs are those that look like a painting, rather than a photo.

Someday, when I retire from the Post Office, I will get a good camera.

If you like these pictures, check out Amish Horses Facebook, and "like" it!  There are several albums with this type of pictures on that site.
                                                            Click on this link:   https://www.facebook.com/AmishHorses

Hauling Manure~

        I bought this manure spreader at the Kalona Sale Barn draft horse sale a year ago.  When I started bidding on it, I realized the Amish man I purchased my horses from was standing next to me.  He started teasing me while I was bidding, "Your not going to pull this tiny manure spreader with that big team of Percherons I sold you, are you?"
       Trying to keep my focus on the bid, I told him, "This spreader box holds all the manure I want to scoop at one time!"

       It also happens that I don't have a lot of storage space and this little manure spreader just fits in my barn.

       When I took my chainsaw to another local Amish business man, to get sharpened, we got talking about my draft horses.  He wanted to know what equipment I owned.  I mentioned my manure spreader and he asked, "Do you have any other livestock?"  I told him, "No."  He teased me, "You only need your horses for pulling the manure spreader. If you didn't have horses, you wouldn't need a manure spreader. That's like the lady that said she needed a car to get to town and they asked her why she needed to get to town and she said, 'To get gas for my car!'"

Obviously, I don't need horses; but if I'm gonna have these big horses, I sure do need a manure spreader!
Karm and Coke provide me with an escape from the pressures of the modern world and plenty of material for my Amish horse blog too.

Not to mention, some beautiful scenery in my back yard and they are awful fun to have in the barn and brush.  You haven't lived until you've stood between a team of draft horses.

My Runaway Horses

       Stonewall and Jackson were actually easygoing, gentle horses.  I bought this team at the Kalona Sale Barn but the guy selling them was an Amish man, that lived only a few miles from my place.  The picture with our dog "Coach" sniffing them was taken on their first day as my horses (you can tell he didn't know them yet.)
        I bought them in the fall and that next spring, when they turned 2, I took them back to my Amish friend, he used them for his spring fieldwork.  When they were ready to come home, my Amish friend and I drove them here.  I hitched them a few days later and took a nice drive down a gravel road, everything went great.

       Just before unhitching them I decided to take them out into some cornstalks, to see how they would react; because I was planning to take my disc out into that cornfield in a few days.  Well, that was a mistake!  A cornstalk poked them or the sound of rustling leaves scared them, I'm not sure, but they took off as fast as they could go.  When we started to get close to a fence, I tried to turn them out into the open field by pulling hard on my left line... it broke.  I fell back into the wagon pulling on the right line and that turned them into the corner of the field and they came to a stop, unharmed.

I was shook up about it, so I took them back to my Amish friend to let him use them a little more.  We ended up having a whole string of runaway stories over the next year.  I'm saving all of that for a collection of short stories about my horses.  I have one of my short stories posted on this blog.  It is a story named, "Back In Time."  You can click on this link below.
http://amishhorses.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

       I was so discouraged because I liked Stone and Jack a lot.
I felt like crying out "Why Lord?"  Now, years later, I know that it all turned out for the better.  I had so many great experiences, taking these boys back to my Amish friends place.  Because of my troubles, I got the opportunity to drive a six-horse hitch, on a plow and a disc (Stone and Jack in the hitch)  and many other interesting jobs.
        All of these experiences ended up as material for my book, Under the Heavens, due out later this year.

Our Old Homeplace

     There used to be a huge barn about were my horses are standing. When I first met my wife the barn was still there but it came down in the 80's

     This smaller barn is actually a corn crib my wife's grandpa built. It makes a great horse barn.


     My wife's grandparents moved onto this farm when they got married in 1918. Her grandmother was the 4th daughter in a family of 5. My mother-in-law was born in this very house in 1928, she was the 4th daughter in a family of 5. My wife grew up in this home and, you guessed it, she was the 4th daughter in a family of 5. It so happens we have 5 children and we like to tell our 4th daughter she is destined to take over when we move off the place, but she better have 5 children!                                    

     Our old windmill isn't in use anymore but if the wind catches it just right, it starts spinning again. I hired an elderly Amish man to climb up to the top and wire it so it couldn't spin. I was surprised when he got up there and I could see that the face of this windmill was taller than a man. After all the effort my Amish neighbor put into fixing my windmill, the very next wind storm it broke loose and went right back to work, spinning.  

My Neighbor's Barn

            I saw my neighbor pushing his bike down the road about ten miles from our place.  He had a flat tire, so we threw his bicycle in the bed of my faithful little S-10 pickup and hauled it home.  When I pulled in his drive and saw his barn up close, all I could say was, "Wow, can I take some pictures?"
          I am a big fan of old barns!  I love to look inside and imagine what life was like back in the old days.
          That is what I like about having Amish around... the old days are still alive and well on their farms!

           A lot of time was put into building these old structures.  Look at that foundation!  Most old barns in Iowa were built with native oak lumber; such hard wood you can't drive a nail in the beams.
(At least I can't)
           If you click on these pictures you will get a closer view.

           I love barns with a ramp access to the mow. Just imagine how many loads of hay were pulled up that ramp by teams of horses over the years.

           Back in the good old days this barn would have been hopping with activity around chore time. People and livestock probably hurried inside during cold winter snowstorms, or walked out of its doors at the perfect time of evening to see a beautiful sunset.  I bet this old barn could tell some great stories and a few romantic tales too.

    Check out my Facebook page,    https://www.facebook.com/AmishHorses   Look at my photo album named "Barns."