Mennonite Carpenters

My old "horse barn" needed some help soon, or the roof was gonna fall in. I had been telling my brother-in-law that I wanted his crew to come do the work as soon as I could scrounge up the money.

My wife's granddad put up this corn-crib some 80 years ago and my dad-in-law plastered three sides after they stopped using it to store grain. That made it into a wind-tight and useful horse barn. This wooden side (pictured below) was starting to get really weathered. It didn't show from the road, so looks weren't the issue. However, I love this old building and wanted to save it.

You can see in the picture above, that the rafters were getting soft in places. These Mennonite-raised carpenters knew what they were doing and got us all fixed up. I think this barn will outlast me now!

You can see Karm and Coke were displaced for a few weeks, till the carpenters were done. There is a strand of electric fence keeping them out. They seemed to enjoy all the company they had while the crew was working (normally things are pretty quiet.)  I spent about a week with a magnet picking up nails before I let them back in this area. Sure hope I got them all!

My brother-in-law is way up top fixing the peak.

Dan put in a clear piece of siding, for a window to let in light.

Randy and Henry put in the final touches on my doors.

The whole place looks a lot better now, huh? (Rear view: above. From the road: below)

A special thank you to Randy, Dan and Henry.

You guys did a great job... and it was really fun having you around the home place!

(...by the way, this farm was Randy's home place when he was growing up.)

Working with horses on an Amish farm

Under the Heavens, is all about that!

This was one of our cover options for Under the Heavens 

Have you ever looked through the pages of a Draft Horse Journal? If not, you are really missing something wonderful. The Draft Horse Journal is a beautiful magazine that is published quarterly. It is full of well written stories, articles and best of all pictures! Yes, even the advertisements are full color pictures of the most amazing draft horses you've ever seen.

Here are the links to their Facebook page and main website
DHJ Facebook page                    Draft Horse Journal

They also review books!

I took a snapshot out of my copy of The Draft Horse Journal so you could read this review. (with permission from the nice folks at The Draft Horse Journal)

Amazon Link for Under the Heavens

If you are interested in reading about life on an Amish farm, or working with draft horses... this book was written just for you!

A Horse named Fire

 Last week I had a chance to go to the Iowa State Fair.  I had a perfect day enjoying the National Percheron Show, that happened to be held on my day off from the Post Office.  I will share pictures of that in an upcoming blog post about Percheron show horses.  The Budweiser eight-horse-hitch makes a yearly appearance out our state fair.  As the old movie song goes, (movie titled, "State Fair") "Our state fair is a great state fair... it's the best state fair in our state."

These Clydesdale horses are breathtakingly beautiful.  I watched them prance perfectly through a crowd, complete with yells and screams coming from a nearby midway, and a band playing rock-n-roll at the bandstand.

I took pictures of the process of un-hitching this team and a video of the Dalmatian being helped off the big wagon.

Yes, this is me! I took a "selfie" because I happened to have on a red shirt and it looked like I was part of the crew. I wish!



 I took a lovely video of these horses parading back to their home-base horse stall area.  You can view this video by clicking the link below. You may need to have a Facebook account to view it.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=275887645937785&set=vb.135416786651539&type=2&theater

 I love the feathering on the fetlocks of Clydesdale horses, as seen here. You won't find many of this breed of horses on an Amish farm, mainly because of this feathering.  Imagine what they look like after getting into a cockle-burr patch.

Clydesdale horses were "bred up" over the years as a carriage horse, with long legs for transporting loaded wagons quickly.  Belgians and Percheron horses were traditionally bred with shorter, heavy boned legs for strength in pulling plows and doing field work.

 Nowadays, you will find many Percheron and Belgian horses have evolved (selective breeding) into "Hitch Horses" with long slender legs, ideal for the show ring.  I'll show some pictures of that in my next blog post.

My own Percheron team is more the old-fashioned type of thick-bodied heavy-legged horses made for pulling a plow.  I prefer the old style but don't get me wrong, I love to go see these amazing creatures at the State Fair.

 While I was watching, snapping pictures and taking videos, I overheard a young couple talking to their children beside me. They were very friendly people and had three cute daughters. I heard them telling their little girls that the big horse nearest me was raised by their grandfather.

I told them politely, that I'm sorry to be eaves-dropping but did I hear you say that your dad raised this beautiful horse.  The woman said, "Yes, my dad raises Clydesdale horses and sold this horse named "Fire" to Budweiser.

 I asked if I could snap a photo of her and Fire for my blog, and she was happy to oblige. Fire is one of the "Wheel Horses" the team closest to the wagon and the biggest.  She told me that although her dad doesn't live in Iowa, she and her husband live here.  They came to the fair not knowing they would see their family horse, Fire, but were pleasantly surprised when they recognized him.

Fly By

 Crop dusters fly over the Nye homestead.

We had a fly by spaying the other day.  I was out cutting weeds in the pasture and all at once a low flying plane came out of nowhere.  I enjoyed watching it and took a few pictures before the smell got the best of me.  I headed inside with my grandsons, until it got quite outside again. In the evening, my wife and I decided that it would be a great time for a campfire/smores fest.

 Our grandsons, Alex and Ezra totally agreed!  The boys wanted to sit up on Karm and Coke first.  We noticed that no flies were bothering the horses.  Very unusual. 
 Ezra suggested that grandpa ought to get up on Karm too.  I climbed on a concrete block to get on my Percheron mare, which was fine until I jumped down and caught the corner of the block with my shin.  Ouch!

While enjoying the campfire, my wife commented that it was a perfect evening, with no flies or bugs.  It didn't occur to us until later that the fly by, spray-plane had killed off all the bugs in our area.





Fortunately, fire-flies were unaffected.  My grandsons spent over an hour catching and storing them in a jar they used as a nightlight at bedtime.

Grandpa Horse

Yep, I'm a grandpa and I love it!  My little grandchildren love horses, like me, and want me to be the horse at times.  My old knees aren't having as much fun as Lyla and Kinley are.  You can see my little granddaughters have the concept of hitching up a team of horses by the picture below.  They hitched a team to this wagon, which by the way is a load of more horses.

 These blond horses were my first draft team.  I bought a pair of sisters that were Palomino/Belgians from an Amishman in our community and started raising colts with them. One of the mares had a bad hip and was soon replaced by her own daughter. They were Lucy and Sally originally then after Lucy passed on, her daughter Babe became Sal's teammate.  Babe had her own colts that became my horse grandchildren.

My daughter Bethany is riding double on Sal, with my son Dallas. (Picture taken about 17 years ago) This photo was shot only a few weeks after the other and you can see how fast this colt was growing.  I sold these colts at the sale barn and a few years later I saw them all grown up at the county fair.  I think they recognized me... well, I recognized them anyway!

 My current team of draft mares are related also, Karma is Coke's aunt.  The Amishman I bought Karma from still has Coke's mom, Kerry.  Kerry used to be Karma's teammate but was much shorter, so, Coke makes a better teammate for Karm.  You can see what a great match they are.

Karma (on right) is an aunt to Coke

Harness Shop

 There is nothing like walking into an Amish harness shop.  As soon as you walk in, a rich smell of leather mixed with harness oils and a scent of horses greets you.

If you are a horse person I promise you will be in paradise.  Most shops, like the one pictured above, sell items from saddles to horse wormer, brushes, hoof picks, blankets, bits and a million other such things. Even if your not a horse person, I believe you will enjoy the experience.  Go in and ask if they would be willing to make a custom leather belt, most will.

There are at least three harness shops in the Kalona, Iowa area alone.  I make a point of going to all three even though I have my favorite. (I won't say which one) The shop east of Kalona a few miles and then south on a gravel road has mostly bio-harness.  A nylon covered with a very durable synthetic coating. They also specialize in show harness.

 The shop pictured above is in town, straight north of the Casey's General Store. That is a mostly leather harness shop and happens to be the first place I did business with, when I first bought a team of horses.

A third harness shop specializes in nylon harness, and is located north of the leather harness shop, several miles on a gravel road (the road jogs west a little at one point.)

My two favorite harness makers are now deceased. One of them had a shop a few miles from my home and was one of the kindest men I have ever met.  He was full of horse wisdom and told great stories, many of which appear in my novel, Under the Heavens.  
I am saving his best story for my sequel, about an amazing pony.

My other favorite harness maker told me that he went to grade school with my wife's grandfather.  He was a nylon harness man and also was a very kind, wise horseman, with great stories.  Both of these men I used as examples for my Grandpa character in my novel, so if you read my book, know that there really are men like him out there in Amish communities.

I took a single harness in to this last man mentioned one time, to be repaired.  He told me that it may take a while to fix it and wondered if I had any other errands to run while he worked on it.  I did, so after spending an hour and a half in Kalona, I came back to check on his progress.  He was just finishing up when I got there and then spent what seemed like 5 minutes figuring before he gave me my total bill.  I was getting nervous about the price!  He finally looked up at me and asked, "Does $1.75 sound alright?"  I told him that it sounded awful cheep.  He replied, "Well, I didn't use much material, it was mostly labor."  Don't let me lead you astray, I doubt it will be that cheep when you go in to get a leather belt these days.

Check out Amish Horses Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AmishHorses
Under the Heavens, on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Under-Heavens-Thomas-Nye/dp/1936746794/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390142726&sr=1-1&keywords=under+the+heavens+thomas+nye

Grandchild Artwork

        My grandchildren know that I love horses!  My granddaughter Lyla was with her mother at a store and saw a packet of horse stickers, she asked her mom to buy them.  When they got home she had made up her mind that she was going to make a horse picture for her grandpa.  My daughter told me that Lyla wanted her to send me this collage in the mail.  I like how she has put everything together, especially the way she put a saddle on one horse.  Lyla is my horse girl, I'm afraid she has the same bug I have.  I am including a picture of Lyla sitting on Coke, even though this picture has appeared in an earlier post.

        My grandson Alex is my scientist.  He studies books about sea creatures, especially sharks, whales and sea turtles.  He drew this picture for me, I think it is a Percheron.  I am also adding a repeat picture of Alex and myself.  We took a horse drawn wagon ride a few weeks ago, at our place.

This little horse picture was on the envelope.

Mail Order Barn

        I got up early this morning and drove about 30 miles to my friend Kenny's place, where I buy most of my hay.  My trusty little time-machine S-10 pickup has 26 bales on it.  I drive this far because Kenny always sells me top quality grass hay, cheaper than I can find it anywhere close to home, and he is a great guy too!

        This time I took some pictures of his barn and asked him some questions about it.  He told me that his wife's Grandpa built this barn from a kit, he thinks was ordered out of a Sears catalog.  I have never heard of that!  He didn't know when it was built but guessed in the 20s or 30s.  He told me that each board came with a stamped number on it, so that a person could follow pre-printed directions.  Kenny has been told that four other barns just like this one were built nearby and this is the only one of those four left.  It seems that the arched roof was a weakness, that is until Kenny's grandpa-in-law took matters into his own hands and reinforced the rafters as seen below.  He also added these dormers which also was part of a plan to strengthen the structure.  That old guy is a man to be proud of!  People like him are what this country was built on.

       This beautiful old building and many like it across America need to be protected, they are irreplaceable.  Much of the hay stored in this mow (or loft) will come home to my place for Karm and Coke's winter chow.

       For more old barn photos check out my Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/AmishHorses 

      Click on this link and look for my photo album "Barns" don't forget to "Like" my page while there!