[noelcmn]

[atupdate]

Tim

[goatsNdonkey]

Tim

You've got to take long steps to drive a team of Percherons from the ground, as in the first picture. I learned that some years back when I learned to drive a team at a park where I worked. I'd driven this team from the hayrack several times, but on an occasion when two colleagues were getting a plow ready to try them with, I saw how they were getting very fidgetty and took them for a short drive down the lane and around a barn and back. I'm reasonably tall, but I really had to extend my stride to keep up with their normal walk when not pulling a load!

---------- Post added 08-04-17 at 10:11 AM ----------

Here are some archival farm horse photos, taken by my mom with here Brownie box camera, which I think she got in around 1933, when she was 19. Several years ago, I scanned the original 120 film contact-print snapshots to 8mpx jpgs with an HP flatbed scanner. No correction to the scanner output, beyond conversion to BW.

I suspect this first one is from sometime in the mid-1930s, my grandfather with a team of black Percheron draft horses, who Mom (near age 90) thought looked like Dot and Dan. Note that both horses have blankets or fly wisk sheets on their backs:



This next one, showing a load of hay just arrived at the barn from the hayfield, with my grandfather on top of the load, appears to be with a different team, since one of the horses seems to have a lighter coloring around the mouth. They are probably also black Percherons, but their shiny coats make me wonder if they are another breed. If the fellow holding the team is my uncle, this could be late 1930s or even early 1940s, before my uncle went into the Army for WWII. If he's one of my grandfather's brothers, the picture could be earlier:



The barn loft has a crane with a hay hook gizmo that can be lowered down from the ridge pole. One of the horses will be used to pull the rope that raises these mechanical mouthfuls of hay up to the loft. At times my mom or her sister led that horse, while my grandfather arranged the hay up in the loft. Mom was the farm hand for some things before her little brother was big enough for some chores, and her little sister was big enough for some of those things when her brother was off at war and my Mom was married and gone from the farm.

[graeme83]

Despite living in a very horsey area I rarely make use of them in my photos, thought I would change that today and set out to capture some.

This guy was keen to have his portrait taken and came over to see what I was up too,



after taking this one,



One from a while back, I think the same horse,

[atupdate]

Found another one in my files



Tim

[ramseybuckeye]

You've got to take long steps to drive a team of Percherons from the ground, as in the first picture. I learned that some years back when I learned to drive a team at a park where I worked. I'd driven this team from the hayrack several times, but on an occasion when two colleagues were getting a plow ready to try them with, I saw how they were getting very fidgetty and took them for a short drive down the lane and around a barn and back. I'm reasonably tall, but I really had to extend my stride to keep up with their normal walk when not pulling a load![COLOR="Silver"]


.

Thanks for showing those, I love those old photos, especially when you know the history of them. Here's one from my family, my great grandpa Richard Doan is sitting at the side of the wagon petting the dog. My grandma is sitting on the back of the wagon, I thinks it's my great grandma standing to the left. My great great great grandfather Lyman Doan and my great great grandfather Richard C Doan bought the land in 1857 and 1959. Richard C built a log cabin and settled there. The house in the photo was probably built shortly after that. The phot dates around 1900. My dad was born in the house in 1920, when I was a kid an aunt and uncle lived there. I took the second photo in 2009, but since then the house and barn have been torn down and a new house is sitting there. I really don't know anything about those horses, but they probably weren't used in the fields, they don't look like draft horses. In the third photo those are definitely draft horses. Unfortunately I can't identify anyone in the photo, but I know the barn, which I think is gone. I think the man in front of the door may be my great grandfather Roy Ramsey, if so the photo was taken before 1913, as he moved to Oklahoma at that time, my grandftaher was married then and stayed in Ohio.

[goatsNdonkey]

Thanks for showing those, I love those old photos, especially when you know the history of them. Here's one from my family, my great grandpa Richard Doan is sitting at the side of the wagon petting the dog. My grandma is sitting on the back of the wagon, I thinks it's my great grandma standing to the left. My great great great grandfather Lyman Doan and my great great grandfather Richard C Doan bought the land in 1857 and 1959. Richard C built a log cabin and settled there. The house in the photo was probably built shortly after that. The phot dates around 1900. My dad was born in the house in 1920, when I was a kid an aunt and uncle lived there. I took the second photo in 2009, but since then the house and barn have been torn down and a new house is sitting there. I really don't know anything about those horses, but they probably weren't used in the fields, they don't look like draft horses. In the third photo those are definitely draft horses. Unfortunately I can't identify anyone in the photo, but I know the barn, which I think is gone. I think the man in front of the door may be my great grandfather Roy Ramsey, if so the photo was taken before 1913, as he moved to Oklahoma at that time, my grandftaher was married then and stayed in Ohio.
Attachment 365180



Attachment 365181

It's amazing to think of all the work in those fences shown in the first picture, the zig-zag split rail one and the straight log one! The horses in the first picture look pretty big to me, though maybe they weren't the team to use for the heaviest work, at least by themselves. I think that, most of the time, my grandfather just had 3 horses total: a draft horse team and, for many years, also his "courting horse," Pearl. Pearl was an all purpose horse. She could pull a buggy or a small wagon, or she could be ridden. When the crick was too high to ford any other way it was crossed riding Pearl! (There was no bridge over the crick, until my dad build one in the late 1940s.) When Pearl got too old to work, she was put out to pasture; whereas, teams might have been sold when a better or younger team was needed. For picking corn, which he did by hand, just one horse pulled the wagon alongside, trained to keep pace with my grandfather. The horses would have all known voice commands in those days.

[noelcmn]

[Des]

Red Hill Show, Victoria. K-S2 + FA 43

[ramseybuckeye]

I needed a longer lens for these Amish horses

[atupdate]

Plowing Demonstration



Tim

[goatsNdonkey]

I needed a longer lens for these Amish horses

When I was little, in the 1950s, my grandfather no longer had horses, though the tack was still hanging up in the barn. So I never got to see him work with them and only know about it from family pictures and stories. One of the things I like about seeing our local small Amish community's horses is that I know that everything about how they use them would have been so familiar to my grandfather. He did get a tractor at some point in his later farming years, but I don't he and the tractor ever got along very well. I suspect that the tractor didn't understand him when he talked to it, like the horses did.

[Kerrowdown]

[gifthorse]

[gifthorse]

Playing with NIK Silver Efex