Life on the Farm, some first hand experience

[SideHillnDirtPoor]

                   We are a machine culture, granted, and most of us have zero comfort around big animals now.  Well, this is Peak Oil central, and maybe you better get some comfort with 'em.  Unless you intend to one day use your own muscles alone as your power source.  It can and is done.  I wouldn't choose it.  For a little garden, okay.  For a farm - no way. 

                    the ONE thing that "Jeromie" said that bears repeating, Time and Time Again is this..................  In 1930 We had the "Option" to go backwards in technology.............  Every farm still had a team, and every farm still had people that knew how to work that team............
   It didn't make a "Shit of difference if fuel was only a nickle a gallon..  You didn't have a nickle to spend...........

I would caution that if you want to build resiliency into your rural life, you better learn to work animals.  Apparently this is just one step two much for most people.  Working animals is a skill and an art, and can be tough to learn.  It is so much easier to just turn on a machine and go, but ultimately you are fooling yourself if you think you can be independent with tractors and other diesel machinery as your power source.  I'm not saying you should never incorporate machines.  I'm just saying they better not be your only "skill".  If all you can do is run a tractor, you have not covered your ass and are not operating sustainably.

                       In 1930 A full 46% of the population was involved in Agriculture... A good 90 % of that number still knew how to work horses.  With Less Than 1% of the population involved in Ag today,  Just how Screwed are we............ ??

As for another excerpt of some of the difficulties encountered as someone green learning to work animals in a machine culture, take today.  Gotta plow about 4 acres of garden in, turn in the "trash" from the growing season to break down.  Back when we started, we were eagerly sold a big, beautiful new Amish built sulky plow with the state-of the art  bottom and told by the local rep (not Amish) "your team (two horses) can pull this through sod no problem."  Great!  I dropped $3100 on the thing.  Guess what - it has never really worked for us.  Turns out it's at least a four horse unit under our conditions, better five or six.  I gave it another shot today, as our ground is getting more mellow, with our three big heavies.  Still no go.  I'm putting the thing on the market, unloading it at a loss (if anyone will buy it, which is doubtful.)  I never expect to have the horsepower to pull it properly.  The moral?  If you want to know what equipment to use, find someone who has used it under your local conditions.  Even the Amish, when they were out this way this spring, couldn't believe how hard it was to pull their plow through our sod/soil.  But i did later come across some

                      When I was a Young man, there were still a bunch of people that had worked horses, many born before the turn of the last century. Today, I can count the number of people that actualy use there horses daily (not including the horse pullers) on 1 hand.......  far as I'm concerned, We Are (unable to think of a better term)...............Fucked

How to survive the lifestyle?  Again, try your damndest to forge community.  And I don't mean a bunch of people within a half-hour's drive, I mean a bunch of folks right there within walking distance at most, and possibly even under the same roof.       

                                    And If It Isn't in an area of small Agricultural holdings.................  You are still screwed. Believe me....... I know the Feeling.....!!

Want an excellent insight into the communal style of doing rural life without modern technology to rely on?  Read Brende's, "Better Off." The story of a young couple going to live alongside the Amish, by Amish means,

                           I asked some old order Amish about the group that they stayed with....... Somewheres in the midwest they said....  Minimalites they called them.........

[SideHillnDirtPoor]

We've got a little 20 acre farm in the middle of Scandinavia and I agree it is hard work but it is a fantastic lifestyle. My tractor is a 1961 Ford 'Fordson' SuperMajor that still runs like a top.

                           You couldn't have bought a better tractor if you tried..........   I have the "Power Major" that my Grandparents bought, the month after I was born, June 1959. It came with a set of 3-16's (plows) and was the only big tractor that we had untill we bought a "Leyland" in 1977.  One really neat thing about all those "English Tractors", the fuel tank held enough fuel to do a hard days (8 to 10 hours) work .  The  966 and 1066 farmalls would burn in an hour what my major burns in a day.    I burn used hydraulic oil (filtered) and transmission oil in mine all the time. With the "Low Sulfur Fuel" that we have now, "Non Detergent Oil" is a good idea anyways, as it replaces the "Lubricity" that isn't in the new fuels.  The only problem I have with my tractor is getting parts, as the "Major" series were a thorn in Fords side, and they were more than happy to quit carrying parts for them.  The parts are readily avalible from Britian but the shipping costs is a killer.

                 I power an "American # 2 sawmill" with a 56 inch blade with mine too, left hand feed allows me to run it right off the PTO. Have to watch those big logs tho....  Ain't to hard to stall the tractor (55 horse) out..  If you get feedin too fast.

[vinekeeper]

I know a woman who bought a portable sawmill. She makes a living from her woods. She does mushroom log innoculations, raises herbs, grows ginseng and goldenseal, and is now doing lumber and hopes to get set up to sell it. She's amazing.

She is my hero!  Sight unseen ... she is the model of my dreams.

[Grower]

I'll let her know.

She's also a sweet know-it-all, and anal about records, but she's a great person and I admire her gumption. Stands about 5'3" and cocky as hell.

[teotwawkian]

                           You couldn't have bought a better tractor if you tried.......... 

I spent about six months doing research before we bought it. Our requirements included a front loader and a cab. If I could have found a 1964 version with these I'd have bought it instead. But the '61 does just fine.

One thing I intend to add is power steering. Right now it's manual and is a bear to steer. My arms ache afterwards, though it's a good workout. I found a firm in Turkey that makes power steering add-ons for a variety of old tractors and bought one of their bolt-on kits. But the loader and cab necesitated a differently shaped steering bar and the one that came with the kit needs to be modified. Fortunately a neighbor bought an entire Cincinatti Tools equipped machine shop when a local steel firm upgraded to computer controlled equipment. He and I will do the mods in Spring and add power steering.

The only other thing I'd wish for is four wheel drive. There are versions of the SuperMajor with 4WD made as an add-on by the British Roadless corporation but they are very hard to find and are snapped up quickly by collectors at a premium price. I actually got my old beast stuck in mud this May and it took my neighbors and me about 10 hours of work to get it out. We finally got it out after we filled the ditch with old clay roof tiles from our barn and pulled it with his 35 HP Massey-Ferguson 135 tractor from the same era.

For folks that worry about diesel becoming prohibitively expensive there is always wood gas. 2/3 of our farm is pine and fir forest. Scandinavia used wood gas during WWII as a gasoline and diesel replacement. Here is a Youtube video showing a Swedish guy's Fordson running on wood gas -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF_zFimqTXw (External Embedding Disabled)

[the Black Hunter]

SideHill - You are right about the situation with teamsters, however, i do not consider this the biggest hurdle.  As I said, I learned it myself by doing mostly relying on books.  With a mentor, you could learn it even better, and quicker.  I offer lessons, for instance.  At any rate, for those that want to do this, my point is, it can still be done in relatively short order (not video-game quick, but relatively quick in real time - a couple of years to become fairly natural with it.)

The biggest hurdle, absolute #1 hands-down in my mind is the almost complete dismantling of true human community we have affected in the industrial age.  Not only do we not have real community, I do not even detect a true desire for it anymore - even amongst those who would like to pursue a lifestyle akin to what i'm attempting along with my partner.  People simply do not get how badly we are going to need each other - on hand, every day.

I can't say it too many times.  If you don't have community in this type of life, you will have hardship and misery.  Period.  As far as i'm concerned, this is JOB #1.  Reforge community.  Find the right folks.  If you have to sell everything and relocate to do it, then sell everything and relocate.  All the other jobs, trials, skills to learn, etc. are trivial by comparison to this one.

As far as being "fucked" goes, my take is Carolyn Baker's (you should check her site - great articles.)  Which is, in a nutshell:  "There are no more chances at solutions.  We are down to the wire of options for individuals."  In other words, make the right decisions.  Because yes, most are fucked, but not all.  The game is to make sure you aren't one of them.  And the game is on!   

[DraftLady]

Black Hunter - I couldn't agree with you more about learning to work with big animals.  I'll be the first to admit that I will NEVER know everything but the time that I have spent with draft horses has taught me an immense amout about real HORSE power.  I have also had to learn to take care of these animals.  And that doesn't mean changing the oil every 3000 miles.  Feet, teeth, joints.  I have been contemplating how I'm going to feed these guys when commercial feed is no longer available.  I have plans - don't know how they will work out but at least I have plans.  I'm still working on it.  I'm planning on a test plant of oats next year.  I know I can grow corn.  The question is - can I grow enough to feed them.  I don't have a baler but I have plans for a manual one-person baler.  Maybe could be rigged for a horse.   But I'm definitely going to need feed/food in the winter for them.   But let's put that into perspective.  If it is a one-person baler, how in the world do you put up enough hay for the winter (avg. 6 months or 24 weeks) when it takes a bale a week per horse?  There are other chores to be done besides someone walking around all day putting up maybe 1 bale day (dependent up on production).  Let's say you even get 4 bales a day.  It will take a village to survive.  Your thoughts on community are spot on! 
   On another note you had earlier - physically working all day can feel good BUT as your body ages - it hurts mostly.  Things become very manual.  I understand our desire to create more automated machines.  Workouts are a great idea.  Build muscle that you need so you don't hurt the ligaments and tendons that take the stress. 

Draftlady

[the Black Hunter]

Yeah... we've got a lot of the significant details of pre-industrial type survival more or less figured out with significant experience in many.  What is freaking me out right now is how isolated we all are.  Not good.  Things function best around here when there are many hands and many minds.

As for your drafts, do you have any experience with the old sickle-bar horse mowers?  I put up a barn full of hay cut from the verges of the roads this year with mine.  (The mower cost me $120 before rebuild.)  It was there for the taking, all i had to do was cut it.  We rake it with an old  dump-rake ($150), collect it on a wagon with a frame and net of old baler-twine and put it up loose.  Loose hay being the way it was done, of course, before balers.  But again, this takes help to get it done in reasonable time -yes. 

Those old mowers could probably be repaired from scrap and a simple coal forge if used with respect, for ones' lifetime.  You want to cut the quiet roads, mind-you, and not just for the sake of avoiding traffic - the soil along the busy roads is often sodden with lead from decades of emissions.  We live in a bloody chemical soup!  You can also make deals with people with hayfields, too.  You do the cutting and other work for a percentage of the take.  In the old days around here (high plains), the heavies were set free into pasture in the winter, so the old timers tell me.  They got no supplementary feed all winter!  In the spring they were down a couple hundred maybe, but they were otherwise okay.  They were fed-up and put back to work.  I'm not saying this is ideal, by any stretch.  I'm sure some died.  But if you made sure they were a bit fat all summer... horses are way tougher than many of the folks who baby them today think (I mean, some people have a suit of clothes for all conditions for their horses - ridiculous!)   

The body needs some extra attention if you use it all day, no doubt.  If i don't stick to some kind of regular after-hours physical regimen, I start "getting old."  I plowed an acre with the horses today, for example.  I'll be doing some stretching tonight - working the lines in tight little fields for a number of hours is both a rugged and precision job that translates to tight muscles.  If you don't do something about this, it will only get worse.  Some of the books I learned to be a teamster from suggest that you needn't be particularly fit to work horses.  I dunno.  I think you'd have a tough time doing this stuff if you weren't pretty physically competent.  Of course, you'd get fit fast doing it.  If everyone farmed with horses or oxen - not fooled around here and there, but actually did regular work this way - there would be little or no problem with obesity! 

[graveday]

Black Hunter, I vote you most likely latocer to succeed, come teotwawki.  The bit about outfits for horses, yes, but not all are big, beefy, draft horses.  My wife and daughter just remembered they had to blanket her horse.  All he does is do dressage and jumping, and she trimmed him in order for him to be better ride in winter.  Obviously, I have little weight in this matter, as I love the look of shaggy horses in winter.  This is just too precious, but it is getting my daughter through puberty.  Problem is I look like a piece of cake after putting a horse in a trailer or jumping one almost four feet at fourteen.
I agree heartily about needing, and wanting, more like minded folks around, with skills, to accomplish my vote.

About the chemical soup we live in:  We are a chemical soup, and I hope we have the ability to adjust, long term, and of course, short term, to the conditions we meet.  Ice ages seemed to be no obstacle, now we get to check out warming.

I also agree about stretching, and I think it should happen morning and night.  I swear I am trying to make it so.

[the Black Hunter]

I don't know much about riding horses, although i did a fair bit of it earlier in life and once participated in a cattle drive - I occasionally ride the heavies.  I always wondered why they trim horses!  Sure, you need some clothes if you're trimmed. I too like the hairy look on horses - nothing like a team of Clydes galloping through the snow in winter, hair all over - glorious!

On the Indian reserves, i have seen plenty of normal horses toughing it out under all sorts of conditions.  And we had feral horse herds nearby here for years, and this is one tough place some years.  Think Mongolia.

The part i am having trouble surviving is the interim period.  I was definately born a couple centuries too late.  Nothing that has ever, ever really interested me has been anything of real practicality in the world of today, not even when I was a little kid.  Cobbling together a dollar when I need to (like now - off farm season!) from the grim palate of industrial choices out there today is almost more than I can stomach.  Obviously, I like to work.  Cutting trees, building shelters, making fires, hunting, gathering, training/working animals - doing it with your hands or basic tools on a human scale - this is work for a person.  Not the stupifying shit we're mostly offered up today.  That's always been my cross to bear.  Surviving in this ghastly industrial situation as a walking anachronism.

I wish someone could tell me how better to do that - not physically, but mentally! 

We may be "more likely to succeed" if we can forge community.  Thing is, bare survival is not our goal, for anything more than a short term.  We know plenty of the right people.  I don't think they "get" where we're at today.  Most young adults out of college are acting as though it's the same old apple of a world their parents raped had. 

[FarmTeam]

Well Capella, thank you for a great post.   I have truly enjoyed reading this entire thread.   We learned draft horses from nothing to a good grasp in about three years, with much mentoring from a dear Amish friend.  Most skills have taken less time for a solid grasp.. but some remain absent.   Not a true herbalist in sight....   For the most part, each skill is simple enough, an interlocking nest of relatively simple things.... its the overwhelming number of simple things that is so awe inspiring.. So much to learn.   So, in the end I agree with Black Hunter and others.. its the lack of community that scares me in the dark hours of the worry nights.  Well, if anyone wants a Capella type experience in the upper midwest, read about us in help wanted.. we surely need the help on our homestead here in southern Wisconsin, and have many skills to teach and resources to share.   The challenges are coming, best wishes with all your preparations.

[graveday]

You could almost say it comes down to community and immunity, along with munitions and monies.  Heh.

[unrepentantcowboy]

I have this awful feeling that the day will come when I need help getting crops planted, cultivated and harvested but have no money to pay people.

I wonder if people are so conditioned to valuing everything in terms of money, that they'll see the need to literally work for food, fuel and shelter.

Because if they can't make that leap, we're going hungry.

[Capella]

Don't worry. I think when people actually go hungry, they'll make the leap to working for food pretty quickly.

[rbrgs]

I'm still going to worry.  I don't see many people willing to work for food, and even if they are, there won't be food until AFTER they've worked for a season.  And what if it's already July?