The Draft Horse Journal invites you to explore the online version of our magazine, the world's foremost heavy horse & mule publication. This big quarterly, approximately 200 pages per issue, has been serving the trade since 1964. We intend our web site to be the online counterpart of the magazine. If it has to do with draft horses, Belgian horses, Percheron horses, Clydesdale horses, Shire horses, Suffolk horses, Brabant Draft Horses, you'll find it here. Make this your Draft Horse Home on the web.

The Draft Horse Journal invites you to explore the online version of our magazine, the world's foremost heavy horse & mule publication. This big quarterly, approximately 200 pages per issue, has been serving the trade since 1964. We intend our web site to be the online counterpart of the magazine. If it has to do with draft horses, you'll find it here. Make this your "Draft Horse Home" on the web.

A Horse-Powered Produce Farm
by Arthur Bolduc
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Summer 2009

Over a century ago a fellow wrote a book, Ten Acres is Enough. It chronicled the trials and tribulations of a businessman and his family who turned their backs on the hand-to-mouth existence of the city in the late Nineteenth Century and bought a ten-acre farm where they grew produce and found modest prosperity, good health and security. That is all Atlee Weaver and his young family were looking for when they bought a dozen acres of land between Danville and Brinkhaven on SR 62 in Ohio eight years ago.

The once conventional Midwest family-run farm, growing livestock and grain on a four-year rotation, cannot pay the mortgage for a young couple starting out in farming today. One of the few entry-level opportunities still open in farming for a young family is produce growing.

At the time Atlee was in construction and wanted a piece of farm land where he could afford to build a home, an Amish home built for comfortable living, and raise his family, even if only a small farm.

Thirty years ago 90% of the Amish were employed on farms, today 90% have off-farm jobs or are employed in local cottage industries on their farms. Get big or get out was not for them. The Amish like to play guerrilla economics (that is, if a commodity is in oversupply, they switch to one that is in demand) on their mixed grain and livestock farms. [Read More]

Cool Squared
© Baxter Black, DVM
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Summer 2009

In the grocery store this new law now means that you will be allowed to purchase beef (and other meat) that is guaranteed to be born and raised in the United States.

Is that a consideration when you go to buy a car? A television set? A pair of boots? A tool? A tractor? Strawberries? Wine? Or gasoline? (Sorry, this last one was a joke!)

Should you? If you are in a business that sells and manufactures an American product, then you certainly hope the rest of the country prefers to buy something “Made in America.” And, in these hard economic times, buying American will benefit your neighbor’s job security as well.

Granted, origin is not always clear. For instance, Toyota’s headquarters is in Tokyo. It’s listed on the Japanese stock exchange. It is a Japanese company. They are called foreign cars. Yet they have a manufacturing plant in Alabama! Ford Motor Co.'s headquarters is in Dearborn, Michigan. It is on the New York Stock Exchange. Henry Ford invented it! Yet the Ford F150 pickup is built in Mexico!

Can both or either be labeled American under COOL regulations? I suspect there will eventually have to be ‘variations’ of COOL. One of the difficulties implementing the ‘American Label’ on beef, for example, is that packing houses process Mexican cattle that come into Texas feedlots, and use beef shipped to their plant in refrigerated trucks from packing houses in Canada.

In one days’ processing it is common to hang these carcasses side by side, for ground beef to be co-mingled and the specific origin of each to be lost. Maybe we could establish categories like, Pure American Cool, Quasi American Cool or Possibly American Cool. It would depend on the percentage of U.S. raised beef in the mix. Other factors to be considered would be the amount of Canadian grain in the ration, the number of Mexican cowboys on the ranch, or the presence of Irish whiskey behind the seat of the feedlot manager's pick-up! A lot of details remain to be worked out.

There was a restaurant in Arkansas that offered squirrel stew. It was quite popular and was always crowded. One customer inquired of the owner how they could find so many squirrels?

“Well,” said the owner, “We do have to cut it with a little mule meat. But,” he said, “only ten percent.”