We farmers have been trying to remain calm. But we’re all stirred up, and not just because of the springy feeling in the air. It’s not just because we’re working in our greenhouses: raking beds, setting up propagation tables and heat mats, hauling in potting soil and seed packets.
No, we’re stirred up about horses. For one thing, we’ve been feeding grain all winter to our four draft horses, because they’re all at the age when a little extra in the winter helps.
Now grain is highly exciting. It’s hard for a horse to keep calm in the face of a grain feeding, and it does a farmer good to remember the order of things: which horse to halter and bring in to the stalls first. Which horse will stand nicely next to which horse, even when grain is on the way. Which horse gets a little more grain, because they’re harder keepers, and which horse gets a little less, because they’re easy keepers.
Most important is which horse goes out of the stalls first. For instance, yesterday I brought Ben out first. He went nicely over to the hay waiting outside. Then I brought Molly out, not realizing she was going to race back in and check Ben’s grain bucket to make sure he hadn’t left any crumbs, either in the bucket or on the ground.
Meanwhile Moon, who I hadn’t even bothered to halter, because he went into his stall on his own, decided to come out. But I was already asking Clyde to back out of his stall, and then I had to both keep Clyde in one place and try to get Moon out of the way at the same time. Finally Moon cooperated, but I had forgotten about Molly and Clyde.
Molly was sure Clyde was going to get the grain crumbs, so she started bucking and squealing, and Clyde stopped backing, and I said “Molly, for heaven’s sake!” and chased her out of the barn, while Clyde waited for me. Then I went back for Clyde, led him out, and was getting ready to take off his halter at the barn door, when Molly decided to squeeze past back into the barn.
“Molly, you turkey!” I said, letting go of Clyde, who went forward, and didn’t want to stop for me to take off his halter because now Molly was behind him. But he finally did, and pretty soon I had four horses calmly eating hay in the barnyard.
All this is to say that grain is as exciting to horses as horses are exciting to horse farmers, which is why we farmers are all stirred up: we’re planning to buy a new team. We don’t really want to buy a new team, but our nice old horses don’t have the pep for another full garden season.
We get pretty jazzed up on our horse trips, sure that this will be the perfect team for our little farm. So far we’ve been to Connecticut to look at a giant team of Belgians, about whom my fellow farmer said, “It makes my stomach hurt just to think of those dinner-plate hooves trying to walk down our narrow garden pathways. All those heads of lettuce going crunch crunch crunch.”
We’ve also seen a pair of black Percherons, who had the opposite effect: “It makes my stomach hurt to think of asking these two little horses to pull a full hay wagon up and down our hilly fields.” Way out in western New York State, we saw two more giant teams of Belgians, and a lovely little too-expensive pair of Belgian mares.
Next we’re headed to Maine to see three more teams. Maybe one of these will be the perfect team for us! Meanwhile we visit our four perfect grain-loving horses in the barnyard, wishing they were a little younger, and reminding ourselves of just what kind of horses we’d like to have come live and work with us.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 6-March 12, 2024