Of Horses and Men
Story by Jerry Wilson Photography by Bobbi and Steve Olson |
 |
 |
| Click on the above image for a slide show of images by Bobbi and Steve Olson |
During the Great Depression, farm families had to be thrifty, inventive and
hardworking, just to stay alive. That applied to horses too. For my grandfather’s
team, there was little time to stand idly about, munching precious hay. In spring
it was plowing and planting, in summer cultivating and making hay, and in fall
the harvest.
Once the crops were in, when neighboring horses settled in for a well-deserved
rest, Grandpa hitched his big black draft horses to a maintainer blade. For
$2 a day – $1 for Grandpa and $1 for the horses – the three of them
passed the cold days of winter grading county roads or pushing off snow.
But it wasn’t all work, at least
not for the men. Now and then neighbors got together for pulling contests, which
Grandpa claimed his horses often won. I was born too late for that. I only heard
the tales.
For every horse that does a day’s
work today, a thousand enjoy a life of leisure – playthings on hobby farms,
saddled for occasional weekend trail rides, running free on ranches where they
never see a saddle, let alone a harness, graceful but idled icons of a bygone
age. Not so on a handful of farms where some of eastern Nebraska’s finest
and best-trained horses and mules reside. And not so for the horses and mules
at the Nebraska State Antique Tractor and Horse Plowing Bee at Petersburg.
Don’t let the name fool you.
A lot more than plowing goes on the last weekend of August on Charles and Lucilla
Huisman’s farm west of town. There’s oat threshing, corn shelling,
log and shingle milling, blacksmithing, a parade of horses and antique tractors,
a tractor pull, a flea market that even included a kitchen sink, an antique
auction, a country music jam, and plenty to eat. But the horses and mules draw
the crowd.
There’s something elemental
about watching a man and a perfectly-matched pair of mules or a double team
of red-roan Belgians work like a synchronized and finely-tuned machine. No diesel
fumes, no deafening rumble or roar, just the dull plod of great hooves on mellow
earth, the jingle of harness, the sigh of a shiny moldboard slicing a strip
of sod, the gentle urgings of the driver, the barely audible straining of the
team.
What is it about keeping antique crafts
alive that so inspires a man that he would spend his spare time, and probably
his spare cash too, maintaining thousand-pound animals that eat like a horse,
breaking and training them to respond to his commands, grooming them with meticulous
care, then hauling them to a neighboring county to turn an acre of sod in the
time he could have worked 10 acres with a modern tractor and plow?
“It started back in 1981 or
1982,” said Walt Klein, chairman of the Rae Valley Heritage Association.
“A bunch of farmers who had old tractors got together. They just wanted
to plow. They added horse and mule plowing in ’85 or ’86.”
Gradually many other nearly-forgotten farm crafts fell into place. Klein used
to run the shingle mill, for example, a contraption powered by a Wood Brothers
steam tractor that slices chunks of cedar log into sweet-smelling pink roof
shingles. Now Walt is too busy as chair, so he’s turned the shingle mill
over to his son, Kert.