As some of you may know, I was accepted as part of the inaugural class of the Wendell Berry Farming Program and began classes this fall. Now that I’m on winter break I’m hoping to share some of the writing (and learning) I’ve been doing in classes and in the fields of Henry County.
Here’s an essay I wrote for my Draft Animal Power class on why farmers would consider using draft power in 2019.
-Rachel
——————————————————
The Path to Agrarian Independence
My grandfather paid his way through college logging on his family farm in Appalachia with a team of mules. Now, over fifty years later, I’m in college to learn just that- along with a few other things. What was common knowledge to him now plays a role in my own education, as I learn more each week about how to manage a team. I do not know of anyone in that holler still using draft power, but it was common in the 1950s. The first tractor on his farm was the one he purchased in 1995, although his own father had retired the team years before, along with cutting back his own workload later in life.
Both my grandfathers were raised on farms, and driving a team was second nature. In less than seventy-five years we have lost the ability to use draft power on our farms or to understand large animals. Most people notice cows as the black blobs you whiz by on country roads rather than a team of oxen. Horses are for racing or rodeos. The only exposure to draft animals are compliments of the Budweiser Clydesdales.
What did we lose on our farms, in our communities, even within our own personal rhythms when we unhitched a team for the last time? Perhaps more importantly, what do we gain by returning draft animals to the farm? How will it change the way we operate? Most importantly, is it worth it? Or are draft animals simply an obsolete past, outdated technology, aging quietly alongside rusting equipment. Might it be possible to fit these animals back into our farms and homesteads?
Recently, I recalled that my idea of the afterlife is quite different than anyone else’s I have ever met. One day in class we were discussing the intersection of agriculture and religious themes and the possibility that farming is part of the curse from Genesis, where Adam and Eve are removed from the garden and forced to work the land. I finally had to speak up. My own belief is that at the end of the age we will all be returned to earth to fix the mess we have made. We will spend the rest of eternity giving it a second shot by cutting back briars, breaking up concrete, and picking up faded beer cans from creek beds (I could definitely spend forever doing that).
Floating on clouds is not really my style. I also believe humans are designed for meaningful work. We feel most fulfilled when we are creating, fixing, and growing (not sitting behind a desk). We were meant to do physical, tactile work. So long as I do not have a sore knee in eternity, I do not think I will view it as a punishment at all.
In our society work has become something to avoid, rather than simply doing what needs to be done. Wendell puts it this way, “The growth of the exploiters’ revolution on this continent has been accompanied by the growth of the idea that work is beneath human dignity, particularly any form of hand work. We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from.” (Berry 37) We shift manual labor onto the shoulders of migrant workers who are unlucky enough to be born on the wrong side of the border. Other manual labor goes to the rugged hands of blue-collar workers who, supposedly, were not smart enough to get out of their hometown, even though many of them are making more money than their highly educated peers, and quite satisfied in their careers.
Keeping livestock, no matter what species or for what purpose, is work, and draft animals are no exception. It is, however, meaningful work that gives you a purpose to get out of bed on a cold morning, and makes you feel more at peace at the end of the day, knowing everything, and everyone, has been tended to. Chores are redundant. That is why they are called chores and differentiated from other work. The animals need to be fed at the same time, everyday, for as long as you both shall live. Just the word “chores” conjures up images of the chart posted on our refrigerator growing up, complete with metallic star-shaped stickers to signify my success (or lack thereof) to my siblings and me.
In the 21st century repetition is only tolerated until we can find some algorithm or robot to do it for us, and free us from the bondage of inefficiency. We have a complete inability to do a mundane task without utilizing technology to entertain us while we toil. When is the last time you did something physical, without music or a podcast, and worked uninterrupted for an hour? Did you get bored? I should note here that there’s nothing wrong with being bored.
Boredom is the predecessor of creativity and imagination. We never allow ourselves, or heaven forbid, our children, to become bored. It is in that space where we learn to entertain ourselves, which is a mental skill, and just like any other, has to be exercised to stay viable. The more “boredom time” you allow yourself, the sooner you will fall into true contemplation. Sometimes it is worry or stress, which is the one we’re all accustomed to, but not always. There is also hope which is just another form of imagination. We only continue farming through lean years because we’re able to imagine the bounty to follow. Our ability to imagine better circumstances, to invent our own hope is what keeps us from the clutches of despair in a career where things are rarely in our control.
There is also a quiet contentment when you do not particularly have to think about anything at all. Filling up water troughs, or carrying buckets down a barn aisle way, as you have a million times before, you do not have to think about it. You simply exist, and do the task in front of you. Now, I must admit, it is easy for me to become distracted. It is rather vigilant work to stay focused (or bored) in times like these, but I feel that the reward is worth it. Teamsters have practiced with the best of them, simple, repetitive work. They have learned to embrace a season of boredom and revel in the following creativity.
In a world enamored with entertainment and put off by snooze buttons, relying on draft animals instills rhythm and focus in a caretaker’s day. This leaves them not only more productive, but actually, more fulfilled. Eventually, work even the “boring” stuff, becomes something to enjoy instead of something to avoid. Daily chores, rhythms, patterns, along with the ability and self-discipline to embrace work make us better teamsters, more importantly, better humans and strengthen our society.
Rural communities are skeletons of what they once were before tractors and farms got bigger, absentee landowners bought the farm across the road and the neighbor’s kids stopped playing ball in the street because of the traffic. Thus idea of rural communities has become just that: an idea. Folks using draft power need a whole network of people. They have got their favorite local feed store, a tack shop in town, blacksmiths and yoke makers, breeders, trainers and fellow teamsters. Although this network is quite a bit smaller, and more widely spread than before, it is relatively still intact. John Deere does not do much for the local economy. Neither does buying diesel fuel at the gas station up the road. It does not build a sense of community either. If we are using farming as part of an attempt to revitalize rural areas, we can not continue to rely single handedly on the machinery that dismantled them. As you can see in the graph above, right around the time farmers switch to using tractors the number of farms decreases dramatically while the size of farms surges. In another graph in the same publication it shows farm labor plummeting while farm production increases are slim in comparison. What we don’t see in any graph is the knowledge lost, skills that became worthless overnight and rural people standing on a city street at a loss as to what on earth comes next. I realize that the world will never be the same, there is no going back. But are there some remnants that we can hold onto in our own communities and cities in the 21st century? Are there not lessons to be learned here? Choosing to invest in draft power has the ability to not only build up our communities but to strengthen us as individuals.
Choosing to incorporate draft power gives a farmer back their independence. They are no longer a slave to the bank, to which they owe the note on their equipment, or an oil market halfway across the globe, or the price of metal and plastic to build the thing, or the company that’s hopefully still manufacturing replacement parts. They’ve thrown off the chains that bind them to industry and instead put their hope in their fellow man and beast.
Since the early 1970’s the mantra, coined by Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, has been “Get big or get out.” Reflecting the promise that farmers would be able to turn a profit with just a few more acres, and year after year their crops inched outward. Baited by experts they produced a little more every season, and had less and less to show for it. We are more efficient as ever, yet we have no leisure time. We might feed the world but can’t provide for our own family except through the good fortune of a partner with an off-farm job. The promises made to farmers fifty years ago by Butz, and others, have no more ability to deliver today than they ever have. It’s fool’s gold, sending hardworking men and women rushing to their own demise.
Yet a teamster with enough space can grow all the feed for their own draft animals, not relying on anyone’s labor but their own. Draft animals are refreshingly independent, in contrast to the agricultural system we’ve built completely reliant on fossil fuels and subject to the whim of international relations. Nearly everyone has heard the generic statistic that food travels about 1,500 miles from farm to plate, but I don’t hear anyone asking how far their fuel has traveled, or how many pit stops it’s had to make.
For a farmer with an aim of real sustainability draft animals are the only self-sustaining option, harvesting their own fuel, and with the ability to reproduce. I recently overheard a long-time horse logger say “I’ve never gone into the woods and found a baby skid steer.” When your tractor breaks down you have to buy another, which means more metal, plastic, and rubber being manufactured, and more shipping to get it to the local dealer.
Draft animals fit into the natural order. They are part of the entire system we as farmers are trying to encourage. They’re adding fertility and organic matter to the soil, trimming grasses, they can provide milk, and eventually meat, they’ll decompose into the soil instead of rusting in the back forty... they know how to adapt to your landscape and the farm itself understands this relationship. Rubber tires and diesel exhaust fumes are still completely foreign to the microorganisms in the soil and the plants we’re trying to grow and harvest on the surface. They have no reference for technology that’s only been heavily adopted in the last seventy five years.
But bacteria and fungi aren’t the only ones that understand a biological relationship. Humans have had relationships with equines and bovids for thousands of years. There’s a reason stables are still full of ten year old girls getting horseback riding lessons. There’s a reason you’re still spending your hard earned money on dog food even though your pooch is a couch potato instead of a hunter. Our pets typically aren’t holding up their end of the bargain in regards to the agreement we made upon domestication, and yet we keep them around. It’s because animals are good for us. Even though we can’t see them working they are. No matter what kind of day I’ve had it all goes out of focus as a mule muzzle or a wet steer nose fills my field of vision. Animals keep us calmer, happier, and some studies are showing evidence that they may keep us healthier too. Machines don’t do that. Machines make us cranky and impatient and just encourage anxiety and frustration because there are no limits.
When we surround ourselves with machines we begin to forget who we are. We begin to forget that we aren’t machines. We work later, and drive faster and further and we expect ourselves, and the people around us, to be perfect, like our laptops and cell phones and cars, obeying every order.
Bigger doesn’t always mean better. There are now thousands of tiny homes popping up across the country. These homeowners know that it isn’t about the size of the house but of quality, and are forced to get creative to utilize small spaces. Likewise, small farms, the kind that can be managed by draft animals, are forced to get creative too. They’re combining sheep flocks with their cow herd, and running chickens over the garden to terminate a cover crop. Smaller farms can often end up being more productive than their neighboring fields with expanses of corn and soy. Draft animals apply healthy limits. On a tractor a farmer can work from dawn to dusk, there is no creature to slow down the pace. There is no animal reminding him that life is out of balance.
Farmers are feeling more and more pressure to produce, and they’re planting a few more acres every year, while being less able to keep up. Farmers have the highest suicide rate out of any profession including veterans. In an article published by the Guardian in 2018 author Debbie Weingarten gives some harrowing statistics. “A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggested that male farmers in 17 states took their lives at a rate two times higher than the general population in 2012 and 1.5 times higher in 2015. This, however, could be an underestimate, as the data collected skipped several major agricultural states, including Iowa. Rosmann and other experts add that the farmer suicide rate might be higher, because an unknown number of farmers disguise their suicides as farm accidents.” (Weingarten) Farmers have been lost in the shuffle and often passed over by mental health campaigns.
There is no one, no animal, nothing, telling us to slow down. It’s actually, quite the opposite. Bankers, universities and government agencies are actually encouraging folks to produce even more, completely oblivious to the chaos that it creates. A person can only take so much of that. Eventually you break. In an agricultural world that seems to be spinning out of control draft animals bring us back to a point of balance. They don’t allow us to go too far, and I think what a lot farmers need right now is some pressure on the lines keeping them steady.
Draft animals connect us to the world, to what is real, and to ourselves, but also to each other. When I began quilting I got to finish a project that my great-grandmother had started, even though she died long before I was born. As I stitched her quilt top together I felt like I knew her, like we were becoming acquainted, touching the same dusty-blue, floral, cotton, only fifty years apart. Farming with draft animals is also how we can get acquainted with our own history. Now, when I visit with my poppy we talk about the mules that they used to farm with and he’ll tell me stories about logging or cutting hay, or show me some of the equipment still hiding in corners of barns and sheds.
The world was built on the backs of men, oxen, horses, and mules. We owe it to these creatures to keep these relationships intact, to keep up our end of the deal. We are the reason that these animals exist and we have a responsibility to them and to our own culture and family histories to find a place in our world to continue laboring alongside these animals.
When we unhitched a team for the last time, be it horses, mules, or oxen, we gave up our independence from the banks and oil companies, our ability to produce (and reproduce) our own power, and to sustain it by our own efforts. We sacrificed our skills and the trades of harness makers and blacksmiths, trainers and teamsters. We traded in our companions, a working relationship between beast and man, intact for centuries, and when I look around I struggle to see what we’ve gained. All I see are overworked farmers being underpaid and undermined, forsaking culture, heritage, and history for a promise that cannot be kept.
So, dear friends, let us take up the lines, grab the goad from the wall, oil the harness and dust off the yoke. Now is the time to return to the fields with our teams beside us, for what we create is much more than cabbage and hope. With each turn at the end of the furrow we carve out a place for humans to remember their purpose, to sink hands into the soil and become fully alive, and to create life, beginning on our farms and stretching out from the edges of the field, into the city streets, beyond rivers and across creeks, and enveloping the earth to be renewed.