Can you run a Farm with just ONE Draft Horse??

Hi everybody, today I have decided to get Ken and do a few odds and ends with him. As I'm doing these odds and end chores in this nice early spring day, I kind of want to talk a little bit about the difference between a one horse and a two horse farm. My farm here I have six horses and basically I just use the four adult horses and I have the pair of colts. If you've been watching my videos you'll see you would know all these horses that I have and have been using. But there are so many people that would like to farm on a small scale like a homestead type of thing and so they're thinking they need a team of horses or they'd like a team of horses. And I guess I'm just here telling you that so many homesteads out there or small farms, all they would need is one horse. And with the price of horses nowadays it's so much cheaper just to buy one horse. And I want to even show you today a few of the things you can do with one horse. It's just amazing what you can do with one horse. I don't usually use one horse, I use two more often than not, but sometimes it's just really handy to use one horse and sometimes I just am going to use one horse just to show you guys how valuable just a single horse could be. So today we're going to hitch on to the wagon and bring it over here to put some slab wood on. We're going to hitch on to our little trailer to take out to the corn crib and put some corn in that. And then we're also going to hitch on the stone boat and take some more posts around to the different to the spots that I need to go. So let's get to work. So we're coming into our wet, wet garden and I want to get this wagon out of here and there's no way I can come in with the skids here because I'd get it buried. I want to explain a little bit about this cart that I'm using. This cart is what I use for a team and I also use it for three horse hitch on my plow sometimes or whatever I'm doing with three horses, but it also works really good for a single horse. The shafts that I made last fall that are on right now, they're nice heavy duty shafts, which I like, but they're maybe a little bit heavier than I would like for the horse itself on their back, but it's not too bad. But it really should have a little bit of a bend to it. It makes the cart tipped up quite a lot. The seat is kind of tipped back. It's actually quite comfortable to ride, but it's just not quite as good as I would like. I could do some little bit of changes to it. So we're going to hitch on to the cart, I mean the trailer, corn trailer, and go get a little bit more corn. The other day I hitched up Ken and Buck to the cart and I don't have a jack on this trailer and I need to get one. So I've just been dropping on these blocks and it's a pretty heavy trailer too. So it's a bit of a pain to do the way I do it, but sometime I'll have to get a jack and bolt that onto this trailer. So anyways, the other day with the blocks I had Brenda go to head. So I think I'm gonna have her do that today and that way I don't have to worry about him going ahead too much and Brenda can actually back him up to me. Hi Kenny. All right, back him up a little bit. Back up, back up, back up. Just a little bit. Good. Isn't he cute? He's a good horse. Okay. for a very short period of time and it's wet again. Hey, what do you think? You think you can throw it in there easy enough? Yeah, yeah. I might have to take a step but I can do it. So the other day I brought the blocks over and I backed into it, which worked actually pretty good. But I was here, but today I'm going to leave Brenda here so she can fill it while I go load the slabs onto the wagon. And so because of that, I'm going to tie can probably just with the lines onto the crib right here and Brenda can load up the trailer. Kind of slow going this way. Well, I guess I gave my wife the hard job and I got the easy job. I got the wagon all loaded, but then she's almost loaded too. How are you coming in here? Good. You had me working today, stacking lumber, throwing corn. Good for you. Don't need to go to the gym. Good, good. And still love this job. Well, that's great. That's just about enough in there anyways. So why don't we take this over and unhitch this and hitch it back onto the wagon? I'll have to pick out some for the horses. And can I give Kenny a cob tonight since he brought it over? Sure. I'll apologize to him for calling him F.A.T. before. I think he still deserves an ear of corn. Kenny, how's it going so far? Is that going to freak him out? It will if you don't move it. It will if I do too. Oh, Kenny. Careful. He's still scared because it's still here. Careful. This is Ken being scared. Damn it. Face your fears, Kenny. Face your fears. Why don't you go on that other side and we'll hold that trail like we did before. Oh, boy. I hope it works good like it did last time. I caught that. Whoops. I didn't pull the pin. Back up here. Back up here. All I was doing was concentrating on doing what I was supposed to be doing. Wait a minute. It doesn't matter that's not under there. There we go. Okay. Try that again. Careful step. Oh. That did work good again. Thankfully, he stopped when he was supposed to. But when you do something like that, you need to pull the pin first. All right, Stepji. It's really warming up, isn't it? Yeah, it's really nice. See, you're down to your t-shirt already. Must be you're working harder than I am. Yeah, must be. You'll make up for it later. This time of year when I start working, my biggest problem is where did I put my coat? Where did I put my gloves? And then I have to go looking for them. Does anybody else have that problem? And here's the slab wood. What kind of slab wood is this everybody? Put your answer in the comments below of what kind of slab wood this is. Oh. I think Ken does beautifully singly, don't you? He does. Oh, he always has. He can go his own pace. And he doesn't have to worry about anybody else. And he's strong. The other day when I had the two black horses together, we brought over two bundles of slabs. And so obviously with just one, I just chose to grab one bundle of slabs. So that's kind of the way it is with any horse or team horses that you have in front of you. You need to know what they can pull because you don't want to have them pull more than they can handle. Now, I knew for a fact that Ken could pull this without a problem and he did. But, you know, that is one thing you have to learn when you're working horses. How much can your horses pull? Not how much can your neighbor's horse pull, but how much horses can your horses pull? And it's not that they can't pull it, but just do they have the mental mindset to be able to pull it plus the muscles in their body to pull it. A lot of horses can be very strong and yet they won't pull anything because they've been messed up in one way or another from teamsters that overdid it or just didn't do it properly. And so they can't pull much at all. And they're big, strong horses. And some horses are so small you wouldn't think they could pull anything. And it's just amazing what they can pull. So you just need to know your horses. Just a lot of it's mindset, right? With the horses. Absolutely, yeah. Just like people. Just like people, just like weightlifters, you know, they need to have it in their head, know that they can do something to be able to do it. So I'm going to unhitch from this cart and hitch on the stone boat and I need to go pound some posts. We're kind of making ruts here in your garden. Not ruts, but holes. You'll fix them and we need we need one or two on the garden. Gee gee gee gee. Oh, bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Oh, you might want to want to know why I'm parking him here. My shed's kind of full of equipment so I don't have a place to put it. So I'm going to leave this outside. But you also might wonder why I'm not on the seat while I'm backing him up. With the mud that we have, it always, all carts, all tires just go harder through the mud forward and backwards. So because I had to back him up through the mud, I decided to get off. So it'd be less weight on the cart and just easier to back up. Also, this cart is just a little bit different as to how it backs up as compared to the team on the single pole. And so he hasn't done a huge amount of backing with this cart. So that's why I chose to get off and back and walk, be on the ground while he backed in. On this coming Friday, we're planning on doing a video of continuing our basics series that we've been doing. And on Friday, we're going to be driving Ken around. I'm going to kind of teach beginners how to drive. A lot of times, even though I'm saying beginners, even intermediate people might pick up some new thoughts as far as driving. So maybe you can hope that you tune in and watch and see how we go about it. And you might learn something. And also, you might be able to teach me something by some of your comments. You might be able to give me ideas that I'm doing wrong. So that's why I'm not talking about any of that today. That'll be in a couple of days on Friday. Bye. Oh. I cuffed up. I got to get my chainsaw. I noticed I've got a tree across my fence one spot and I got to get my sledgehammer. It's really a maul, isn't it? Yeah. I'll talk about this when I do a lesson on hitching up a horse, a single horse, but this strap here is not usually on my team harness. It's just on for the single horse, for shalves. And so I just have to connect this up so I don't lose it in the process of working them without shalves. Oh. Okay, let me talk a few things, let him cool down. So here we are at the ditch I was making several weeks ago now. So I got the ditch all done. As you can see, the water is flooring quite nicely. And I talked about this before in an earlier video, how the water is going down that ditch right there and then down that swale. I got some more cleanup to do, but I kind of somewhat smoothed it out a little bit with the excavator. And then I brought the horses out last week. It was actually dry enough to harrow. So I actually harrowed this, the springtooth, this section of dirt that I took out of the ditch and put in the ground. And there's still a few rocks to pick and throw out of the way. But this morning I came out and just put the old fence post in and the wire up along the ditch. And now I'm just going to a few spots where it's too far of a distance between posts and I want to put a few more fence posts in. And then we'll go up a little further where the tree is across the fence and we'll cut that down. While I was digging the other day, I came across this out in the woods just a little ways. And my neighbor does quite a lot of hunting up on this land. And so Shawn, if you want to know where your little seat is, it's right here. Kind of comfortable actually. So you can pick it up anytime. But anyways, a few more rocks to pick, a few more posts to put in. And you can see we have the ditch made all the way up through there. And the water is flowing pretty well, although the slope isn't quite like I would like. I wish it was able to drain out completely, but I didn't do a very good job with my slope I guess because there's a lot of water right here in this corner. But it's still flowing out and I think by summer it'll be dry. So we'll put a few more fence posts in. With it being still quite wet up here off the sod, I'm not going to let Ken come up here at all because he'll just sink into the mud and it makes it so much harder just to walk. So I would just carry the posts in. It's just a little bit of a waste. Did want to show you one kind of interesting thing. Come look at this Brenda. Oh wow. Huh. Look how much clay that is. That's why the water is so clear, but look at all them dead earthworms in there. Are they dead or do they live in water? I don't even know. I don't know. They look like they're moving. That one is. If it wasn't so deep I'd find out. It's not that deep. I don't really know. See that one moving? That one's moving, yeah. That's good to see that we have all those earthworms. Wait, wait, wait, wait, what the hell are you doing? I want to see. I'm like a kid playing in the mud. I want to find out. You're going to find out how wet it is and cold it is. It's cold. Oh, I didn't get any. I can't go down. You don't have your rubber boots on. No, I wanted to see. I'm not afraid of worms, but I don't want to get my boots all wet. Anyways. It was good to see all those worms. Also, both he and I were breathing quite hard as we came down the field. Sometimes I feel sorry for him. I wasn't. Sometimes I feel sorry for the horses because they breathe really hard. They get their wind back real fast. I breathe hard when I run too. I think they're doing okay. I think it's okay. I think it's good for them. Now, we'll see if we can get Jim breathing hard here. He works as smart as he can so he doesn't have to breathe hard. That's his goal in life. Okay, Kenny boy. Come step. I haven't been down here yet to see what Jim's been doing down here up close and personal. I can see it from my kitchen window way off in the distance, but although that looks yucky, in the end, it will be really good. It seems to be working good. I've got to show people this rock. Oh, boy. Oh, no. Don't even get any ideas on that rock. Move in that rock. As I was coming up through the excavator, I was trying to get a nice straight line with a ditch, and I came upon that rock. You can see it goes way over there to that small rock. It's a big monster, and who knows how deep it goes. Although, it may not go that deep. I don't know. You probably saw my other video with my big boulder that I pulled out of the cornfield last year. I guess I'm pretty glad I don't have to worry about this one. It's out of the field. I'm going to leave it right there. But because of the ditch around the rock, I decided I better put a post here and kind of make a crooked line with the wire just so that's covered up. We still got quite a lot of fence work to do here, too. Maybe tomorrow I'll get you to head out and put insulators on. There's a few other spots to fix. Yep. I probably only have a few more days before the bugs really come out, and I'm glad to do that. Well, I hope they'll be long in that. Really? Yeah. You get a few warm days, and you get those darn black flies. Catch that one. We got to pick all these stones up, too. Yeah, we got work to do. One advantage of having one horse instead of two in a situation like this, because it's so wet, at least there's only four hoof prints making holes in the ground and not eight. Oh! This right here would be great firewood for our indoor stove, which isn't going to happen because it'll probably go to the cabin. It needs to go somewhere. But for right now, I'm just going to block up in long pieces and get it off the fence. I just like it because it's clean. There's no bark on it. Okay, so this job is done for now. But I just wanted to show you this in case you guys are possibly homesteaders or want to start a small farm. I just want to show you some of the things that you can do with a single horse. You don't have to go out and buy a team of horses to do so much of the work that might be necessary to do on your home place. It's nice to have a team, but you can do it with one. You can. A lot of things. You can, so often. So, I hope you have a great day, and we'll see you next time. See ya. Let's take him home. As promised, Kenny, here you go. I'll put it in your bucket for you. How about that? It's cute.