The Idyllic and the Real--Horses and Farming

The Times runs an article today: Farm Equipment That Runs on Oats.

It's about a farm in Vermont, associated with a co-housing collective, doing the locavore/sustainable farming life.  The farmer uses horses for most chores, saving the tractor for "heavy soil".  He and the writer celebrate the emotions of feeling at one with the team, understanding their personalities and ways, etc etc. You may observe from the title and the "etc.s" that the story struck a nerve.

These give the idea:

“People are attracted to the way of working with animals, of being back in touch with nature, of regaining a kind of rhythmic elegance to our lives.”....

Still, this elaborate routine provides the sort of connection to living things that Mr. Leslie believes people today are longing for — and it is why he is convinced that farming with horses will have a real renaissance.

“I think people are hungering for a kind of unplugged reality,” he said. “That leads to a deeper self-understanding.”

It's all fine and dandy for those who want this sort of life, but we had horses for about the first 10 years of my life.  From that jaundiced perspective I'd offer a few observations:

•  The Amish have a sustainable life, but not this family. The farmer and partner have only one child, a girl about 6.  If you're going to have a sustainable way of living you need to have some more children, so at least one will stay on the land.  
• If you're living a locavore life, you don't need much cash, meaning you aren't depositing much into Social Security and Medicare.  So having adult children to support your old age is important.
• One of the downsides of this farming can be observed in the Amish: it tends not to support the ideals of women's liberation.  Because field work is usually more strenuous, the males tend to get stuck with that (in the article it sounds as if the man does communing with the horses though my mother did enjoy driving a team) meaning the females get stuck with the house work. The internal combustion engine and electric motor did much to free women.
• It's dangerous.  Farming is dangerous whatever motive power is used, but I suspect the accident rate was higher in 1930 when horses were predominant than today.  To their credit, the article's author notes a very bad accident with the horses early in the farmer's career which broke both legs of his partner.  It doesn't say how they managed in the months before she was able to do resume her work.

For anyone interested, here's a link to a 1921 Cornell extension study on tractors versus horses.