Anna Peck works with oxen in northern New York. She was kind enough to stay late in her office at work to record our interview. Anna has a unique story: raised by her sister, she started showing cattle and then oxen in high school on the Vermont-New York state line and fell in love with it, piecing together advice from various mentors to teach herself to train oxen. Lately, she prefers driving single oxen and using the three-pad ox collar developed in Germany over the bow yoke common in the U.S. She offers advice on animal training and cattle breeds suited for oxen, as well as thoughts on raising a family alongside draft animals. Anna was one of many presenters at the 2024 Draft Animal Power Field Days in Montgomery, NY September 27–29, where she explained the 3-pad collar system and worked her single oxen Sam and Otis in the woods. 

Claus Kropp has a the kind of job you only get it if you make it for yourself. He works as the founding director of the Lauresham Open-Air Laboratory at UNESCO Lorsch, a medieval abbey site in Germany. There, they have a full-scale model of a medieval village, filled with historically accurate buildings and animals. Claus works the land with his oxen and practices "experimental archaeology," which you will hear explained in the episode. He also runs the non-profit, overseeing the day-to-day of a busy public facing historical venue and research institution, and organizing the Center for Draft Cattle Research and Organization to connect draft cattle users all around the world. He tells us working with oxen puts him in flow, and you can hear his deep love for these animals -- and passion for draft cattle generally -- shine through our interview. His organization is also the home of the World Draft Cattle Symposium, and we talked shortly after a successful Symposium in spring 2024.

We’ve got a slightly different type of episode this time around. Since registration is about to open for Draft Animal Power Field Days 2024, the podcast crew looked back at audio gathered at Field Days 2023 at Shelburne Farms, VT and created an audio collage of sorts. In a corner room of Shelburne Farms’ incredible Breeding Barn, I interviewed Jared Woodcock, Eric Westergard and Rick Eshuis. The indefatigable Caralyn Roeper did our guest introduction. Bear with us on the audio quality; there is some human and animal background noise going on from the event outside. 

Jared Woodcock is, in his own words, a father, farmer, forester, and ecologist. Among many other things, he manages private woodlots with horses under the moniker Timberdoodle Horse Logging. Eric Westergard is an ox drover, logger and carpenter in West Virginia and a perennial feature at Field Days despite the distance to his home turf. And Rick Eshuis manages the farm at Tillers' International in Scotts, Michigan. He is a longtime horse teamster who volunteered with Tillers' for many years before becoming an employee, and his passion for the work can be heard loud and clear in our interview.

*2024 Draft Animal Power Field Days has been moved to the Orange County Farmers Museum in Montgomery, NY. The dates are still September 27th-29th and the itinerary is not expected to change much!*

Friday features day-long intensive workshops focusing on forestry, fieldwork, mowers, and horse and oxen basics. Saturday is a mix of shorter workshops on all types of topics and features a benefit auction, and Sunday has a mix of family-friendly programs and the DAPNet’s annual member meeting. You can learn how to register to attend the event (or sponsor, exhibit or volunteer at it) at draftanimalpower.org.

Editing for this episode was provided by the stalwart Louis Menard and fabulous Alexia Allen. 

Jim and Maggie discuss logging with horses (which he started doing as a child, and went into business in right after high school), haymaking, setting high expectations for your animal-powered operation, working stallions, his equipment choices for the farm and log landing, and much more. As we discuss in the episode, Jim might be part of the minority in the draft power world at this point – he grew up within the culture of working animals. I think his no-nonsense attitude and incomparable work ethic are not unrelated to that. Jim’s horses are seriously strong and well behaved, and it’s not by accident. Be sure to stay to the end for a very solid piece of advice for anyone working with or hoping to work with draft horses. 

We address a couple of vocabulary words in the beginning of the episode, but here's one more: scoot. Scoots are large sleds made for pulling loads of logs. 

Maggie interviews Michael and Karma Glos of Kingbird Farm about why they use horse power in their organic market garden, the eras of horses on their farm (including their love for Fjords), marketing horsepower to the public (or not), the economics of draft power, and raising their child around animals. Join us at their kitchen table for this laugh-filled conversation (and please pardon their pet birds chirping in the background). Find out more about Michael and Karma and their farm and products at https://kingbirdfarm.com/.

Maggie Smith interviews her friend and mentor, Donn Hewes of Northland Sheep Farm. They discuss hay making equipment, horse (and teamster) training, mules, the Suffolk Punch breed, and the art of working with -- and building a life around  -- draft horses. Find out more about Donn, his farm and collaborations and teamster training opportunities, at https://www.northlandsheepdairy.com/.