Horse Buyers and Winter Plans

Selling horses is one aspect of the diversified farming practiced by David and Deborah. Though the alfalfa leaf is the farm's major money-maker, horses certainly contribute their share to the farm's income, both directly and indirectly. Indirectly, horses "save money to make money," as the saying goes, by using no expensive outside inputs like diesel fuel and tractor tires. David and the interns do all of the farrier (hoof) work (as the horses and not shod and only require the occasional cleaning and trimming), and they rarely require medical care. Horses are also the reason that the farm has such an easy time finding enthusiastic, unpaid labor, which saves quite a bit of money, I imagine. Directly, horses make money by being sold as trained draft teams or single horses.

Horse buyers are an unfortunately fickle and unreliable lot, however. Many people contact the farm saying that they would like to buy a team, but most of those people are not serious enough to go further than one or two emails. Some will come and "window shop," as Lisa puts it. Such buyers may come and drive horses and say that they are wonderful and will surely make a good team, and then leave, never to be heard from again. This is one kind of frustrating horse buyer experience.

The other kind of frustrating horse buyer experience stems from horse buyers with specific and difficult to match needs and wants. We recently had two loggers come to look for a single horse to match with their horse. Unfortunately, their horse was a very tall animal who fit poorly with all but one of our horses. Ben, the horse that did match with their animal had not been driven in a week or two, as we were focusing on training two other horses who were too small to be matched with the logger's horse. Ben was thus out of practice (he is quite a young horse, so he sometimes forgets his manners) and did not stand still very well when asked to stop (whoa). Thus the horse buyers drove away without one of our horses in their trailer, disappointing everyone.

On a more positive note, I thought I would share my plans for the winter, which have worked out quite well. After contacting several farms in June, July, and August, I managed to find a farm with draft horses that wanted to take an intern during the winter months. The farm, located in south-central Kentucky, raises a wide variety of livestock and uses draft horses for hay-making, feeding, and water-carrying. I hope to have many opportunities to drive their two Percheron (a breed of draft horse) mares. I will be leaving my current farm internship on November 1st, going back home via train to visit my family for a couple of weeks, and starting work on the Kentucky farm in late November.

The experience of working in the arid West has made me realize that I have little interest in living here. Though working here has been a good experience, I certainly wouldn't want to live in a place where it doesn't rain for four months in the summer, and where much of my time farming would be spent dealing with irrigation. I feel relieved that I found a farm in Kentucky to work on, and I think that I will confine my future internships to the area of the country east of the Mississippi.