Thread by @homemadeguitars

Anybody in the mood for a Jeffie ramble?
I've got some thoughts jumbled up inside me, and gonna sort on them a little.
Last night I was talking to a guy I know but not well - friend of a friend. And I said I'm trying to learn how to do this - farm - with donkeys, and it's hard.

2. And he said like, "huh, why d'ya think they invented tractors?"
I didn't answer that question, but the answer is, to make money.
They invented tractors to sell them at a profit.
There was not universal agreement they were better. It depended what you measured.
Capitalism.

3. Tractors are the children of Capitalism.
Without capitalism there would never have been a tractor.
My grandfather covered the state of Iowa with red tractors between WWI and 1956.
Part of the way they did it was kill all the horses.
Fact.
They'd pay a king's ransom trade in,

4. On a good young team with 15 or 20 years left in them, and send them to the slaughterhouse.
Horses got more and more expensive. Hard to find good stock.
When I was about 7 or 8 somebody at dinner said, "Draft horses," and I said, "What's that?"

5. And my dad said, "You'll never see one. They'll be extinct before you're grown up."
This picture is me in 1989. Predicting is difficult.

6. I picked up some old harness for parts by asking an elderly widow in my area, this being about 30 or so years ago. WWII era family."
"Sure, take a look," she said. "I imagine the harness is still hanging on the barn wall where he left it."

7. She went on. "You know, we never had another profitable year after he sold those mules. Not one."

8. There's a constant undercurrent of anti-capitalism in my Twitterverse. I'm sympathetic with it, but as regular readers know, I view that differently.
Communism was supposed to do capitalism without the capitalists, but it turns out a turd by any other name still stinks.

9. The way I live when my thing is working - which isn't all the time - is physically much easier than mechanized work.
The mechanized work applies more energy to the resource, dirt or grass or steel or whatever - but you the operator wind up having to do your share.

10. The higher energy takes a greater mass of resource and compresses it to be handled and stored faster in larger masses.
The current system is that farmers do not physically handle hay. It's in ton bales and a good strong person can just move one on flat ground / concrete maybe

11. What I do is expend energy more constantly but at lower peak outputs. Instead of picking up a sixty pound bale, I pick up six, ten pound forkfuls. Or ten, six pound ones.
I'm old. Sixty pound bales tear my old body to pieces.
So, it's easier. I just go chug, chug, chug,

12. but rarely Vroom!
It's easier.
Quieter, too.
I mow with machinery. I do not own a donkey powered mower. Until I had the team it was not reasonable to try to pull one.
But a one horse mower pulled by an 800 pound horse can be pulled by two 500 pound donkeys without batting 👁️

13. This mower, to be exact. I've been dithering as to which bar to get, the 32" or the 4', but I've got a 5' sickle mower on a little tractor, and the 32" one would give me the ability to do some precision maintenance along my swales.
I like a lane to make overseeing pleasant.

Here's a short video of that mower working with one horse.
I've asked the guy if he'll set one up for a team instead of a single and he said yes.
The girls don't walk as fast as a horse. Shorter animals.

15. I believe the US is taking meaningful action to implement the climate plan which is best agreed on by all the best minds. I mean this.
I don't think it will work, as everyone knows, but I'm kinda hoping to give that a rest. We'll see what we see.
As I said, my dad predicted

16. That I'd never see a draft horse.

17. And he was no fool.
Anyway - this didn't go where I thought it was going, but life is like that.
Later, y'all.

PS. The reason why I do is hard, is my ignorance. I am learning the skills every day, from a very low level. Most of the knowledge I need is lost in the entire developed world.
The other thing that makes it hard is the sort of equipment I want mostly doesn't exist. Donkeys r smal

PS2. When the donkey system is working, when I'm trying to do something they and I have the skill to do, it is amazingly easy.
When I used to haul hay with my Belgians I never had to touch the lines. All spoken control. Don't need a tractor driver. Donkeys work the same.

And the godawful noise.
I don't have the godawful noise.