One Week Behind the Plow: A Greenhorn Goes to Draft-horse School

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It was, in short, a disaster—an undeniable confirmation of my greenhorn status.

Mary's good cooking tonight, and the encouraging words of my fellow students, have softened the blow to my ego. Still, I can't help but feel apprehensive about tomorrow. I'm not worried about the horses anymore; they're wonderful, gentle, patient, beautiful. No, it's me I'm concerned about. Will I ever get the hang of this?

I learned a lot today . . . mostly that I have a lot to learn.

TUESDAY

We arrived at the barn this morning to find a familiar-looking pile of hardware and leather straps on the floor. "I just don't understand how that harness got that way," said Rod, scratching his head in mock puzzlement, "but I guess there's nothing to do now but have you people put it back together."

We did . . . and got it almost perfect. Only one piece was wrong: The top hames strap that I had put on backward.

Dan Morgan, Slack Point's other fine instructor/teamster, and Patti Brown, the ranch's effervescent young owner, joined Rod today to give us still more driving practice and to show us how to hitch to and use basic farm implements. They are superb teachers. I'm amazed at their knowledge (each has been around draft animals since childhood), as well as at their ability to communicate their know-how.

There were other newcomers to today's class, too. Since Cora is due to foal any time now, she and Sharon were put out to pasture and two new teams were substituted: Jan and Jean (Rod describes them as one of the top working Belgian teams in the country) and Meg and Madge, the ranch's mules.

I've become a confirmed Meg-and-Madge fan. They're as responsive as the horses, but smaller (and thus easier to harness and maneuver), as well as slower (which gives me more time to steer them).

I was especially glad to be working with Meg and Madge this afternoon, when we were learning how to operate a disk harrow and spring-tooth harrow. Both are fairly simple tools but take some getting used to. This is particularly true of the disk, on which you sit—perched precariously close to the cutting wheels—while you drive the team ("a harrowing experience," quipped one student). As I tried my best to scratch reasonably straight paths with the implements, Meg and Madge plodded along, tolerant of my tentative line-handling, always willing to swing back around and give me just one more try at getting this steering business right.

Unfortunately, I don't have it right just yet. As if to confirm that fact, I nearly took out a couple of sections offence with the hay wagon this afternoon, and on another occasion I forgot that when you drive a team (in this instance, Jan and Jean) down a hill, you should anticipate a slackening of the lines and take up the excess play in order to hold the horses back. The result of this oversight was a terrific (but entirely involuntary) Hollywood-style runaway-buckboard scene, with me at the helm, and Rod and the others holding on for dear life as the wagon careened down a grade and ( just barely ) across a narrow plank bridge.

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