The Suffolk Punch

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Meanwhile, the horses are producing manure. "Manure isn't good for anything until you compost it. Then you've really got something." And once you reintroduce the workhorse into the equation, you are into a different kind of agricultural economics altogether. It's nearly impossible to assign certain costs of horses to any traditional (or recently traditional) category of farm economics. Take manure. Once you have the horses in the barn, Rutledge says, you've got to get the manure out of there. Is that a health-maintenance cost (like keeping a tractor greased)? When you take it out to the field, is that a transportation cost (the horses are going out there anyway)? And once it's spread on the field, is that a fertilization cost or a waste disposal cost or what? A horse is no perpetual motion machine, of course, and it may be more labor intensive. But if it does a significantly better job, Rutledge says, it pays for itself.

He's the first to point out a horse's limits. "For heavy tillage, a tractor is more efficient. But for most of the rest, on a small farm, horses will do the work and add value to the land. That's what I call appropriate technology." They become most efficient in extreme situations—and Rutledge shares the biblical wisdom of all farmers that an extreme is always around the corner. In times of drought or in times of heavy rains, the horse is at its very best, even for the occasional odd job. Rutledge speaks self-deprecatingly about the time he got a truck seriously mired thanks to a lapse in attention. The tractor was useless in the deep mud, but one of his Suffolks hauled the truck onto dry ground in minutes.

Furthermore, he points out, "you can use a horse on any land where it can stand up. A horse does fine on land that's got over a 12% slope. Use a tractor there and you can end up field pizza." Toward the end of a day, Rutledge hitches up a team of two-year-olds to a large wooden sled he built. "These boys don't know nuthin'," he says. "They're the equivalent of two 15-year-old kids."

Nevertheless, under Rutledge's guidance, they proceed with what could pass for horse wisdom along the edge of a field. Grinning, Rutledge scoops something up from the ground and holds it up. It's a wren's nest, made in part with chestnut colored hair. "See, it's a rare Suffolkbird nest."

Further along, beside a forested slope, are a dozen mammoth logs. "Sally counted the rings on that big oak. It's 158 years old. These boys hauled it out of there—up the slope—without any trouble." He stops to examine the slightly disturbed ground where the logs had been pulled out of the forest. "Horses are best for selective logging," he says, and indeed they are still widely used for that purpose. "Logging roads and big skidders just wreck the forest, especially in hilly country."

Thunderclouds begin to unfurl in the west, and the sun drops down. On the way back to the barn, Rutledge stops the horses every few yards and hops off the sled to collect the quartz rocks that dot the pasture.

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IMPLEMENTS FOR FARMING WITH HORSES AND MULES'

Sam Moore

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