a call to consciousness: from the new horse-powered farm

7/29/2019 A Call to Consciousness: From The New Horse-Powered Farm

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tools anD systeMs for the sMall-sCale

sustainable Market GroWer

Stphn LSLi

Foreword by Lynn Miller

The New

horse-powere

farm


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O course, everyone knows that the swallows eat moquitoes and fies, but this alone does not explain thspecial treatment accorded them. Swallows are thougto mate or lie and it is hoped that this delity wextend to the human couples dwelling under the samroo. When the birds come fying through his windochirping excitedly as i to announce their return, told man marks the date and the time in a ledger ke

just or that purpose. He then compares the date wi

the return o the swallows in seasons past. From thcumulative data stretching back through the scribing

In a small village in rural China an old man sits by anopen window waiting or the swallows to return. He istoo old to work in the elds, so waiting or the swallowshas become one o his tasks. Every spring the swallowsreturn to their mud-and-daub nest, axed to the ceil-ing above the altar to the ancestors within the mainroom o the upper story o the building that houses theold mans extended amily spanning generations. Te

people o the village have a custom o allowing the

swallows to build nests in their homes because theybelieve the swallows bring good luck to the household.

Fall plowing

Cu: A C t Cu


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The New Horse-Powered Farm320

arm. Te workhorse can be part o an integratedgrazing management system, eectively harvesting itown uel while improving the quality o pasture. Thorses can also be participants in growing and harvesting the stored eed necessary to carry them through th

winter. Te stabled workhorse produces tons o manuror the compost pile that contribute to the building oorganic matter and the maintenance o soil ertilityAnd the workhorse has the capacity to reproduce itselraising oals or eventual replacements or as trained

workhorses or sale.Tere are other benets to working the land with

horses that are not so easily quantied. Te constanpassage o the heavy diesel tractor over the land can hava deadening eect on the soil. When we work the gar

den or years with a team instead o a tractor, we beginto sense a subtle regeneration o the land; a quickeningo the lie orce. Te results o this transormation othe soil will be realized in the favor, nutritional content, and keeping quality o the ruits and vegetables weharvest rom the garden. We may also note changes inourselves through our long association with our equin

partnerschanges that are even harder to describe bureal enough to those who eel them.

And now it is midaernoon in early October and

am out with the team. We are using the walking plowto turn over some sod. Te horses are ghting t at thitail end o the garden season. Te soil moisture contenis near perect or plowing and, by some miraculoumixture o scant knowledge and pure luck, the line odra is correct enough that the moldboard is slicingand turning over a neat ribbon that glints in the slanting sunlight like a wave breaking over beore me as

walk behind in the urrow. My breathing and my stepare in sync with the horses as the air, crisp as a ripe redapple, surges into our lungs. Tis work o all plowingis all about the doing, but to the extent that my mind istill spinning, the thoughts that it weaves are exultantsavoring these precious moments o loy exertion. Tiis our moment in the sun, the horses and I, each step wetake but a urther squeezing out o the precious elixir oour arming lie.

Tere are so many times when that lie is not thiand we endure the rustrations o broken equipment

the many old men who have preceded him, he ormu-lates a prognostication or the coming growing season:cool, wet, dry, hotin eect, the birds are an augury ohow much rice the villagers can expect to store in theirgranaries come harvesttime.

o manage a arm demands that we are awake to theanimals, the plants, the water, the insects, and the sea-sons. Now that we are acing such extreme ecologicalimbalances as climate change we have to be awake tothe whole atmosphere, the oceans, to the multidecadeunolding o causes and eects that we have set inmotion. It is challenging enough to be attentive to thecomplexity o one little arm; can we do it or a whole

planet? In any ecosystem we can break down and cata-log the components but we still dont come any closer

to understanding the complexity o interconnectionsthat sustains the wholelet alone grasp the mysteriouscreative orce that breathes lie into it all. Te smalldiversied arm is a step back rom the hubris o indus-trial monoculture. Humbly but sincerely, small armerstry their best to mimic the diversity and complexity o

wild nature in their arming systems and to allow spaceor that mysterious creative orce to bring healing to theland and the animals and their own souls.

Te ecological arming practices o sowing cover

crops, composting, rotating crops, and mulching notonly help to build soil while producing healthy ood,they also can sequester as much as 1,000 pounds ocarbon per acre per year. Our cash crops can be under-stood as the dominant species within the engineeredecosystem o the arm, but we dont want to be at war

with the rest o the fora and auna. While as armerswe need to harvest these crops to make our living, wealso want to protect the other species and, in particular,the biotic lie within the soil. Although we must raisecash crops in order to turn a prot, the primary aim oan ecological approach is to grow crops in a system thatat the same time conserves and even builds up the stocko our soils. When soil conservation is our primarygoal, healthy and abundant ood crops and livestockare a natural outcome.

Te horse-powered arm takes these carbon seques-tration benets a step arther by employing a livingand renewable resource as a source o traction on the


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A Call To Consciosness 3

relative economics o tractor versus horses simply paand ade away. Ahead o us there is only the next urroto be turned and then maybe a chance to let the horsand mysel catch our breath and or me to tell themGood horses, and to whisper my silent prayer

thanks or the abundance o lie they bring to me.

Barefoot hoofprints in the snow photo by Alex Brollo, Wikimedia Commons

crop ailure, a sick animal, a disgruntled customeranynumber o things that can and do go wrong on anygiven daybut that is all behind us now. Tese ewmoments o pristine plowing with a good plow and agreat team o horses are what make all the other worth

the while. At such a time the considerations o the


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The author with equine friends photo courtesy of Margaret Fanning

a call to consciousness: from the new horse-powered farm

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