We’ve got a slightly different type of episode this time around. Since registration is about to open for Draft Animal Power Field Days 2024, the podcast crew looked back at audio gathered at Field Days 2023 at Shelburne Farms, VT and created an audio collage of sorts. In a corner room of Shelburne Farms’ incredible Breeding Barn, I interviewed Jared Woodcock, Eric Westergard and Rick Eshuis. The indefatigable Caralyn Roeper did our guest introduction. Bear with us on the audio quality; there is some human and animal background noise going on from the event outside.

Jared Woodcock is, in his own words, a father, farmer, forester, and ecologist. Among many other things, he manages private woodlots with horses under the moniker Timberdoodle Horse Logging. Eric Westergard is an ox drover, logger and carpenter in West Virginia and a perennial feature at Field Days despite the distance to his home turf. And Rick Eshuis manages the farm at Tillers' International in Scotts, Michigan. He is a longtime horse teamster who volunteered with Tillers' for many years before becoming an employee, and his passion for the work can be heard loud and clear in our interview.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Field Days in Glenville, NY, September 27th-29th. Friday features day-long intensive workshops focusing on forestry, fieldwork, mowers, and horse and oxen basics. Saturday is a mix of shorter workshops on all types of topics, and Sunday has a mix of family-friendly programs and the DAPNet’s annual member meeting. You can learn how to register to attend the event (or sponsor, exhibit or volunteer at it) at draftanimalpower.org.

Editing for this episode was provided by the stalwart Louis Menard and fabulous Alexia Allen.

Jim and Maggie discuss logging with horses (which he started doing as a child, and went into business in right after high school), haymaking, setting high expectations for your animal-powered operation, working stallions, his equipment choices for the farm and log landing, and much more. As we discuss in the episode, Jim might be part of the minority in the draft power world at this point – he grew up within the culture of working animals. I think his no-nonsense attitude and incomparable work ethic are not unrelated to that. Jim’s horses are seriously strong and well behaved, and it’s not by accident. Be sure to stay to the end for a very solid piece of advice for anyone working with or hoping to work with draft horses.

We address a couple of vocabulary words in the beginning of the episode, but here's one more: scoot. Scoots are large sleds made for pulling loads of logs.