At one time, most farms had at least one team of draft horses. They were used to pull lumber from forests and stumps from fields. They plowed cleared fields to raise crops, delivered goods to market, and returned with needed supplies. (Try to do that with your tractor.) Horses fertilized the fields and forests in which they worked, and they did it all with minimal environmental impact. If you consider that some of the land they plowed was used to grow hay and grain, then you can safely say these horses helped produce some of the “fuel” that kept them going.
With the arrival of the combustion engine, these once-indispensable members of the farm team became obsolete. According to Steve Bjerklie of Sanborn Mills Farm in Loudon, New Hampshire, “By the second half of the 20th century, the efficiency of gas- and diesel-powered machinery had pushed draft-animal logging [and farming] largely to the fringes.” With today’s growing concerns about climate change and rising fuel costs, many people are taking a second look at
