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A Man and a Team

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Jeffrey's father driving Chubby and Tom. Photos courtesy of Jeffrey Lent.

Fifteen cords a winter. I’d thought it was more like 10 but my mother informs me otherwise and although she’s 80 she’s not only still sharp as a sawtooth but has much better reasons than I to recall the accurate figure. This was the amount of wood cut by my father to heat the house, a standard two-over-four cape with a monster of a wood furnace in the basement that allowed heat up through floor registers, as well as to fuel the Queen Atlantic range, the sole source year-round for meals. And she would recall this prodigious amount of wood – she was raising three young children and no mother forgets this sort of essential survival fact. The great iron-and-chrome range was a beautiful thing and the center of winter life in the farmhouse. I recall the thick layers of jack-frost on the interiors of the second story bedroom windows. I never recall being cold.

All that wood was cut by one man, my father, in the woodlot that crowned the hillsides of the farm, in and around the sugarbush that played its own central role and so not only did he make the decisions of a logger but also a forester, decisions about which trees to thin, how to maintain a healthy varied woodlot, and with an eye ever cast to the importance of the maples. Work accomplished in the short days between morning and evening milkings, the daily mucking and spreading of manure, around the late January and early February lambing season, and before sugaring began anywhere from early March to early April. Always in autumn and winter for the following year. One man with peaveys and cant hooks, a maul and wedges, a giant unpredictable McCullough chainsaw, and a bobsled with its side panels and heavy runners that allowed it to be drawn through deep snow. By the team of horses,who functioned not only to draw out the loads of wood but to skid logs down to the landing. And wait for their man to come down and unhook the skidding chains and roll the log onto the load before going back up the hillside.

The skidding was done by either the team or one of the two geldings, depending on all factors – the size of the log, the angle of the incline and steepness of the descent. But up in the woods they’d wait, frothing steam from their nostrils and as the work went on, steam also rising from their bodies, waiting for the man to hitch them to the skidding tackle and then, with only his “Step up,” down the mountain they’d go toward the landing.

Those cords were cut to three-foot lengths to be unloaded down the bulkhead and stacked in the cellar for the furnace. Except for the five cords that were processed further. A neighbor with a buzz-saw attached to an old blue jeep spent a few afternoons churning out the 16-inch blocks that Dad would then split and stack high in the woodshed just off the kitchen. The cooking fuel. Anyone who’s seen five cords cut and split this short knows it’s a veritable pile of wood. Right up to the rafters, with just enough room left for a chopping block and axe to make kindling for the range.

It was in many ways a typical mid-twentieth-century hill farm. A 15 cow tie-up for the Jersey milkers, with room for a few heifers and dry cows, although at that time we bred to have the cows calve in the early fall so during the summer high season most of the cows were dry. A flock of about 60 sheep for Easter lambs and wool, as there was still a market for wool. Sugaring was done in partnership with a neighbor, and most or all of the syrup was sold through direct mail-order: people from out of state heard about your sugaring operation and contacted you directly and then told friends and came back year after year. There was no advertising.

Along with other farmers who could, we converted to a bulktank and poured concrete as those regulations were put into place in the 1960s. In the spring, after sugaring but before the fieldwork began, my father supplemented further by processing the Easter lambs and hot-house piglets for the New York markets – loading the livestock truck with 50-gallon heavy paper drums with chilled carcasses and leaving after evening milking to drive to Brooklyn and the wholesaler he did business with, unloading in the middle of the night and driving back in time for morning milking. Even then, those “fresh from the farm” quality meats were in strong demand and brought premium prices.

Then as now, keeping overhead low was what kept a farmer in business.And then as now, technology always seemed to hold the promise of greater productivity and, most assumed, greater prosperity.

My father differed. Long after others had begun or completed the switch to tractors and the new equipment tractors demanded, he stuck with his team. First of all, with knowledge and foresight – what is known as horsemanship, much as cattle demand husbandry, his power source never broke down. Repairs were nonexistent and upkeep was simply part of the daily and seasonal round. And then there was the machinery. The simplest, the bobsled, the plows and cultivators and potato hillers, were only horsedrawn. More complicated machinery that involved gearboxes were ground-driven; that is, the wheels provided the power through movement. These included the mowing machine, the tedder, the siderake, and the hay loader in the days after he stopped pitching the windrows up by hand while my mother drove the team so he could make the load. Everything was simple – the tooling of those machines was basic and elemental – any farmer with a set of wrenches could easily make repairs in the field and continue on with the day’s work.

And then there was the quiet. The internal combustion engine has removed this from most farming activity. Even above the whirring rhythmic shuttle of the mowing machine’s cutter bar, the calls of crows, of high-spiraling red-tails, of hedgerow bobolinks and brown thrashers could be heard. And so seen, sought out, not simply luckily glimpsed. One could raise one’s eyes from the job and the team, the horses, who not only were doing the job but knew the job,would continue on while the man on the seat behind them could take a moment and watch the woodchuck scurry to its burrow, track the vixen and her kits as they came into the flattened mown grasses to learn to hunt.

In some ways this pairing of man and team was most directly evident during sugaring. The team knew the sugarbush as well as the men and boys. A gathering tank was loaded onto the bobsled and the team would work their way through the network of roads, pausing at strategic points while we hauled the full buckets in, either on snowshoes if the snow was deep or rubber boots if the thaw was early. The gatherers would head out to replace the empty buckets and trudge on and the team would step up and move to the next stop. Only going up or down to the sugarhouse did a man hold the lines, although sometimes a cold, wet boy would be allowed to drive the team while gathering. No roads had to be broken open – the team and sled did that the first pass through. A hard freeze the night before meant not only a strong sap flow the next day but that the trails for the men were easier to travel.

It was not an easy life – none worth living is. But there was an engagement between man and land and animals, in which the machines played a vital but lesser role than today. The central triangulation of husbandry was foremost. The machines had not taken charge. I think of my farmer friends today who are striving toward greater levels of sustainability. I think of the organic farmers, both dairy and otherwise, who throughout the year remain dependent upon fossil fuels.Who pride themselves rightfully upon their relationship with the land compared to the agri-business and massive logging companies, and yet still drive down those rows, make that hay, skid those logs, with not only diesel exhaust floating over their crops but also the ultimate heavy impact of their implements upon their and our lives and land. It is, after all, but a moment. A high-flying flock of geese heading south in the fall.

Tom and Chubby. A pair of grade Belgian geldings.Who did everything that needed to be done and with wise curious eyes. The first of many teams I’d know.

You do know a horse.

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