Horses Once Moved the Apple Harvestby Joy Morton Porter, Arbor Day Farm Historian Late every fall, after the last load of apples has been unloaded at the Apple House and cider-pressing season is winding down, snow falls and a chilly northwest wind sweeps over the fields. These are sure signs that autumn is over and winter has begun at Arbor Day Farm. There is something special about this time of year. Thoughts linger about the harvest just completed, with the urgent demands to get the perishable apples in at the correct state of maturity, then processed and sold before winter sets in. But other memories also come flooding back from seasons long past. When I was a boy following my Dad's shadow, draft horses pulled the wagons loaded with apples. In fact, horses pulled the sprayers, mowers, plows, and all the machinery because there were no tractors. My father, Grove Porter, was one of the last farmers in Otoe County to go to tractor power. He loved horses and thought they should have a place on every farm. The teamsters took great pride in keeping their teams curried and brushed, and their harnesses saddle soaped, clean and pliable. Those proud hired hands also had to harness and unharness their teams daily, plus feed and water their powerful animals. Each wanted his team to look and be the best. The horse shoers would come about once a month. Mr. Rosco and his assistants, Johnny Riggs and Mike Stite, would arrive at daybreak and spend the entire day shoeing the ten or more teams plus saddle horses. They brought with them a forge, anvils, coal, iron, nails, and tools. Each horse's foot would be trimmed and rasped smooth before being fitted. Rosco possessed unique skills to be able to take a flat, straight piece of iron, get it red hot in the forge, and on the anvil hammer it and shape it into a perfectly-fitting shoe. He then punched nail holes through the hot shoes and fastened iron cleats (called "corks") into the shoe to keep the horses from slipping. Johnny and Mike stayed busy trimming feet and nailing the shoes on the horses. Johnny was a small, wrinkled, old-looking man. I told him that I wanted to be a horse shoer when I grew up. He looked up at me as he held a huge foot between his legs and said, "Kid, anybody who makes his living with his hind end higher than his head is a fool." The sweat dripped off the end of his nose, and he looked like he was in pain from holding one-fourth the weight of the big Percheron. This image helped me decide later I would not make horse shoeing my life's work. Mike was extremely strong and fearless around farm animals. It took two men to carry Mike's steel toolbox - the one he could pick up and load by himself. Those men knew exactly how deep the nails could be driven into the foot without causing pain and lameness. Now the tractors, a 1945 Farmall M, a 1949 Farmall C, and a 1950 McCormick W-6, which eventually replaced those horses, are put away for the winter under the same lean-to-shed at the Historic Morton Barns where those magnificent animals once were sheltered from the cold and snow. The end of the era of draft horse farm power is in a way like the end of each year's apple harvest season. Neither will ever return, but fond memories of them linger on. |