Horsepower

[brynseiri]

Any members old enough to recall when horses did most of the work at home? Or spoken to the generations who used them about it? I recall the story told to me by my grandfather of mechanisation at home, how he went from horses to a TE 20. It must have been space age like, going from working with an animal who you cared for daily, worked with, ate lunch with. It must have been strange, as this grey machine, that drank only petrol, and could go all day non stop, that didn't need rest, replaced the gentle giant beasts. Your horse could listen to you moaning. How many men must have gone from talking to their horse, although no answer, but at least it was another creature, to being alone on a solitary seat, all day with their thoughts? Then there's the land you didn't have to put aside to keep them, all of it back in to production.

 

[timff]

Fascinating subject. Being a farmers son in my mid 50's I worked with several old boys who were past retirement age but just carried on into their 70's. They used to tell me stories of the days of horses, and I'm very glad I took the time to listen. I could write a book, but the one thing I will always remember was them referring to their tractors as 'horses' well into the 80's. They each had a designated tractor on the farm and I guess they took almost as much pride in the machine as they did in the horses of old times!

 

[country_gal]

My Dad is always telling me stories of when he was a wee tot on the farm he used to get to sit on the clydies as he was the farmer's son and all the other kids were jealous lol. He still loves them! we are attending this next month ....

 

[brynseiri]

The 35 at home was always known as the "ceffyl coch " or red horse. Grandfather said his typical day with horses rested on feet condition, shoe missing and it was off to the blacksmith, where you'd join the queue. You'd be lucky to get started by 11 am in those circumstances, but it was never the horses fault. Then depending on how fit they were, an acre, two at the most on a good day was expected output. Mowing was no joke, you needed plenty of water to hand as the horses had to pace pretty hard to keep the momentum of the mower, in summer heat. He told me how he recalled as a boy during the Great War, how he came upon his father crying after his team had been taken to the front for the war effort. The pride that farmers have is like Japanese bushido, you see most horse teams at the ploughing matches being lead by a second bloke, grandfather was quite rude about them men, the whole "men aren't men if they can't be plough on their own" was a big deal with him and his friends. Obviously that was down to lack of practice, but he still sort of looked down on them. He was a ploughman though, and had been since his late teens, on farms the ploughman was sort of top in the pecking order. He said horses killed men just as much as tractors, they'd squash you against a wall, or get spooked and take off full pelt. One good one, he was ridging with this young horse he'd brought home from Menai bridge sale during an air raid, next door had these bloody wild pigs, the neighbour was run off by the war Ag in the end, anyway there he was ridging up for his "favourite" crop - swedes "weeks on his knees thinning them would follow, and one of these wild pigs popped out the hedge and scared the mare, off she took with the ridger in tow, breaking it as she jumped the hedge. And the pig was so quick on its feet he couldn't catch up with it to kick its arse. He was wild! Who'd have thought, farm machinery with a mind of its own!

 

[Fordson1]

My father used to say that in the horse days, and even in the early days of the tractor, there was less of a divide between the bigger and smaller farms. Ploughing was done with a single furrow and a pair of horses regardless of whether it was a big or small farm. Maybe the bigger farm might have someone ploughing all the time in the winter/spring whereas the smaller set-ups wouldn't be at it all the time but at least all were using the same equipment. The same applied when the Ferguson 20 and Fordsons came along. Nowadays it's easy for the smaller set-ups to be dwarfed by bigger equipment and the smaller plainer outfit can feel a bit inferior.
He also told of ploughing with horses in a field near the road and seeing the local Ferguson 20 dealer bringing 3 of them from the train station where they had been dropped off. One driver in front, and the other 2 tractors following without a driver, joined one after another with a tow frames that took care of the steering. It was quite a sight and he used to long for one to get left behind!

 

[Roy_H]

My late father and his brothers all worked with horses but they all said " We wouldn't want to go back to those days!"
When they trained a new young horse ( to plough or pull a cart for instance) they always put it beside an older more experienced horse for a start. This horse used to be refered to as the "Line horse". Dad used to tell a story about their neighbour's " Hoss man" who was half angry and half in tears one day because his boss sold all his horses and then bought new ones to replace them, all of them youngsters with no working experience whatsoever. "The silly bugger's sold all me line hosses!" he moaned "What the bloody hell does he expect me to do now?"

 

[Blue.]

My dad always said catching the horse in the 1st place was half the job!

 

[fingermouse]

My late father remembered the horses at home and could recall all there names and there characteristics it was fascinating listening to him as Grandfather who actually worked them spoke little about it
Dad recalled being allowed to mow and occasionally drive the binder when He was still at school his main job at threshing time was keeping the contractors engine in water they had to fetch it from the pond in the yard it was war time and one night they forgot to cover the smoke stack and there was a big raid on Liverpool a random bomber saw the glow and unloaded his incentiry bombs all round amazingly they never landed anywere near the stack or the engine and no harm was done
Dad also recalled our 1st tractor in 1943 a standard fordson it was the year he left school and went straight to driving it with the trailer plough that came with it
Only thing I ever do remember grandad saying about the old days was after I moaned once about not having a back window replaced in a tractor and it was bloody cold ploughing he replyed by saying bloody cold you should have followed 2 horses ploughing for weeks on end in deepest winter you would know what cold was then

 

[brynseiri]

Taid said the space between his thumbs and index fingers would get like a wet sore from ploughing with a horse plough in the rain, that would get infected. Wearing sacks and be soaked to the skin. Think of the poor horses. I'd find horseshoes on the place, some he'd recognise as belonging to Prince, one of his horses, as obviously every shoe was shaped different, and prince had one odd one- I couldn't tell the difference no matter how much he showed me. Shire shoes are fecking big lumps of steel too. Its hard to understand though, everything, beer at the pub, milk to the railway station, corn to the mill, cultivation, drilling, harvest, goods haulage, coal, all carried by horses. And not too long ago in our history.

 

[Blue.]

Taid said the space between his thumbs and index fingers would get like a wet sore from ploughing with a horse plough in the rain, that would get infected. Wearing sacks and be soaked to the skin. Think of the poor horses. I'd find horseshoes on the place, some he'd recognise as belonging to Prince, one of his horses, as obviously every shoe was shaped different, and prince had one odd one- I couldn't tell the difference no matter how much he showed me. Shire shoes are fecking big lumps of steel too. Its hard to understand though, everything, beer at the pub, milk to the railway station, corn to the mill, cultivation, drilling, harvest, goods haulage, coal, all carried by horses. And not too long ago in our history.

What a change in my grandads life,they were milking by hand,no electric,horses etc... Then in 95 the year he died he was mowing 75 acre in the day with a 100hp tractor and milking 100 cows on his own.

 

[Red Fred]

Grandad ran away to Canada in 1905 and took a job ploughing with mules- Nick and Bright and Buck and Barney as he used to tell us. He said that a good day's work was to plough once up in the forenoon and once back in the afternoon.
Round here, there were several horrid accidents with working horses and more can be found in the old newspaper archive online. A Land girl was killed in 1917 when she was knocked over by the horse she was leading and the cart's wheel went over her head. Another horse went into a wet patch known as "The bottomless bog" and they couldn't get it out so they shot it and buried it where it stood. I always think about it when I'm mowing that bit as it was later drained and is just a damp depression now.

 

[DeeGee]

Whereas it is good to recall those days of horsepower and the affinity of many with their horses there must have been so many cases of cruelty to working horses; whether it be uncaring farmers or more likely horse owners in urban areas who cared little for the welfare of their animals.
Phrases like "flogging a dead horse"; or "Home James and don't spare the horses!" may be bandied about nowadays but the connotations relate to an era when some horse owners were guilty of gross mis treatment of their horses. Just as some neglect and abuse modern vehicles, so would many have done so to sentient animals.

 

[brynseiri]

Grandad ran away to Canada in 1905 and took a job ploughing with mules- Nick and Bright and Buck and Barney as he used to tell us. He said that a good day's work was to plough once up in the forenoon and once back in the afternoon.
Round here, there were several horrid accidents with working horses and more can be found in the old newspaper archive online. A Land girl was killed in 1917 when she was knocked over by the horse she was leading and the cart's wheel went over her head. Another horse went into a wet patch known as "The bottomless bog" and they couldn't get it out so they shot it and buried it where it stood. I always think about it when I'm mowing that bit as it was later drained and is just a damp depression now.

Lots of bogs round here that are rumoured to have horses go down in them, what a fecking horrible way to check out of this life.

 

[ARW]

There's a pond in one of our fields that was said to be deep enough "to loose a working horse" according to my granddad, I wonder how they came up with that phrase

 

[Vizslaman]

Beings as I am approaching my 69th birthday I can still recall having heavy horses on the farm. My grandfather was a ploughman and only ever ploughed with horses.
I recall as a child leading a horse round and round in circles to drive the elevator carrying straw up to the top of the rick,
Potatoes were picked by hand into large wicker baskets.
The farm belonged to St Bernards Hospital in Southall Middlesex.
Warren Farm alas is now a sports centre

 

[brynseiri]

What a lot of these green types don't get is, horses need fuel. They can't be fit and work by munching some wild grass and a bit of hay. They need oats, and plenty of it. So as green as they were, they were incredibly inefficient.

 

[Mursal]

I think most folk of that era, would rather grow their own fuel, as money would have been hard to come by.
So having to buy fuel to keep it going, must have been hard to say the least, especially on the smaller one horse holdings. Most, didn't make the transition and when the horse died, did without.

 

[brynseiri]

I think most folk of that era, would rather grow their own fuel, as money would have been hard to come by.
So having to buy fuel to keep it going, must have been hard to say the least, especially on the smaller one horse holdings. Most, didn't make the transition and when the horse died, did without.

One thing that changed when a te20 came here, was all the produce went to market, at a time when prices were good and well subsidised. More often than not, grandfather had to buy hay in to keep his plates spinning, everything needed to eat, and in a wet year, fodder was expensive. The economics of scale also come in to play, a good day on the fergie yielded 5 acres of ploughing plus, on a tank of fuel, so five gallons tops. The horses took a day to do one fifth of that output, taking half the oat acreage on our place just to work them. All that butter, and all the eggs sold on the black market to all the Jews in Colwyn bay was better invested in a Ferguson is what my great grandmother told grandfather, after he mentioned it for the first time, grandmother's new back kitchen was going to have to wait.....

 

[Wellytrack]

My Grandfather was born in 1910.

He started out as a ploughman, well I say 'Man' but in effect a boy of 13 really.
He also smoked a pipe from then until his death at 90 years of age.

I've said it before, but that generation seen some amazing changes. When he was born, Ireland was almost the same as it had been 100 years earlier.
When he died it was almost as we have now.

 

[7610 super q]

A good few killed working with horses too. Dad witnessed 2 lads killed by horses which ran wild, after blinkers were removed too soon.