Plow Shares

My father has always handled a plow with ease. His swinging stride a little less swinging in the awkwardness of walking down in the furrow. He is one of the few I've seen who can handle the plow while driving the team of horses with his torso. A leather strap buckles the reins together. One rein is over his left shoulder, the other comes out under his right arm. He can plow while keeping the right tension on the reins so he can steer and keep the team steady. It’s the kind of ease that comes with practice.   

Pa plowing an acre per horse per day with Dude and Rusty

Pa read that a man could plow one acre per horse per day with a hand plow. With the old team Dude and Rusty, that would be two acres in a single day. Pa will tell you that those old timers sure knew what a full days work was. He will also tell you that he didn’t quite make it to two acres, but that isn’t the way I remember the story going. Either way, Pa rose early and after a cup of tea, he sunk that single plowshare in the dirt in the wee hours. He plodded along behind the team manning the handles, furrow by furrow. He broke for a midmorning respite and a cup of tea. Pa would return to the plow until the lunch hour brought a quick break. Pa had a sandwich, a long drink of water, and another cup of tea. The team would get tied at the hitching post for some hay and water. Then it was back to the handles with the reins across his shoulders, walking along in the furrow until a mid-afternoon tea break. By sun down, two acres were done as I recall it. But I guess the results will be highly debated like all the best stories are. Stuck in memory in that constant struggle to set the facts exactly right. Is it supposed to be accurate, interesting, or maybe the best combination of the two?

Rusty, Dude, and Nellie on the sulky plow

Perhaps one of the most understated inventions in agriculture besides the plow itself was one you could sit on. As it was with the hand plow, Pa spent a great deal of time on one of those new fangled sulky plows too. Pa handles a sulky plow with the same ease as the hand plow. He can plow all day, moving along one furrow at a time. Nellie got added on as a third horse when the going was tough. Many hand make for light work. When I was little and he still smoked a pipe, he would stop the sulky plow at the end of the field and smoke. He would rest the horses with sweet, vanilla, tendrils of pipe smoke wafting around him. The only thing we were missing was the lone oak tree in the middle of the field for these respites. 

When Nellie and Ivan were the second team to take to the fields on our farmstead, Pa let me drive the team. He would sometimes let me drive on our P&O sulky plow. It was red and yellow, one of our few pieces of machinery that was painted up nice, and Pa’s long time favorite. It plowed only one furrow at a time. Sitting in the seat you are right above and slightly behind the plowshare. This is the best seat. All you hear is the soft plodding of hooves on stubble, the tinny jingle of harness, the squeak of the evener, and best of all; the ripping of roots as the plow turns over the soil right under your feet. It’s the sound of the soil whispering to you. It’s telling you that it is just as excited for this years crops as you are, that it is ready to work, and alive in the spring time air. I always think of this when I’m putting along on a tractor, that I’m never close enough to hear clearly what the soil has to say, and there’s no quiet like there is plowing with a team.

Me on the freshly painted P&O sulky plow

There are many tricks to a sulky plow. There are different settings of various levers to get it just right. The furrow needs to be deep enough, turning over the soil just so. Sometimes left over stubble accumulates and messes up the whole operation. Because of this, Pa always attached a heavy wire to the coulter. Dragging that along behind the plow plows under even the roughest of corn stubble. Many folks think all the corn stubble needs to be disked up before you plow it under, but a ten foot cable will plow under just about anything without clogging up your plow. 

Another tricky bit is the delicate balance between machine and driver. The team plods along the same way as always; one horse walking down in the furrow and one on top. If the driver is sitting level when the plow is sunk, he is then cockeyed when out of the furrow. When I was young, we plowed at a lot of shows as a demonstration for folks to watch. One of our show-going comrades decided to give the sulky plow a try. While he was well versed in handling a team, the nuances of the plow were new to him. He wasn’t accustomed to the delicate balance or what each lever did to adjust the plow. He took a seat and went on down the field. All was well until one wheel popped out of the furrow and that delicate balance was upset. The comrade was pitched into the dirt and rather embarrassed to have done so in front of a crowd. He insisted that Pa had done this on purpose. Pa hadn’t, of course. It was just the learning curve of the sulky plow and he wasn’t the first or the last fellow to be pitched into the dirt.

Most great stories that involve horses also involve wrecks or runaways, and there is almost always a human cause. We’ve been very fortunate to only have had a few of these personal wrecks, but stories they are indeed. Pa once hit a rock (one of the very few on our farm) with a sulky plow. It threw him off the seat and he got his leg stuck in the spokes of the wheel which kept rolling and left quite its mark on Pa’s leg. This story is also the testament to the value of a truly great team. Pa, on the ground with his leg stuck in the wheel said “Ho” and Nellie and Ivan stopped despite no one holding the reins. Pa's only casualty was walking with a gimp for a week or two, some nasty bruising, and a weird spot on his log from where the spokes of the wheel cut into his leg.  Not all incidents end this well, but Pa’s skill and a little bit of luck have proven handy over the years. Almost all the sulky plows in Pa’s collection, including the favorite P&O, have been wrecked by other folks.

Another story that sticks in my memory is the nine mule runaway. Pa and I were taking turns at a show that was entirely run on horsepower. I remember feeling rather proud, there on the seat. There were several other teams in the field that day. There was a team of nine mules on a three bottom gang plow, eight mules on a two bottom gang plow, and a few other teams of draft horses like ours. The ground was very dry and very hard that day. It made for tough going. While our team loyally plodded along, the mules were not impressed. At some point in the afternoon, the team of nine stopped in the middle of the field. They just would not move any further. From our vantage point, we couldn’t really see well what was going on. Then all of a sudden the mule team took off. The plow jerked out of the ground and went bumping along the ground with the bottoms still set in the down position, the driver clinging to the lines. The team went on down the furrow, made a perfect left turn, ran along the headlands through a gate and made another left turn. The best part (for me anyway) was after several guys had jumped out of the way, and a girl a few years my senior ran at the running team hollering. She managed to grab hold of the the lead two mules and they stopped. We found out later it was the mule in the center that had been caused the whole works to stop initially in the field. Some folks thought to remedy this by throwing dirt clods at the center mule to get him moving. A dirt clod ricocheted off the center mule and hit another who was startled and away all nine of them went. There is little that makes you feel so helpless as sitting there on your own seat watching all of this happen without being to help because you need to attend to your own team. Horses don’t have an off switch. But hat’s off to the young lady who was skilled and brave enough to stop a nine mule runaway.

Rueben, Roy and Valerie on the P&O

We continue to turn soil as all farmers do. Nowadays we do some with the team, some with a tractor and still more with a steam engine when we can. Our farmstead has moved along the timeline of farm technology since those years of plowing exclusively with horses, but that is a story for another time. Spring time is still plowing time. It always will be, regardless of the form of horsepower used. We prepare ourselves and the soil for the coming growing season. I love to plow with any type of technology and will jump at any chance to participate, but plowing with horses will always have my heart. I will never forget the sounds and the feeling of moving through the field with them. If you ever get the chance to see a horse farmer turn the ground with a team and hear its whisper, I hope you listen.