Interesting news: "On Small Farms, Hoof Power Returns"

A big thank-you to my youngest nephew, Hannes, for sharing this article with me, which appeared many weeks ago but has only just made it into my orbit:

On Small Farms, Hoof Power Returns

By TESS TAYLOR – New York Times – Sheffield, Mass.
Published: May 3, 2011

ON a sunny Sunday just before the vernal equinox, Rich Ciotola set out to clear a pasture strewn with fallen wood. The just-thawed field was spongy, with grass sprouting under tangled branches. Late March and early April are farm-prep time here in the Berkshires, time to gear up for the growing season. But while many farms were oiling and gassing up tractors, Mr. Ciotola was setting out to prepare a pasture using a tool so old it seems almost revolutionary: a team of oxen.

Read on here.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in the Emmental and Aaretal, the heartlands of Bernese Switzerland, farmers all around still used teams of horses or oxen to pull the plough, or the roller, or any of the other heavy implements needed to till the land, sow and reap. Horses or oxen were used to pull trees out of managed woodlands and shift other heavy stuff.

Just last Sunday, one of my walking friends told me her father never ever swore at his oxen, but when the new tractor came in, replacing the animals, he would kick at the tyres and swear at the temperamental machinery – she said the atmosphere on the farm changed completely – and not for the better.

Now that the price of fuel is rocketing, young farmers are returning to this much more natural way of life.