Some folks have seen a team of horses haying along highway 87 earlier this year. You might think this rancher is going to great lengths to save on fuel with the prices being so high, but Jim Quade just loves his team of horses, and likes to have the chance to keep them trained and working.
I received a special invitation to come watch three teams haying at Ken and Daphne Kuhlmann's ranch. Jim sold Ken his swather, and Ken loaned Jim his horse team. They got together to swath Ken's field on Horse Thief Creek the old way. Ken Kuhlman, Jim Quade, Bart Bilden, and Isaac Buck were driving three teams of horses cutting hay in an eighty-acre hay field. Though it is slower than using a swather, it is a much quieter and more enjoyable way to cut the hay according to the men. When Daphne and I arrived at the field, the men stopped for a field picnic lunch which Daphne had prepared. When the men rest the horses, they get to take a break too. Getting a chance to sit in the shade and have some water. One of the horses had something on that looked a bit like a decorative skirt, but when I asked about it, I was told that it was called a "fly net". It was an old device that was used to help keep the flies off of the horse. Ken says cutting hay with the team may take longer than using a machine, but the team can get down into the ravines better where a swather can't go. Ken plans to put the hay up in small square bales after the cutting, and then in the fall he will put his livestock out into that pasture for grazing.
Ken's father, Vernon Kuhlman, was there to watch the proceedings. Vernon drove horse teams when he was a young man before going into the military. When he came back from the war, Vernon sold his teams and bought a tractor, eventually owning and running a tractor dealership. Now, at 102 years old, he wonders why anyone would cut hay using a team.
It isn't often we get to have a real-life glimpse into the past. It truly felt as though I had stepped back in time for the afternoon, no modern distractions to take away from the beauty of the moment. Getting a realization of just how far the world has come with technology, it is no wonder that the older generation had such resilience. Every part of living came with labor. While I often long for days that seem like simpler times, for some, the best part of the "good ole days" is that they are gone. I have to admit that I love the modern conveniences that we enjoy, especially hot water and a furnace that heats my entire home.
There are still some living this simple life. Ken and Daphne have a well-organized and maintained homestead and ranch. It is the feeling of true ranch life. Bart Bilden and his wife also have a simple homestead lifestyle, with some modern conveniences, maybe taking the best from both worlds. His wife Heather has a website called https://couleecreekranch.com where she shares pictures and stories about what life is like on their ranch. For those of us who do not have this lifestyle, it gives us the chance to see it without the dramatization that the tv shows like to portray.
Next year keep your eyes on the road, but keep an eye out for the little team cutting hay along the highway south of Roundup. Lastly, a poem written by the late Paul Harvey:
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker"
- so God made a Farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board"
- so God made a Farmer.
"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon - and mean it"
- so God made a Farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt, and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps; who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, and then pain'n from tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours"
- so God made a Farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds, and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place
- so God made a Farmer.
God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark."
It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners; somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church; somebody who would bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says that he wants to spend his life "doing what dad does"
- so God made a Farmer.
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