Right where they belong

[john hall]

Completely NOT lawn and garden related, but possibly of interest to some of the farm boys.
I would venture to say that 95% or more of the folks here have never had dealings with farming with horses. There are quite a few of us though whose fathers and grandfathers have shared numerous stories about such adventures. As best as my dad can figure, my family quit using horses and mules in the mid 50's--all replaced by IH tractors (2 M's, 2 Super A's, a borrowed Cub, and a McCormick 10-20---think the F-20 was long gone). Anyway, the barn was built in 1950. There was no where fancy to store harness, bits, collars, pads, blinders and whatever else was needed to put the animals to work. They just nailed a couple pcs of rough cut lumber up and hung everything on them--60 years later, most of the items are still there where they were hung after the last horse was worked--I know a couple harness and hanes have been removed. Anyway, we were filling the barn with straw today and I decided to get a picture, kind of neat in my opinion. Oh yeah, most all the horse plows are still under the same shed attached to a corn crib. The last of the horses died off in the mid 60's, dad swears he fed them as much in retirement as he did when they were working.