9 Miles

Saturday next, Tillers International hosts the annual plow day and open house.

A number of classes coincide with the event, but as the title implies, the centerpiece is plowing with horses and oxen.

The folks at Tillers favor using a walking plow and most often select the Oliver 99.

The reason they choose a walking plow is largely due to the practicality of the implement for international development.  Walking plows are still used in most places where draft animal power is employed (The plain communities of the United States would be a notable exception, with sulky and gang plows being more common).

The reason for choosing the "99" plow is that it's state of the art.  It's truly one of the most advanced walking plows on earth.  The joke is that tractor plows came along shortly after the Oliver 99 and so "state of the art" makes it nearly a century old.

Plowing an acre of land with a walking plow the size of an Oliver 99 averages out to be around 9 miles of walking for both the drover and the plowgirl (or boy, or man, or operator - no judgements here).  Done well, though, plowing is not the drudgery progress has made it out to be.  Farmer and author David Kline (who produces the very fine quarterly magazine Farming) explains it better than I:


“I enjoy plowing. Just this past year one Soil Conservation Service expert told me, in all seriousness, that if I'd join the no-till crowd I'd be freed from plowing, and then my son or I could work in a factory. He insinuated that the extra income (increased cash flow) would in some way improve the quality of our lives. “I failed to get his point. Should we, instead of working the land traditionally, which requires the help of most family members, send our sons to work in factories to support Dad's farming habit? Should we be willing to relinquish a nonviolent way of farming that was developed in Europe and fine-tuned in America? Should we give up the kind of farming that has been proven to preserve communities and land and is ecologically and spiritually sound for a way that is culturally and environmentally harmful? “Maybe I'm blind, but no matter which angle I look from, I fail to see any drudgery in this work. And I am convinced that if one farms carefully, soil erosion need not be a problem.”