If you understood everything I said, you'd be me.- Miles Davis
The first two books, respectively, are pretty straightforward in terms of readability, but to get the most out of Mr. Ludwig's book, you need the "reader's guide." Fortunately, I've published that readers guide- in its entirety- at the top of this post. It was easy, being just one line.
The Pride and Joy of Working Cattle assumes you know enough to follow good advice, and that you'll pay attention to doing the little things right. Every time. Without fail.
Eventually, I hope to put out an oral history of ox teamsters. As part of that project, I've interviewed Mr. Ludwig twice now. Each time engaging and soft-spoken, his style of talking mirrors his writing. Yes, oxen can perform at an incredibly high level. Read between the lines to figure out how.
In this excerpt from our January 2018 conversation, Mr. Ludwig only explains what he did. It's up to you to figure out how.
Rob Collins: Did you ever do anything particularly unusual with your oxen?
Ray Ludwig: Well, I’d have to think about that for a while. . .
Ok, I used to be able to ride them and do stuff. WIth my voice commands, I could sit on the hayrake and rake hay.
We went to a plowing competition up in Vermont, a fairly big one. We got up there and I unloaded the team and unloaded my sulky plow and they had an area for practicing. So I hitched them up to the sulky plow, hopped on the seat and walked them out to the practice area. We plowed a nice, straight furrow down through. We got to the other end and I talked them around- didn’t get off- talked them around and they sidestepped around and they went back and we plowed two, or three, or four furrows that way. All the ox people there couldn’t believe it; They stood there with their mouths open. (laughs)
I think that was a little unusual, but I did that a few times at plowing competitions. In fact, one time I had two teams- a team that were two and a pair that were five or six. Somebody asked if I could plow with both teams, you know, tandem. I said I hadn’t done it but I’d give it a try so I hitched them both to the sulky plow and I hopped on the plow and they went right down there and made a nice straight furrow and I talked them around and they’d come around, and back another one, back another one. They just couldn’t believe it.
RC: Yeah, that would seem a little unusual. . .
RL: Well, when I was plowing here at home, that was the way I was doing it. I would have a field and plow it that way with the sulky plow.
RC: Did you use a walking plow as well?
RL: Yep, I could handle a walking plow as well and the team would go along; I could talk them along. We went to another contest here in Connecticut and we used to do that every year there, just to show off a little bit.
Great post. I was a student of Ray's back in the 90's and spent a good deal of time with him. I think what you say is very true and I worked very hard to be able to train my cattle to his standards. The stories of the plowing competitions (among other work we did) bring back a lot of memories. In fact, the moment that I decided I wanted a team of my own was when I witnessed another one of his protégés showing off their cattle’s abilities by standing on one end of a fairly large, indoor show ring and driving the animals in all sorts of figure eights, backing up and other maneuvers while standing still at the end of the arena and just belting out voice commands. I was about 10 or 11. Ray’s (and some of us who worked with him) abilities in training animals to this level is in fact hard to explain but I think it came down to just a few things. He did things differently. The working cattle community can be very set in their ways when it comes to practices and customs. Ray always had higher expectations for his animals and did things differently and bucked tradition because he knew a lot of folks with steers and oxen had self-imposed limitations on what they thought cattle could do. He knew differently. Second, ironically because of my first statement, he was extraordinarily set in his ways when he did come to a conclusion. Training was done to perfection. Repetition was the key. No excuses were given or taken. “It’s never the team, it’s always the teamster” he would say. That has stuck with me to this day. Third, he had a natural ability that looking back, I was blessed to have as well. We wanted to be able to drive our animal while walking behind a plow, or sitting on the cart or harrow. Why? Because it’s more practical that way. You just need yourself to do your chores instead of two people. So we started training calves individually in exact, precise and repetitious ways from when they were just off colostrum. The next milestone was to get them off of halters after they were put in a yoke for the first time. Usually at about a month old. We drove from behind the near steers shoulder and as the animals responded better to voice commands we kept moving our positioning back and driving them from the near steers flank and then before you knew it they were used to us giving commands from behind them. In the example of driving from a walking plow, we’d walk the off steer up and down a plowed furrow over and over and over again until they were used to it before even thinking of chaining them to the plow. That gave us time to, again, work on driving from the shoulder then the flank then from behind. Once they were on the plow the animals were used to what we were going to do. It is hard to explain because some of it is just natural ability but it was very much how we were taught and we knew Ray could do it so it must not have been totally impossible although it was a challenge. As with Ray always testing the limits of what was accepted, a lot of us as youngsters didn’t know any better so we followed his good example and hard work.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great tribute, and a fine example of thoughtful reflection on just what makes Mr. Ludwig's driving so special. Drop me an email sometime at rcollins@cpschools.org I'd love to chat with you about your experience.
DeleteI learned allot from Ray. I watched him pulling logs down a very steep hill. Then I ask hime how steep of a hill can oxen pull logs down. He said "How fast can they run?" That was the extent of all of my interactions with Ray. But I have land where all logging is down steep hills and so I learned a great deal that has been very useful from that interaction. But then I know how to watch someone to learn from them and no one has to tell me that logging on snow is fine but packed snow that turns to ice not good.
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