Rural Heritage April/May 2026

BIOAVAILABLE WATER • MAKING A SAFETY BRIDLE-HALTER • FLORIDA CRACKER CATTLE

Apr/May 2026

DESENSITIZING A YOUNG TEAM OF WORKING STEERS

BORROWING FROM YESTERDAY TO DO THE WORK OF TODAY SINCE 1976.

On the Square in Kidron, OH • Open every day except Sunday 800.438.5346 Shop Anytime At LEHMANS.COM Longer days mean it’s time to clean, care, and grow. Visit Lehman’s in Kidron for all-natural home essentials, durable hand tools, and trusted goods for garden and homestead. From freshening your home to preparing the soil, you’ll find everything you need for a season rooted in tradition. Spring Starts at Lehman’s.

VOLUME 51

APRIL/MAY 2026

NUMBER 2

Departments

Editor/Publisher Joe Mischka editor@ruralheritage.com Advertising ad@ruralheritage.com Editing Susan Blocker Subscriber Services subscribe@ruralheritage.com Regular Contributors

5 Publisher's Post 60 J.C. Allen Archives 80 Rural Bookshelf 82 Calendar of Events

85 Associations 90 My Card 95 Breeder's Directory 97 RH on YouTube

Rob Collins Ralph J. Rice Anna Knapp-Peck Donn Hewes Jerry Hicks Mary Osmer

RURAL HERITAGE ™ (ISSN 0889-2970) is published bimonthly. Periodical postage is paid at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and additional mailing offices. ©2026 Mischka Press. All rights reserved; reproduction of any material in this publication without written permission is prohibited. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $34.95 for one year in the USA and possessions; US$58.00 for one year in Canada, US$83.00 overseas. POSTMASTER send PS Form 3579 to: RURAL HERITAGE PO Box 1096 Cedar Rapids IA 52406-3323 CONTRIBUTORS: We welcome manuscripts, photographs, and drawings for possible publication. Email submissions are preferred. Guidelines are available on our website. Rural Heritage 2907 Applewood Pl NE Cedar Rapids IA 52402-3323 (319) 362-3027 www.ruralheritage.com To subscribe to the digital edition, call 319-362-3027 or visit www.ruralheritage.com.

3 Cover Photo: Mary Osmer and Bella Tolosi demonstrating how to yoke a pair of steers at a University of New Hampshire animal handling and behavior class. Above: Mary teaches class participants the commands for driving a team of steers while pulling a tire. Features 8 The Open Bridle for Work Horses............................... Donn Hewes 13 A Bridle/Halter for Safety............................................ Donn Hewes 16 German Fellowship........................................................ Rob Collins 24 Bioavailable Water. ............................................. Jenifer Morrissey 34 Socializing Young Working Steers.............................. Mary Osmer 40 The un-forgotten Farmers of the Chars Part 1........... Paul Schmit 48 Florida Cracker Cattle........................................................ Les O’dell 50 Sixteen Mule Hitch......................................................... Joe Mischka Extra pages and videos on this story are on the digital edition. 52 The Smoke House............................................................. Jerry Hicks 54 An Unlikely Journey............................................ Anna Knapp-Peck 64 Draft Animal Power NETwork........................... Anna Knapp-Peck 66 The Corn Crops (1919 Reprint) ..............................C.B. Hutchison

April/May 2026

The next issue will be the Jun/Jul 2026 edition which goes to press early March. Contributor and Advertiser Deaadlines for the next issue are April 20, 2026. Your Subscription We want you to enjoy uninterrupted service to your favorite magazine, Rural Heritage . If you have any questions you may contact us by: email:subscribe@ruralheritage.com; Cedar Rapids IA 52406 Remember, magazines are not automatically forwarded after an address change. The US Postal Service not only destroys your magazine but charges us for the notification. An issue lost because of failure to report an address change will not be replaced for free. We publish 6 issues per year: Jan 15 (Feb/Mar) Mar 15 (Apr/May) May 15 (Jun/Jul) Jul 15 (Aug/Sep) Sep 15 (Oct/Nov) Nov 15 (Dec/Jan) The US Postal System takes as long as 18 days to deliver to some areas, so please be patient. To Canada can take as long as 4 weeks and to overseas as long as 6 weeks. The expiration date above your name on your mailing label represents the abbreviated month and last two digits of the year: JAN26, for example, represents January 2024. If you renew within 25 days of the next issue date (July 5 for the Aug/Sep issue, for instance) you will get the next issue in the mail. If you miss that deadline you will need pay extra postage to get the missed issue. phone: (319) 362-3027 or mail: Rural Heritage PO Box 1096

Rural Heritage

4

Publisher's Post E very couple of weeks someone asks me what I think is happening in the draft animal community, parcticularly as it relates to numbers of horses and horse owners. Just a couple of days ago, I heard a common response from a friend in Illinois. “The guys are just getting too old,” he said. “They just can’t do it anymore.’ And, of course, that is true in a lot of cases — always has been. Hard data is hard to find regarding numbers of draft animal folks or their ages, but anecdotally, what I see is promising. I was in Nevada shooting a practice session where a group was working to re-enact a 16-mule hitch like the ones that hauled freight up and down the Sierra Nevada mountains. About half the folks there were about my age, over 60 or so, but still going strong. The rest were in their 20s. These young people were skilled working with the mules and obviously had a passion for it. Most plow days and heritage festivals I attend include plenty of people with more years before them than behind. And a lot of the older folks who no longer wish to haul, harness and work their horses, mules, oxen or donkeys at these events become motivated when they can serve as mentors to the youth. ° ° ° ° I recently made a trip east to northeast Ohio and southcentral New York to meet with a couple of folks who should be very familiar to our readers. Both have agreed to help me with a couple of series which will be featured in these pages as well as on our YouTube video channel. Ralph Rice has started training a couple young Suffolk geldings on his farm with plans of making them his “go-to” team for the future. With a stable of mares, most of them in foal or about to be, Ralph wanted a team that was always available to work at home and help promote the Suffolk Punch breed in public. The horses are Jamie, a coming yearling, and his coming 2-year-old half brother Murtaugh. Ralph explained his training methods during our first visit and then sent me updates once I got home. I'll be

going back in early April to check on the progress and film Ralph's techniques to share with you. Donn Hewes has been providing us with practical advice for over a year in the magazine and has done a great job of explaining his various subjects. However, we talked last month about shooting some of his ideas for working horses in video format so we might better explain the process. If a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth even more. ° ° ° ° I n April, I will be heading to the Shaker Village in Harrodsburg, Ky., to cover the DAPnet regional gatheroing where teamsters will demonstrate and teach fieldwork and logging with draft animals. We'll have video on our YouTube channel premiering May 3 and 10, and an article in our June/July issue. On April 18, I hope to make it to Dave Brewington's farm for a plow day, which is sure to include a number of draft horse and mule hitches working the ground. We'll be heading to Lyndon, Kans., April 25th cover the annual Lyndon Farm Show where there teamsters will compete for cash prizes in a log pull, obstacle course, feed team challenge and more. I heard last fall about a couple events held each year in Taylor, N.D., where folks use draft horses to plant wheat in the spring and then harvest it in the fall. I can't make the fall event, but plan to be there when they prepare the seedbed and drill the wheat on May 9. ° ° ° ° I interviewed Norm Macknair three years ago for our television program. If you don't know who Norm is, you probably should. He's one of the best sources of information, advice and parts for vintage horse drawn equipment. He was a frequent contributor to our website’s “Front Porch” forum before Facebook came along and rendered the forum obsolete. One of the things I asked Norm about during the interview (which is available on our YouTube Channel, youtube.com/ruralheritage) was how he dealt with people who’ve just found an old cultivator, wagon running gear, or plow and want to know its worth. He smiled and said he usually told them it was worth what someone was willing to pay for it.

April/May 2026

5

Rural Heritage

6

We get similar calls from people who’ve done an internet search and come up with one or more results that list Rural Heritage as a source. Those calls can be frustrating. So, I was a little apprehensive when I got a call from a fellow named JohnClayton,whohadawalkingplowhewaswondering about. It took me a few minutes to understand he was talking about a model — 17 inches long and 5 inches wide at the handle ends and 4.5 inches tall. Because there is no maker's stamp or other identification,John thinks it is not a sales model. “It is made of oak, metal wire and screws, brass plow point and hook. The landside is itself made of wood,” he says.“The screws appear to be handmade as the slots are all off-center and must have been made by someone with the skill and talent of a watchmaker,” he continued. He bought the model from an Etsy dealer in the Detroit, Mich., area in December 2024. When John asked him what he knew of its origin, he could only say that he purchased it at an estate sale in the area about a month before John bought it. The photos at the left show the plow in detail. Please write editor@ruralheritage.com if you have any information. — jm

April/May 2026

7

The Open Bridle for Work Horses

half worked without. Since then, I have trained most of my young horses without them and transitioned a few horses to working without them, but it has seldom been 100%. Transitioning horses that were trained in blinders is a special consideration I will cover later in this article. My interest in work horses without blinders was also sparked by the great fire horses seen in photos from the early 20th century. Every fire station I worked in had photos on the walls of these great looking horses. Why? First, to be very honest, I like the way they look. In my experience, there is no farm or logging work that horses can’t do without blinders; they do just as well

by Donn Hewes U p until now I have avoided writing about working my horses without blinders as I really don’t want to give the impression that working without blinders is somehow better than working with them. I personally think it is like belts versus suspenders, just different ways to hold up your pants. That said, in this article I will explain why and how I use draft horses in open-faced bridles. The oldest photo I can find of me with an open-faced horse is a Suffolk mare named Connie in 2012. At that time, I think half my horses and mules wore blinders and

Connie, a Suffolk mare is in an open bridle while her teammate is wearing blinders. Connie is one of the first animals Donn trained without blinders.

Rural Heritage

8

of brush and a good-sized ditch between us and the town road. A pretty mean dog lived on the other side of the road, and he liked to rush out in the road to attack cars, bikes, horses, whatever. Of course he had no interest in crossing our ditch, hedge or fence, but did our horses know that? On this particular occasion the dog's timing was perfect. Just as the spreader was coming empty and the team was approaching the end of the field to make a sweeping turn to come back, the dog charged across the road with a giant barking attack. As the teamster continued in their turn, the dog fell from the view of the horses behind the blinders. As the attack peaked, the horses bolted away from the attack. An empty, engaged manure spreader is a pretty scary thing, but the beginning teamster did a good job of staying with the horses and machine and, by good fortune, had a large area to run in. They gradually slowed and stopped the team. This was a pivotal moment for me in my appreciation of how horses might benefit from working without blinders. This young teamster probably had some other choices that might have prevented the runaway, as well. They likely had a moment or two to realize the dog was coming (stay tuned into what is going on around you!) and could have just stopped the team and left them standing facing the road and the dog. The horses might not have liked that, but, in a moment, they would have realized the dog wasn’t coming any further. This event was one of the first steps in my interest in what it would be like to work horses without blinders. I have seen many smaller examples since then where horses seem to benefit from seeing what is around them. Training horses to work without blinders should be divided into two parts. Green horses that have never had blinders on in the first place and any older horses that someone may be interested in trying to take the blinders off. Let’s start with the green horses, as it is much simpler. I don’t think I do anything fundamentally different without blinders than I would do with them. In either case, it is always a matter of what you can do to prepare a horse for a new experience before they get the full effect. Controlling their exposure to challenging things is the same objective in both cases. Even for a blindered young horse, they still need to find ways to “feel” and “hear” new things behind them in a way they can accept. Maximizing your control of the situation and managing the extent of

as a team with blinders. Over the last 20 years I have used open-faced horses for many hours on a baler with a motorized PTO cart, I have used high wheel rakes, pin wheel rakes with hydraulic lifts for each side, and rotary rakes. I’ve used ground drive PTO carts with four basket tedders and even pulled a brush hog. Over the last 15 years my horses have all been able to go down the road from field to field with traffic going by without blinders. My horses have been in parades and other events. Truthfully, I think traffic that goes 50, 60, or more miles per hour, is one case where blinders might help some horses deal with these things flashing past them. Some of my horses can do that too, but for the most part I have chosen to avoid those conditions. I just don’t like it and don’t think I would like it even if the team was wearing blinders. Many years ago, we had a small mishap with a team of horses and a beginning teamster while they were spreading manure in our front field. These horses were wearing blinders. It is a large open field and a good place to learn how to operate machinery and a good place to work horses. At the far end of the field there is a high tensile fence, a short hedge row Reva Seybolt drives Bart (a Suffolk/Cleveland Bay cross) and Star.This is the horse Donn took the blinders off when he was upset with the fencing job.

April/May 2026

9

will look where it is going just as any other horse would. You will not see it looking back at you (or your equipment) any more than any other horse. If you or I are walking through the woods, we need to watch in front of us in order to know where to place our feet. Horses do the same thing, especially when they are not concerned about what is behind them. This has been my experience with blinderless horses. The first thing you will notice when you take blinders off a horse that is used to wearing them is that they will look at you with one eye or the other. Can they get used to it and break that habit? Some can and some can’t. I have taken blinders off several horses that were started or trained or working with them. It has been a mixed bag of results. In most cases, if a horse is already working well with blinders, there is little or no benefit to taking them off, and it is likely those horses will work worse without them. I have had no problems driving horses with blinders and horses without them together and have almost always had one or two blindered horses in the hitch each year. Why even bother trying to take them off you might ask? Over the years, I have also worked with, bought

the exposure are the key. For the blinderless horse, you just have to include the things it will see behind it to the sounds and motions it will experience. In the “Training Duke” series of articles, you saw where we had Duke driving single walking right behind the sled while Sire Red Oak pulled it single. We only did this once for a few minutes (15 at most) prior to hooking him up to the sled alongside Red, but he likely saw other teams pulling this implement near his paddock over time. Remember, it was his demeanor that told us he was ready for this, and that would be just as true if he were wearing blinders at that time. While Duke had seen many horses working on a forecart and may have even been ponied alongside at some point, no extra time was given to letting him follow it around before he was hooked to it without blinders. Again, this was our decision based on what Duke had already shown us, and our choices for another horse might have been quite different. How do I determine how successful I think an individual horse is doing without blinders? A good work horse trained from the beginning without blinders

Cortland Fire Department fire horse, one of the influences for the bridles I wanted was the fire horses found across the country at the begining of the 20th century.

Rural Heritage

10

or borrowed many horses that in my opinion weren’t working that well. The reasons for working these less than-ideal horses runs the gamut, but suffice it to say, everything from me being cheap to me trying to be helpful, to everything in between has played a part. These horses have been everything from green and inexperienced to nervous to ready to run away. As I have mentioned many times already in my previous articles, I value calmness at work above all else. Would taking the blinders off help some of these horses be calmer? Here are three examples: Let’s start with Bart. Bart was a spirited Suffolk-cross gelding that was pretty nervous in harness sometimes. Bart had a very good matching partner that was a lot calmer. I was trying to use him at work and help settle him for a friend. One day at work we were unspooling fence wire with a forecart and a team of horses. That can be tricky for any horse as we keep touching the fence and making what they see in front of them move while whatever touched it is out of sight. It is also light work with funny noises. Bart really didn’t like it, so much so that I was afraid we needed to stop in order to avoid an accident. This horse was clearly upset by what he couldn’t see, but would seeing it make it better? The next day I drove him in a different bridle without the blinders for the first time, and he seemed fine. Before long, we were again using them to complete the fencing job, and, to my amazement, he was fine — a completely different animal. He worked that way in farming and driving for the rest of his life. I give this example not to suggest that it will be this way for all horses, because it won’t. Bart is an example of what is possible for some horses. I have never met another horse that so clearly wanted the blinders off and excelled without them from the first step. Rock is a 14-year-old gelding I have owned for three years. When I bought him along with two other horses, they had been standing in pasture for six years. Prior to that, they had been trained and driven some, but maybe not much, and it had certainly worn off in the intervening years waiting for a passerby to give them an apple. These were hard horses to put back to work. The best two I sold within a few months to recoup my investment, and Rock has been an ongoing project ever since. He is the best big, timid, shy, reluctant work horse I have ever had. He can be nervous or afraid, but, with careful use and time and good handling, he has

Open-faced Suffolk stallion Red Oak.

improved a lot. I recently noticed after two years he has mostly stopped grinding his teeth while working, which he did constantly in the beginning. For the first year and half I probably worked him six months with blinders and six months without. I was always just looking for one thing: when was he more relaxed? For the last year and half, I have just worked him open faced. He can work on any piece of farm equipment, and, if I am careful, he can be driven or handled by anyone I am teaching. In my opinion, a horse like Rock has achieved about all he can. He will never be the boldest or calmest in my hitch. He responds very well to a little extra time and space when asking for anything. He wants to know he is safe. I do see his eye on me from time to time while we work, but his head has slowly rotated to the front and has slowly come down. He has never threatened to run away from anything. He may well have ended in the same place with blinders on, but I just got to the point where I felt he was better without them than with them. He spread more than 50 loads with a manure spreader this fall without blinders and did fine.

April/May 2026

11

One final example. I have a 9-year-old mare named Dutchess. I have also had her for about three years. When I brought her home, I knew she had experienced a few mishaps in her life, but in a short visit with her I thought we could work together. She has a lot of skills. She is agile and quick to move in any direction we ask. She stands well while we hook or work around her. She is just a little anxious and a little angry. She usually seems unhappy. She pulls a little too hard on a load, and she tends to pull on the bit. She sort of fails at my one great goal of relaxing while at work. Along with gently bringing her into a working life, we have done plenty of tests to make sure there weren’t other physical factors contributing to her distress. So far, we haven’t found any. Like Rock, she has improved a lot while she has been here. She is quite usable and even helps us teach beginning teamsters from time to time. While they learn to drive, they also learn what they might not want to buy. A horse like this also tires more quickly when working at a serious task like hay making where the hours add up.

I have taken blinders off and put them on her several times. Taking them off might seem to help while she is working at a simple task, but, eventually, with things behind the forecart — like manure spreaders, rakes, or tedders — she has been proven to work better for me with the blinders. A friend and good teamster used her a fair bit last summer ( I was trying to sell her) and thought she did well open faced, and they did a good deal of mowing. In the end, the horse came back to me as she was acting up while doing simple things and not getting along with a pasture mate. This just confirms for me that taking blinders off a working horse will not usually be a solution to a “problem.” To sum it all up: I work horses without blinders because I like it that way. They easily do anything I want them to without blinders. Starting young horses without them is about the same as starting a horse with blinders. It is not always easy or a good idea to take blinders off a horse that is working well with them. As always, feel free to contact me with questions about things I do, or things I write.

Donn hooks his forecart to a camper and pulls it with a draft horse team with open bridles.

Rural Heritage

12

A Bridle/Halter for Safety

by Donn Hewes A long with open bridles (no blinders), I also like my horses to wear a bridle without a halter underneath. Don’t get me wrong, I never discourage anyone else from using a halter under their bridle, as it is a good idea to always have a safe way to tie your horse up at any time during work or a drive. Because I like the way the bridle fits and looks without the halter under it, I needed to develop my own bridle/halter that could do both jobs with one piece. Sometimes people assume I am using these instead of having a separate halter — just adding a bit or something else. There are cases of folks doing this, but that is not what I have been doing. Each of these horses has a normal halter that we put on

every time we lead or tie up one of them. I just use these halter/ bridles in place of a regular bridle. These can be made in two simple ways. Take a good bridle and add two parts needed to make it work as a halter as well. This works equally well with or without blinders, by the way. You need a long strap with a buckle that can pass under the chin and back to complete the loop around the nose of the horse. Now you just need a short piece with a ring that will connect the throat latch with the loop under the nose. These pieces are easy to get, or make, or sometimes scavenge from an old halter. I have also had some good luck taking a nice-fitting halter

Mary wears a custom made halter/ bridle that shows how they can be adjusted to fit. This bridle provides a good space in front, below, and behind the horses ear. This makes a bridle comfortable for a horse, makes it not rub, and harder to knock off.

These parts were used to convert Red's bridle to a halter/bridle in the photo on the left.

Red wearing a halter/bridle.

April/May 2026

13

bridle than it probably was as a halter. Finally, I like the snap on the throat latch as a quick and easy way to secure my bridle, but I need a buckle on the other side of the throat latch to make sure it is adjusted to fit securely. A halter can run a little loose under the throat, but we all know that adjusting the throat latch is important to what keeps a bridle on. It is really easy to make a good quality hole in a nylon strap. Hold a 3-inch nail with a good pair of vice grips. Heat the nail with a small torch in your shop, or over the kitchen range. Then just slide the nail back and forth to “melt” a good hole. I like to use a gloved finger and push them flat and smooth as soon as I pull the nail out.

and making it a useful bridle. You might need three changes to a halter to make it work as a bridle. You definitely need to add a strap in front of the ears; call it a brow band. All bridles have this and it holds the sides up neatly. A lot of draft horses have big blocky heads (some Suffolks sure do), and this is a Another view of Mary in her halter/ bridle.

good chance to make this band a good length that holds the ring on each side up but not so short that the bridle is always tight up against the base of the ear. A good halter will have a buckle on the back at the pole strap to adjust it for size. You may need extra holes in the strap, as it will be worn high and tighter as a Duke wears a halter/bridle made from a halter with modifications.

Rural Heritage

14

April/May 2026

15

German Fellowship

by Rob Collins T hirty years as a high school teacher means I’ve attended more than 150 days of “professional development.” I’d rather not think of how many classes, seminars, and online training sessions I’ve done as well. Not all have “developed” my craft of teaching as much as I’d like. A couple do stand out. First, through the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), I took a course on The American Farm in U.S. History at Tillers International. Day three of that class involved a short demonstration of Tillers’ oxen, Marco and Polo, pulling a McCormick Deering grain binder. I was hooked, and the course

of my life was changed. Since then, I think my high schoolers benefit from a more hands-on, authentic approach to history in my class. The second, the subject of this column, was less formal, but no less meaningful. Last summer, I spent a week at Lauresham open-air museum in Lorsch, Germany. Claus Kropp, who directs Lauresham and farms his own land with oxen on the side, also founded the Center for Draft Cattle Research and Education in 2024. In 2025, the Center made several fellowships available for specific studies related to oxen use. While attending the fellowship, I hoped to develop some new oxen driving and teaching skills. I think I did, but those skills came with a

Rob Collins line driving Enyo, a Raetian Grey ox with a three-pad collar and a sledge.

Rural Heritage

16

David, Lauresham’s 17-year-old ox hitched to a hay tedder.

hundred other eye-opening connections between history, agriculture, animal power, and teaching. So let me take you along. Built on the grounds of the Lorsch Abbey, which was a sizable monastery founded in 764, Lauresham is a purpose-built medieval village that acts as both a living history farm and as an experimental archaeological site. Claus Kropp describes experimental archaeology this way: It is called experimental archaeology because it means scientific experiments. When we do our agricultural experiments, we say we have this historic field type of ridge and furrows. So, we want to know why people chose this field type. So, we set out as many things that collect data as possible. We provide the whole data sets of our weather station, the soil sensors, the soil moisture sensors.Then, we have the wind, we have the rain, we have the furrow depth and the width. We have the yield analysis. We can tell them exactly when our crops grew, why at a certain point in the year. We do

Close-up of a three-pad collar.

April/May 2026

17

Gathering fresh-cut grass from one of the town meadows in Lorsch. Claus Kropp agrees to cut the meadow and remove the hay each year ahead of a town fireworks display in this meadow.

draft measurements with the animals and therefore know how much draft power we had to put in it. For me, learning a skill is the precondition of doing good experimental archaeology. So, when I think about early medieval farming, I first have to learn how to use a plow of that time and I have to learn how to broadcast a field or work an ox. Because if I don't, then I'm kind of assuming that the people back then did the work as primitive as I did, because I simply didn't have the skill. This experimental archeological approach felt similar to what we do at Tillers. While not usually working in a medieval context, the experimental attitude is something we try to cultivate back on the farm in Scotts, Mich. Of course, a highlight of the trip was getting a chance to work with the oxen

One of Lauresham’s replica medieval plows, based on an example from Denmark.

Rural Heritage

18

in the medieval village and on Claus’ farm. Most of the oxen are an old, triple purpose European breed: Raetian Grey. Similar in height to my Devons, they are blocky, solid, willing workers. While not as quick stepping as Devons, they move right along when they have a load hooked. Much of the time, the oxen we worked were harnessed in three-pad collars rather than the neck yoke used in much of England and the United States. However, as part of the fellowship, while I was learning about the three-pad collar, we were also trying out neck yokes – some made at Tillers in the past – on the oxen teams. While three-pad collars are a 20th century development in Germany (they allowed family milk cows to provide draft in the period after World War I when many of the horses and oxen had been killed), Claus uses them

to do medieval draft work as a bit of a compromise. In order to replicate farming practices around the year 800, it only made sense to employ oxen. Plow horses were not common for several hundred more years. Learning to drive oxen meant connecting with local farmers and enthusiasts, most of whom were using collar systems. On the weekend of my visit, we hosted a small gathering of oxen enthusiasts at the farm where I helped demonstrate the fit and function of a neck yoke. Ahead of that visit, we spent an hour the previous day putting a Tillers yoke on David and Nancy, Lauresham’s ox and freemartin team. The fit for David was quite good, while Nancy’s smaller neck was adequate although not ideal. After spending years in a three-pad collar, I expected the team to need time to adjust to the yoke, but

Claus Kropp with David and Nancy, an ox and freemartin team in the medieval village — their first time in a neck yoke.

April/May 2026

19

The remains of the original Lorsch monastic site from the 700’s. Just outside of the frame is a large tithe barn that was run by the abbey.

they walked out immediately just like they’d been yoked together for years, a testament to the work the team does on a regular basis. Since I’ve returned, Claus has started a young team in a neck yoke, and I’ve prototyped a 3-pad collar with help from Spring Valley Harness in Centreville, Mich. In the works is a PVC collar system, which is influenced by Bob Erickson’s excellent donkey collars made from PVC pipe. Being available in much of the developing world, our thinking is that a single cow or bull could

be effective pulling a cultivator – perhaps even without much training if being led. We will see. Unfortunately for me, I visited at the wrong time of year to plow. We spent some time looking over the replica medieval plows at Lauresham. Based on the plows found preserved in bogs in Denmark, they employ a wheeled cart to carry the beam, along with a single handle and several wedges and mortises to aid in adjusting the depth and angle of the wooden moldboard. It’s worth noting that I could see a straight-line evolution in looking

Rural Heritage

20

at 20th century European walking plows in their collection. Wheels and, occasionally, a single handle on these plows made them oddly reminiscent of those from the Viking age. Although we didn’t get to plow, we did tour the test field, which was plowed into the “ridge and furrow” pattern so common across Europe, tracing back to medieval times. Claus explained ridge and furrow this way: “It is basically, like the name suggests, very long strips of fields that are characterized by a change of ridges that can be 6 meters wide and then followed by a furrow area and then the next ridge comes. The ridge itself can have a height of up to 60 centimeters, maybe a meter, and they're really long, up to one kilometer, half a mile length. They're often preserved in Germany in forests

because modern agriculture didn't plow them away.” In these fields was an old variety of wheat with long stems, straw being nearly as valuable as the grain in the Middle Ages. Testing shows that in dry years, the furrow sections of the field produce more, while in wet years the ridges perform well, meaning that this system provided an early type of crop insurance: no harvest was likely ideal, but some part of the crop performed well each year, a lesson in the resourcefulness born of experience. So, a week at “medieval oxen camp” and a robust exchange of ideas made for some powerful professional development training for my role as a Tillers instructor. Did it help my classroom teaching as well? Stay tuned, because that’s a story for another day.

Claus Kropp next to his ridge and furrow wheat field. Note the height of the stems.

April/May 2026

21

Rural Heritage

22

KALONA SALES BARN, INC. 121 9 ST. KALONA, IA 52247 TH

319-656-2222 WWW.KALONASALESBARN.COM

We welcome you to Kalona, Iowa!

MONDAY, APRIL 13 , 2026 TH 9:00 a.m. Running Multiple Arenas: Farm & Field Items, Farm & Horse Related Antiques, New & Used Tack. 10:00 a.m. Harness, Collars, Saddles & Western Collectibles. 1:00 p.m. Horse-Drawn Vehicles, KALONA SPRING DRAFT HORSE & CARRIAGE SALE

Carriages, Wagons, Carts, Sleighs, Buggies, etc. TUESDAY, APRIL 14 , 2026 TH 9:00 a.m. Sale of Horses. Draft Breeds, Draft Crosses, Driving Horses, Saddle Horses & Ponies.

* CATALOG DEADLINE: MON. MARCH 9TH *

• SAVE THE DATE • Monthly Horse & Tack Sale | 1 Monday of Month st Kalona Special Horse Sale | Aug. 4 , 2026 th Fall Draft & Carriage Sale | Oct. 19 & 20 , 2026 th th

April/May 2026

23

Bioavailable Water

I admit that I have had water very much on my mind the past few months. This winter has been the driest I have ever experienced, despite living in semi arid climates for more than four decades. So, when two leaders in regenerative agriculture separately mentioned the cutting-edge work about water by Dr. Gerald Pollack, my curiosity was piqued. Pollack is an award-winning bioengineering professor at the University of Washington. His book The Fourth Phase of Water was particularly noted by those ag leaders, one even saying that this book was one of the few that they reread often. As peculiar as it might initially sound, it is likely that water is not really just water as we have known it. Structured Water is the phase of water in our body tissues and various cells and is not like water in a glass … . Rather, structured cellular water is ordered and energetically enhanced, very much like a crystal, but it’s in a fluid state … . Structured water has many other names: It can also be called coherent water, primary water, exclusion zone (EZ) water, magnetized water, crystalline water, hexagonal water, etc. – Dr. Marie McMahon 2 Dr. Marie McMahon is a professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Miramar College in California. Her 2023 paper on structured water explores structured water’s many characteristics. And there are even more names for structured water than she listed. One of those additional names is bioavailable water. The existence of structured water has been understood for more than 100 years and maybe as many as thousands of years in other cultures. Perhaps, like me, you have experimented with various kinds of drinking water, from spring water to alkalized. And perhaps you are familiar with the concept of bioavailable minerals for livestock. Or perhaps bioavailable vitamins for yourself. While I had heard in passing the term structured water, I had never heard the term bioavailable water. Dr. Pollack’s book makes clear that structured water is not just

by Jenifer Morrissey

Gardening is relatively new to the Voeikovs. Only recently had they acquired their dacha. Russians seem to have a genetic passion for growing vegetables, and the Voeikovs were eager to try their hand. Their immediate neighbors had been gardening for generations, yet Vladimir’s plants stood fully one third taller. This mildly embarrassing achievement arose not out of any special gift or unusual dedication, for the Voeikovs’ thumbs were not noticeably greener than most … Vladimir claimed it was the water. – Dr. Gerald Pollack in The Fourth Phase of Water 1

Water is easily taken for granted, yet a rarely understood phase of water is crucial to the health of cells in plants, livestock, and people.

Rural Heritage

24

• Sheep that appear vibrantly healthy utilize three sources of water, according to their stewards, not just the one that comes from the sky. The Burned Cow In 1985, a South Dakota ranch was devastated by a wildfire. Not only was forage burned and hay destroyed, but the fire also killed cows and left others singed. One particular cow survived the fire but was burned over much of her body. The ranch family was told they should just put the cow out of her misery, but since she was walking and eating, they decided to give her a chance. They heard about Dr. Willard’s Water being good for burns and began treating the cow with it. Dr. Willard was a professor at nearby South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. According to an article in South Dakota Magazine, the water that he developed contains particles with electrical fields

bioavailable to our bodies but to all living things that contain cells, including plants and livestock. Structured water is critical for essentially everything that biology does. — Gerald Pollack 3 Reading Pollack’s The Fourth Phase of Water helped me understand the following stories: • In the 1980s, a rancher used a special kind of water to treat a badly burned cow. • In the 1990s a biodynamic agriculture lecture talked about how water flows. I thought it didn’t apply to me because I wasn’t a farmer or gardener. I was wrong. • A dog would rather eat ice or snow or drink rainwater in a puddle than water provided in a bowl. • Why do gelatin desserts hold their watery structure?

This Hereford cow is shown two months after being burned in a wildfire in 1985. In another month, she fully recovered, including growing a normal coat, after being diligently treated with a special water. Photo courtesy Bruce Murdock

April/May 2026

25

This dog prefers ice and rainwater and snow over water in a bowl. I now understand he prefers the fourth phase of water, also known as structured or bioavailable water.

surrounding them which polarizes the water. The arrangement of the water molecules makes it more active. 4 One could also say it makes the water more bioavailable. The ranch’s cow did recover from her significant wounds, and the ranchers credited her recovery to the special water. Dr. Willard’s son John often thinks back to the first day his father knew the water was special, saying, “He was working in his home lab and burned himself. He put his hand in a bucket of the Catalyst Altered Water and immediately the pain was gone.” The Dog From childhood, we have learned that water has three phases: solid, liquid and vapor. Here, we have identified what might qualify as a fourth phase: the exclusion zone. Neither liquid nor solid, the EZ is perhaps best described as a liquid crystal with physical properties analogous to those of raw egg white. — Dr. Gerald Pollackv

I have a dog who is very athletic and very particular about the water he drinks after exercise. He would rather eat ice or snow or rain water in a puddle than water provided in a bowl. It can be very frustrating when I know he is thirsty that he won’t drink the water I have on hand for him. I am grateful to finally understand his preference. He prefers bioavailable water, also known as the fourth phase of water. Dr. Pollack describes the fourth phase of water as exclusion zone or EZ water because of one of its properties: it excludes other materials from its structure. Regarding ice, he says, “The atomic structure of ice closely resembles the atomic structure of the exclusion zone. This similarity is beyond coincidence: one transforms readily into the other.” From his research, he has learned that the formation of EZ water is a step in the creation of ice and in its melting. “The transition from water to ice requires an EZ intermediate.” He continues, “You may think of ice as being totally solid. In fact, a thin film of water lies on its surface … . The EZ’s

Rural Heritage

26

presence in just-melted ice has been confirmed.” What my dog is accessing by eating ice is that bioavailable, fourth phase water. Raindrops also contain EZ water, as does melting snow. My dog’s water preference, it turns out, makes perfect sense; he’s rehydrating very efficiently because that same water is what’s in his cells. Water Flow [Legendary Austrian naturalist Viktor Schauberger] spent much of his life studying water. Lifelong observations convinced him that vortices lent water a special “vitality.” Schauberger considered water taken from fast-running, vortex-filled streams more “alive” than stagnant water, which he considered dead. — Dr. Gerald Pollack

A lecture I attended in the 1990s about water in the context of biodynamic agriculture talked about how water flows. Dr. Pollack shared the connection between biodynamics and water flow, specifically vortexing, in his book. “Rudolf Steiner invented the so-called biodynamic farming technique, whose central feature is water vortexing. To this day, some farmers and fruit growers tout this vortexed water as producing crop yields of stunning abundance without fertilizers.” The lecture also included a discussion of flowforms, which create the vortexing that wild streams have naturally. Dr. McMahon says in her paper on structured water, “One way or another, it is possible to create more structured water … . Various devices create specific flow and often contain other materials with precise geometry and conductivity that help

Flowforms help water attain structure like that found in free-flowing streams, with numerous applications in gardening and agriculture. Photo courtesy Simon Charter, Ebb and Flow Ltd.

April/May 2026

27

mold problems, crisper form in his plants, and he claimed the plants needed less water. I visited and could certainly attest to the crisper looking form and good flavor — the plants were more like plants grown outside.” While Simon is based in the UK, he also comes to Maine to teach courses and is hoping to lead one in 2026. His colleague Nevin Eckert in Oregon also creates flowforms. 6 What I remember taking away from the biodynamic water lecture in the 1990s was that flow mattered to that community and it could be created artificially; it didn’t have to come from a mountain stream. I also concluded that flow did not matter to me because I wasn’t a farmer or gardener. I was right on the first but wrong on the last. The vortexing of water as used in biodynamic agriculture is creating more bioavailable water in the fruits and vegetables. I can taste the difference. That matters to me after all. Dessert! Gelatin desserts are mostly water. With all that water inside, you’d expect a lot of leakage. However, none occurs. Even from gels that are as much as 99.95% water, we see no dribbling. Why doesn’t all that water leak out? – Dr. Gerald Pollack My favorite desserts are puddings thickened with gelatin, such as blueberry chess or pumpkin. Dr. Pollack says in his book, “Gels hold enormous amounts of water. Gelatin desserts comprise 95 percent water … the gel contains a lot of EZ water. The pockets between those EZs contain protonated water. That protonated water sticks to the negative EZs and remains constrained within the gel unless pressured out. Your gelatin dessert should be of this ilk, and so should your child’s wet diaper.” I have a new appreciation for these desserts! And for the popularity of disposable diapers! Dr. Pollack also discusses another common cooking ingredient and its structured water content. “Egg white is replete with ordered water – understood now to be EZ water. Egg white’s EZ water excludes, as you might expect. To see this for yourself, expose egg white to various food colorings: provided the gooey albumin is left mechanically undisturbed, the egg white will exclude those dyes.”

energize the water and establish a balanced vortex motion within the water … which can enhance the coherence and structure of water.” Simon Charter has studied flowforms extensively and creates them. He says on his website,“Flowform vessels allow the water flowing through them to develop sustained rhythmic flow. This is due purely to the shape of the vessel … . The shaped surfaces of the forms act sympathetically upon the water in them, generating swinging or pulsing movements … . The forms have found many practical uses in agriculture and ecological work. They have been used to enhance liquid manure, in compost tea production, in potentization of agricultural preparations, in natural waste water cleaning systems, in baking processes, fermentation, and food handling.” 5 Simon shared with me that, “Most, if not all, practitioners I know of who try using flowforms continue to do so. One biodynamic vegetable gardener, having seen better root growth in a trial, invested time and money in building a rainwater tank with a sevenfold cascade beside it. He recirculated the water every day for some hours through the flowforms and a carbon filter. He used this water in a large greenhouse, growing salad crops mostly. He told me that after installing this he saw fewer It turns out that gelatin-thickened puddings like this blueberry chess have lots of structured/bioavailable water in them.

Rural Heritage

28

Water Crisis and Opportunity We have a water crisis in agriculture … . We have soils that do not hold water very well. They’ve lost their aggregate structure, crumb structure, and so water doesn’t infiltrate into the soils very well anymore. Soils have also lost much of their water holding capacity due to loss of organic matter and aggregate structure, etc. – John Kempf 7 John Kempf of Advancing EcoAgriculture has said about Dr. Pollack’s work: “Gerry’s research in how water functions in plants and in cells has tremendous implications for how we understand plant nutrition, nutrient absorption and nutrient flow within plants and very importantly how we understand the absorption of nutrients and compounds by plant root systems and by plant leaves.”

John continues, “One of the key pieces for me was thinking about how biology in the soil can actually increase the soil’s water holding capacity directly by developing an environment that can hold more of this exclusion zone water around biological substances and biological substrates even before we begin building large amounts of organic matter. This is actually something we have observed in the field where we may apply a biological inoculant, and we get an almost immediate response in the water holding capacity and drought resilience even though there hasn’t yet been time to build large amounts of soil organic matter.” If structured water is in every cell, then it certainly follows that increasing biology in the soil would increase the amount of structured water there, especially if those microorganisms can also create environments to hold it.

Vibrantly healthy sheep and wool, clean due to stewardship, not washing. These sheep have access to three sources of water, not just the one that comes from the sky. Photo Courtesy Ian and Diane Haggerty

April/May 2026

29