Rural Heritage June/July 2026

FORECART REESE HITCH• RAISING NUBIAN GOATS • LANDSCAPING WITH NATIVE PLANTS

Jun/Jul 2026

HOW TO HOOK AND UNHOOK YOUR TEAM SAFELY

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VOLUME 51

JUNE/JULY 2026

NUMBER 3

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 56 J.C. Allen Archives 82 Calendar of Events

85 Associations 90 My Card 95 Breeder's Directory

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 and Above: James Guthrie plows with his Percheron team at the Shaker Village in Harrodsburg, Ky., during the Draft Animal Power Network SE Teamster Gathering in mid April 2026. Features 8 Hooking & Unhooking................................................ Donn Hewes 14 Calf Training: Halters or Collars................................... Rob Collins 20 Moving Toward Perennial Agriculture.............. Jenifer Morrissey 30 American Mammoth Jackstock....................................... Les O’Dell 34 Ivy Pagliari............................................................ Anna Knapp-Peck 40 Start with a Good Foundation........................ Cameron L. Howard 42 The un-forgotten Farmers of the Chars Part 2........... Paul Schmit 50 Eulogy for Old Doc.......................................................... Jerry Hicks 54 Mike Brewington Plow Day.......................................... Joe Mischka Extra pages and videos on this story are on the digital edition. 60 Tuning up the McCormick Deering Cultivator......... Michael Glos 66 Multi-Use Tools & Tips................................................. Ralph J. Rice 70 Draft Animal Power NETwork........................... Anna Knapp-Peck 72 Mini Nubians to the Rescue...................................... Chiara Dowell 78 Bryan Moon Plow Day.................................................. Joe Mischka Extra pages and videos on this story are on the digital edition. 80 Lyndon Farm Team Show............................................. Joe Mischka Extra pages and videos on this story are on the digital edition.

June/July 2026

The next issue will be the Aug/Sep 2026 edition which goes to press early July. Contributor and Advertiser Deaadlines for the next issue are June 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

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Publisher's Post F or the past several years, we've been trying to get the word out to people about our YouTube channel where we have over 550 videos to watch for free whenever you want. All you have to do is go to YouTube and do a search for Rural Heritage and click on the channel button at the top. That will show you a list of videos as well as playlists where we've curated video subjects such as logging with draft animals, wagon trains, historical sites, and frequently featured personalities like Ralph Rice and Donn Hewes. Once you're at the channel page, you can subscribe for free and be notified whenever we add new videos. By subscribing to the channel, you help support us in our work to bring you stories of people "borrowing from yesterday to do the work of today.” ° ° ° ° S peaking of supporting our business, you can show your support by doing business with our regular magazine advertisers and our new TV sponsor, Huberd’s Shoe Grease. We're proud to recommend their leather care products to our readers and viewers. Since 1921, Huberd's has been restoring and protecting people's leather goods. For many, using Huberd’s is a family tradition that goes back generations. ° ° ° ° W e've launched two new video projects recently. The first is documenting Ralph Rice’s training program for a couple young Suffolk geldings he plans to make his go-to team once they’ve matured. He loves his mares and raising foals but needs a team that he can rely on all year long, when the mares are pregnant or nursing. We’ve covered his work getting the two horses desentisized and accustomed to being handled and harnessed. We will be heading back several times in the next several months as he begins driving them first single and then as a team. The second project is filming Donn Hewes as he talks about and demonstrates some of the techniques he uses to operate a horse drawn farm.

The first couple videos have been about how to put on a bridle using his multi-step method and how to hook and unjook from a farm implement safely. We will have lots more to come. Donn is an excellent communicator and has many years of experience farming with horses and training beginning teamsters. ° ° ° ° I n the last couple of months, I've been to Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Dakota and Nebraska to bring stories of folks working with draft animals to our readers and viewers. I've met a lot of new people I am glad to now call my friends and visited with lots of folks I've known for years. At every stop and every event, people emphasize that they enjoy getting together to use their teams in a group setting, but much more than that, they enjoy the camaraderie of one another. At one of my more recent stops, a plowing and planting day at Taylor, N.D., folks pulled in with their trailers and unloaded and harnessed their horses before 10 am, but weren't in the field in force for a couple hours afterward. They were too busy greeting old friends and making new ones. ° ° ° ° T his issue has several excellent articles, including many tips for using draft animals and managing a homestead. One of my favorites is the teamster profile Anna Knapp-Peck wrote for us about Ivy Pagliari. Included in that story is an essay written by Ivy for another magazine that Anna and Ivy felt should be included. We agreed wholeheartedly. The essay touches on a topic that is sometimes ignored. A farmer's life can be sometimes lonely and his or her mental health issues unnoticed. One of the tools that can promote socialization and a feeling of involvement is working with others. Plow days and heritage festivals can help people meet others with similar interests and issues. Without painting too idyllic a picture, I think many of the safety nets our great-grandparents …continued on page 69

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Hooking & Unhooking A step by step method for use on the farm

by Donn Hewes O f course, there are almost as many ways to hook a team of horses to a cart as there are teamsters, but I wanted to illustrate a method I use and teach to beginning teamsters and horses. There are a few things we should discuss beforehand. First, I teach people how to do these things when they are alone, i.e. by yourself. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have help; help is great! There are many times and situations when having

more than one person is advisable. When we are out in public is one example. Hooking up a team while people are around can be difficult, and a second set of hands is a good idea and sometimes essential. Hooking four, six or eight horses is a lot no matter how good they are, and help is appreciated. So why place so much emphasis on being able to do this alone? Two reasons; first, my primary use of horses is in farming, and you are often working alone. If there is another person available, they are hooking their own team of horses. The second is about having a safe, standardized method for this important task.

Donn drives his team of Suffolk Punch draft horses to the forecart he is going hook to.

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Donn drives his team past the forecart tongue, which rests on a stand to keep it off the ground, then backs them over the tongue.

When I have help, they can “head” the horses, or in some cases, hold the lines or even hook the far side tugs, but I don’t change how I hook, the steps I take, or the order in which I do things. I do it the same every time whether I am by myself or not. A couple more things before the step-by-step instructions. It is often said “never let the lines out of your hands.” This sounds like a reasonable precaution that everyone could take. But I don’t like to tell someone this is a rule, and then have them turn around and see me not following it. The truth is, in my opinion, the best way to hook a team of horses includes leaving the lines for a short period. Others may have another method, but this is mine. In farming and logging you will find there are times when we will hang the lines on the hames (or put them down) but knowing when, where and how to do this safely could be another article. Nothing about this is to suggest that you should let go of your lines or step off your vehicle while you are giving rides. Whether it is professional rides in public or just giving a friend a ride on the farm, don’t leave a passenger on your vehicle if you are getting off; and always have the lines in your hands if people are on your wagon. As well as being by yourself, this method is also intended to hook to a cart while it is NOT in front of a hitching rail and the team is not tied up. A hitching rail and tying the team is a very effective safety tool for getting horses and teamsters started. A hitching rail and tying the horses up could be a safe standard practice for some folks, but the truth on a farm is

that mowers, rakes and wagons are wherever you left them, and we (and our horses) will need the ability to hook up to them wherever they are. That is what we teach and practice. Author Note: A few words about preparing yourself and your horses before I go further. I sometimes feel people would prefer rules rather than their own judgment when it comes to working with horses. Good judgment is what determines when a team of horses is ready to do this work and be hooked up by yourself in this way. The only problem with me suggesting rules that could be used to determine when or how to hook horses is that excellent judgment will be required as soon as you are hooked anyway. Once you have followed the “rules” for hooking, you will need to determine if these horses are ready for a mower or a manure spreader, and we are right back to the essential use of good judgment, so we might as well start teaching that from the beginning. I expect horses to stand and cooperate while I hook them to an implement or vehicle. I need to train them with this in mind and be able to determine when they are ready for these things. I don’t “trust” horses to work with me as I hook a team. I “predict” that they will. The difference is subtle, but when a horse fails to cooperate while I am trying to hook up to a wagon, it is my “prediction” that was wrong,

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Once he has his team in position, with the tongue between them, Donn loops his lines and puts them over the hames where they can be reached quickly.

STEPS TO HOOKING UP SAFELY AND EFFECTIVELY EVERY TIME

not the horse. The horse and I were not prepared, which is my responsibility. This is where your good judgment must come into play. Every horse's harness should be properly adjusted to fit that horse before it is paired with another horse to make a team. Failure to do this correctly sometimes leads to attempts to compensate for a poorly adjusted harness while hooking up, and this can result in an avoidable accident. In a western britchen style harness, the quarter straps and pole strap coming between the front legs should be checked and adjusted to the correct length before the animal is ever matched up with a teammate or hooked to any vehicle. When pulling forward on the breast strap snap, it should form a straight line from the top of the hames all the way down through the hames to the snap. Don’t be tempted later to adjust this, when something else in the hitch doesn’t seem right.

Step 1. Getting your team on either side of the pole. The goal here is to easily step one horse of the pair over the pole and stop quickly so you don’t need to back up much. It is a trick and, as such, it requires practice. The horses sometimes make a game of it; first no one goes over the pole and the next time we both do! After one or two tries, get them into position any way you can. I don’t want them thinking this game can go on forever. Many folks use a butt rope connecting the harness together at the britchen, and that might make this step easier. In backing any distance without a butt rope you need to be careful that the horses’ butts don’t spread too much. I prefer to work without a butt rope except when training some very green horses, and sometimes I might just give a horse a quick pull on the britchen to remind them not to spread apart.

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The neck yoke Donn uses is called a plug yoke, unique to the D-ring harness Donn prefers. The bolt slides into a hole at the end of the tongue.

Step 2. Attach the Neck Yoke First. We always hook up the neck yoke first, all harness types, all vehicle types, every time. Here is where I ask all the beginning teamsters why we always hook up the yoke first. (I ask this almost every day for three months). The correct answer is because they are the brakes (through connection to the britchen), and it only makes sense to hook up the brakes before the gas. It is a common safety practice to have your yoke chained or secured to the end of the tongue and not a bad idea. Just remember the main reason the yoke comes off the end of the tongue is because

What to do with the lines? Once the horses are standing on either side of the pole, take a breath and relax. As I walk to the head of the horses to start step 2, I like to hang the lines on the hames, careful to make sure all the loops are well off the ground. To do this effectively, you need to remind yourself that you are still in control of the team by being at their heads. Some folks won’t like this practice of hanging the lines up as you go to the head of the horses, seeing it as unsafe. Remember, I have been practicing this with my horses from the time I started leading them with a rope.

After connecting the yoke straps to the neck yoke, Donn takes the lines from the hames and walks them back to the forecart where he loops them around the rail.

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After hooking the traces of one horse to the doubletree, Donn walks in front of the team to hook the other horse’s traces, avoiding the implement behind the forecart and staying close to the lines.

the horses were not hooked correctly, and don’t let a safety chain give the false impression that it is OK to hook the horses any old way. It is always important to hook the team correctly. What to do with the lines? After I have finished attaching the horses to the neck yoke and the yoke to the pole, I pick up the lines as I walk from the front of the team to the rear. At this point, I lay the lines in the center of the team, on top of the tongue or flipped over a railing if the vehicle has one. They need to be within easy reach if I want them in my hands, but I prefer to hook the trace chains without the lines in my hands. It is possible when working with a green or younger horse to hook the traces with the lines in your hands, but I usually don’t. I just keep them in reach. Step 3. Hooking Up the Traces — Side One. Start with the inside tug (also called the trace) and hook it to the evener. We hook the inside one first and then the outside one just so we don’t create a box with us in it. If you know the correct number of links to use that is great, but in either case, we will test and adjust at the end to make sure we are using the correct links. Some might say a few links either way doesn’t matter, but that is not correct. Always use the best number of links for a given team and vehicle. That is true of all harness types and all vehicle types. If you don’t know the best number of links from the last time you hooked the same horses

to the same vehicle, make your best guess. Be sure to test and adjust the number of links as described in the last step of hooking up. Count the number of links as you hook up and pay attention to how many you are using. Use the same number of links for all four tugs. There are circumstances where you might use a different number of links between one horse and another, but those are specific to a pair of horses or harnesses that don’t match in some way. What to do with the lines? To finish hooking the second horse you will need to get to the other side of the team. This is where folks might differ with my method. Perhaps this is controversial, perhaps not. Leave the lines in the center of the team and walk around the front, and back to the lines. Once I get to the other side, I mentally check that the lines are in easy reach before I hook up the next two traces. I never step over the pole to get from one side to the other, I never go behind the cart, the vehicle or any equipment attached to the cart. I don’t step over the equipment tongue where it is attached to the cart. I always go around in front of the team. This means leaving the lines for a moment and then returning to them. Why do I do it this way? It is the only one-person system that is completely repeatable every time I hook up. It doesn’t matter what I am hooking to or what it is hooked to. I do it exactly the same every time. Stepping over a tongue or any other piece of

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equipment creates the chance for tripping and is a really bad idea with horses half hooked. There is no way I know of to keep the lines in your hands and get from one side of the team to the other short of walking around behind the vehicle and that won't work every time with every vehicle. Step 4. Hooking Up the Traces — Side Two. Now that you are there, hook the second horse the same as the first; inside tug and then the outside, with the same number of links. What to do with the lines? Now that the horses are hooked, you can take the lines with you. If you need to go to the horses’ heads to check if

the hitch is correct, you can keep them with you. When my horses are standing and I step to their heads, I usually hang the lines up on the hames as I go by and retrieve them as I return from the head of the horses. I wouldn’t be as quick to hang the lines up whenever I want if I was away from home and out in public, but it is what I do on the farm every day. Step 5. Getting the length of the traces right. Hooked is hooked right? Wrong! You're not hooked up to a vehicle and ready to go anywhere until you check to make sure you have the number of links of the trace chain connected. On the farm working

Hooking the last trace, Donn pushes and holds the end of the singletree in position with his leg to tighten all the traces as the doubletree equalizes the tension on all the traces.

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On a D-ring harness, the front side straps carry the weight of the front of the tongue, running from the neck yoke to the "D" ring. The photo on the left shows the strap before it is tightened. The strap running from the collar to the neck yoke is designed to keep the side strap in place, but here it is sharing the weight of the pole. The photo on the right shows the side strap tightened to take up the weight of the pole so the other strap becomes slack. Donn will loosen these side straps when unhooking before doing anything else, to reduce the tension throughout the hitch, making it easier to unhook the traces.

from memory ( i.e. I always use four links) might be OK, but in public, double check the tension every time you hook up. One problem folks may encounter is, with a light vehicle that wants to move forward and back easily, it is not always easy to tell how tight the tugs are. To correctly test the length of our traces we would like the vehicle to NOT roll easily. This can be accomplished in many ways. If there is a brake, set it or have someone hold it. Use wheel chocks in front and behind a tire. If the vehicle is heavy enough or on flat enough ground, it will stay still on its own. Now ask the horses to gently move forward and back. When they lean back, how much do the traces hang down? How loose are they? If the traces remain tight while the horses are pushing back, that is too tight for a Western Britchen type harness; loosen them one or two links until they are not tight when the horses lean back. You probably noticed they were tight while you were hooking them up, too. If you are on the last link and they are tight, the tongue is too long. Don’t try to fix this by adjusting the pole strap or quarter straps. That is not what they are for. The greater problem (and more common) is when they are too loose. Again, with the horse

leaning back, if your traces are hanging down in a long curve from horse to evener, they are too loose. Reduce the number of links being used until the traces are straight but not too tight. You can double check this when the horses lean forward in the traces. With traces tight, the pole strap and quarter straps should not hang down more than a couple inches away from the belly, and the yoke should still be well seated back against the stop under the tongue. The yoke should not be rocking forward or halfway off already. Also, with the horses forward in the traces you should easily be able to put your fingers under the britchen, but the britchen should not pull away to create a gap of more than an inch. Often what happens is the team or the harness don’t match the length of the tongue from evener to the neck yoke. You don’t fix this by lengthening or shortening the pole straps or quarter straps of your harness. They have already been adjusted to correctly fit the horse. If the team doesn’t fit the pole, you need to correct the pole, and this is another place where folks get into trouble. You can’t easily fix the length of the pole in the moment, and you want to use the vehicle and team anyway. Don’t hook and drive the team if there is too much play.

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What to do with the lines? Now that you are correctly hooked, you can take the lines and take the seat. Enjoy the ride! How to unhook. To unhook is basically undoing everything in the reverse order. You always unhook traces before the yoke. It would be an easy mistake to make, but imagine for a moment a team of horses all hooked up on the evener with the pole laying on the ground. If they take one step, that will likely be a very bad accident. Then proceed to disconnecting the yoke. Manage your lines as before, and don’t leave anyone sitting on the wagon while you unhook! What about the D-ring Harness? In this article, I have focused on the Western britchen type harness, which I used for many years before switching to the New England D-ring type harness. The reason I concentrated on this harness is because it is by far the most common work, show, or wagon ride harness in use in North America. While a side backer harness has some different parts and connection to the yoke, the steps to hooking up are the same. The tension in the hitch should be the same and can be tested in the same way. There are only a couple differences when hooking a D-ring harness. First, yoke before traces is still the rule, no change there. The biggest difference is not in the steps but in choosing the correct tension in the hitch. D-ring harnesses rely on tension between the tugs on one end and the yoke on the other to hold the pole in the proper position, placing all its weight and motion on the horses’ backpads instead of their collars. Sometimes this can be hard to accomplish by pulling on the last trace. There are a few tricks to getting the last tug hooked when using a D-ring harness. One is to always back the vehicle against a block or wheel chock before unhooking and don’t point downhill. This will allow the horses to lean back and aid in hooking the last tug. I also used the inside of my knee on the end of the evener and a hand on the chain to lever them together. Today I use a method many farmers and loggers routinely use. We always loosen one side of the front side straps (on the left side of each horse, just for consistency) while unhooking, which loosens

the hitch and makes it easier to unhook. I do this as soon as I get off the vehicle and before I begin to unhook the traces (which includes more walking back and forth from back to front of the team). Despite going to the horses’ heads to loosen this strap, we still need to unhook traces before the yoke. When we are hooking up with a D-ring, we do the same steps to connect the yoke and hook all the traces to the right length. Then, with one extra step, I use the tightening of the front side straps to create the correct tension and raise the pole to the desired height. You can watch Donn go over these steps in detail on our YouTube video, “Hooking and Unhooking with Donn" on the Rural Heritage YouTube channel.

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Calf Training: Halters or Collars

by Rob Collins T he total number of English language manuals for training oxen can probably be counted on your fingers. Drew Conroy, Ray Ludwig, Les Barden, Carmen Legge, Tillers’ tech guides and the 4-H Working Steer Manual all dovetail nicely to document many of the best practices in calf training in a no-nonsense style. Before training a team of your own, I’d recommend reading all of these and referring to them often, but taken as a whole, they are a little dogmatic. So, I’m experimenting with a different take on calf training: a series of questions and thought exercises to ponder, recognizing that each team, and even each session, may require a different approach. This first question comes up often when we’re training calves at Tillers

International. Should I use halters or collars (or nothing)? YES, PUT A HALTER ON ‘EM If you decide to go this route, you’re in solid company. Most folks who work oxen start with calves, or at least adolescent animals, and the first step is to halter and tie them. Equally common is the practice of haltering and tying any team, even adult animals, when you get them out, allowing you to brush and yoke them at a hitching post. I’ve done that for years with my teams, and that’s what we teach at Tillers. Haltering initially. If you’re starting with a bottle calf, haltering is about as simple as it comes: walk up and slip it on. The only real issue is to practice with the Chinese-finger-trap-like puzzle that is a rope halter. It needs to be snug on the nose when

Rob Collins with 6-month-old Shorthorns where halters make good safety sense.

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Routing the off animal’s halter through the near bow keeps it out of the way, as demonstrated at a Tillers class.

you pull and have the long end to the left of the animal. That’s it, but students often step back proudly after putting one on a calf, only to find out it’s upside-down, backwards, or both. For an unruly animal, slowly working it into a corner and using body position, or sometimes a good, solid hug while you slip the halter on is the goal. The process can be less linear than it sounds with a skittish animal. Aim for the least amount of stress to get the halter on the calf. Ten minutes of chasing might be worse than one minute of wrestling, so be open to a change in plans. A few years ago, I had to halter a neighbor’s escaped Holstein heifer. We got her in an inside corner between my house and garage and managed to ease her 500 pounds into a halter for the first time. Patience and persistence are the keys, although sometimes the former is needed and other times the latter. Halter breaking Now that the halter is on, teaching the animal to walk on a halter is often the next logical step. Imagine that the goal is, “When I walk forward, the calf walks with me.” Haltering is used as both a precondition of teaching the animal to

drive and as a useful behavior by itself. Because it’s helpful when moving an animal, trailering it, or bringing it to see the veterinarian, halter breaking is worth doing. For halter breaking, try this trick I got from Anneka Baird: pull on the halter to ask the calf to come forward. Keeping tension on the rope, give the rope an “up and down” wiggle. The second the animal steps forward, release the tension on the rope. Repeat. Seeing Anneka demonstrate this technique in a class, I asked her how many sessions it usually took to halter break a calf. Her response was, “Sessions? Just one. About 20 minutes and they’ve got it.” Negative reinforcement vs. Punishment Anneka’s method brings up an important reminder for halters: negative reinforcement and punishment each have a place, but they aren’t the same. Removing the unpleasant tugging when the calf steps forward rewards walking. That’s negative reinforcement. Giving a sharp tug if the animal bolts adds a punishment. Both are useful. However, living somewhere in the middle, where you have some pressure on a halter all the time, confuses and annoys the calf. Make a point to notice how often you are

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doing that. My only half-joking suggestion is to have a friend watch you and click a clicker every time the rope comes up tight. Get used to that clicking sound or stop tugging on the rope. Halters in Public An additional reason to use halters is to have an emergency brake as the animals are being trained but also keeping in mind that the halter is only used as a last resort. Teamster Andrew Van Ord jokingly describes it this way: “You'll see people hanging on the rope and I guess it's part of my childhood trauma … once they got a little bit reliable, we didn't have (the rope) in our hands anymore. We tied a loop in it and hung it on the bow or hung (it) on the britchen. You didn't want to let dad catch you letting that rope come up taut. It was one thing to have it in your hand, but it should always have slack in it unless they are trying to run away.” Continuing this line of thinking, several living history farms, either by policy or practice, keep halters on their animals whenever they are interacting with the public. If that’s going to be the way an animal is worked, starting the training with a halter makes good sense.

Training Jersey heifer calves in halters at a 2025 Tillers class.

Five-week-old Devon calves with collars and the lead wrapped on the yoke.

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Having a lead on the yoke allows for an emergency brake with 6-week-old Devons.

PUT A COLLAR ON ’EM I used collars to train my first team, mainly because I had collars but didn’t own halters. Since I was training a pair of generally calm and well-mannered bottle calves, it worked nicely. But when I started my team of Shorthorns, they were each 550 pounds, 6 months old, and had not ever been handled. In that case, halters seemed more prudent than collars. One of the main proponents of training with a collar was Connecticut 4-H leader Ray Ludwig. Tillers’ founder Dick Roosenberg describes Ray as the best trainer he’s seen due to his incredible patience with animals and clear, disciplined directions. In The Pride and Joy of Working Cattle, he says, “… The calf is being trained to respond to verbal commands and not merely to comply when being pushed … so the trainer must be careful to avoid tugging on the calf to make him obey. Because the use of halters provides a ready ‘handle’ to promote this bad habit, I recommend the use of collars … forced to rely only on voice commands and gentle taps to determine

what is expected of him, then, the calf will become more alert and responsive to his trainer.” One of Ruy Ludwig’s former 4-H kids, Justin Riendeau, described the decision to use collars this way: “We were talking about calves and some of the kids that were in the club. He was like, ‘No halters. I don't like halters.’ And we always trained with collars. That's how I did all my calves: training them with collars and a lead. … It almost gave you too much control over the animal [to use a halter]. He wanted you to be able to stop the animal if you needed to be able to stop it, but he wanted that animal to learn a voice command. He felt that some teamsters were too reliant on [halters]. We never really used halters at all. We had them for transporting the animals, or if the vet came, or something like that, we used them, but Ray is a guy who likes collars and that's the way he taught us.” WORKING WITHOUT A HALTER OR COLLAR Now, imagine taking the halter or collar discussion to its logical end. What if the animals simply learned

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Seven weeks old and no leads for cart work.

to walk up and stand while being yoked? What if you gave up control of the animals to focus only on communication? Even if it’s only an academic question, take a minute to consider it. A team of oxen becomes most useful when they can be worked without a lead rope. Using cues from a halter, in many ways, slows down the learning. For instance, if the “whoa” command is given verbally and accompanied by a tap of the stick and the teamster stopping their feet, the animal learns that each of those cues means to stop. Add in a tug on the halter, and the animal has no choice but to stop. But did it learn to stop? Perhaps. Working without a halter or lead, even sporadically, accelerates the learning process for animal and teamster alike, provided the animals don’t run away into the next county. For this reason, training in an enclosed area makes good sense. Tillers has an excellent tech guide, Training Young Steers, that outlines round pen training. In this guide, Marcia Keith says, “Tillers International prefers the North American tradition of using only voice commands,

body language, and a crop or short stick. Working with lead ropes can be counterproductive to the teaching of voice commands as the animal and trainer may learn to depend on them. The training ring permits control without ropes.” Training a team to accept the yoke initially when they can simply walk off requires total focus and a willingness to accept the occasional setback, but it is possible, and a team trained this way becomes handy in a relatively short time. If you skipped to the end to see which method is the best, I hate to disappoint you. My standard rule of woodworking and oxen driving applies: Every task has six options. Two vie for “best” designation, two suffice in a pinch, and two may cause loss of life or limb. I’ve been happy training teams in each of the three methods: halter, collar, or untethered. In hindsight, the method matched the personality of the team, and I blurred the lines a bit within each method. In the final analysis, keeping a large set of training tools in your kit opens more possibilities in the moment. Both you and your team should benefit from that.

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Moving Toward a More Perennial Agriculture

those trips, I found myself exclaiming whenever I saw a pond or stream or lake. Since I’ve never lived through drought before, I thought that five years into drought I would stop seeing and feeling new things. I was wrong. I had seen, and somewhat expected, seasonal streams to quit running and seasonal ponds to no longer fill. There were, though, two ponds that “had always” had water and continued to have water in them. This winter, though, they too dried up. Since

by Jenifer Morrissey

We’re certainly not suggesting that agriculture should be only perennial, but it’s essential that we move towards more of a perennial balance. – Liz Carlisle 1 I was surprised at myself this winter. We went off the ranch several times to other places in our region to help my neighbor shop for bulls. On

The first flowers of spring always bring joy. This year they also brought a sense of astonishment that they had survived our droughty winter. They weren’t as numerous or vibrant, but they had survived. I am awed by the resilience of perennials.

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perennial food crops. Carlisle says, “If you want to have fruit at some point, you’ve got to plant that tree and take care of it. That’s what impresses me most about the folks in this book — their ability to engage in deep, long-term processes.” Perennial systems can be designed that can produce prodigious amounts of food and other resources for human beings. Fruit trees and nut trees, trees with edible leaves, fruiting shrubs, perennial vegetables, herbs and spices, edible flowers, seeds, roots and tubers ... there are numerous yield-producing plants that can be included, depending on the climate and local conditions, within a perennial planting scheme. – Elizabeth Waddington 3 Elizabeth Waddington is a permaculture designer in Scotland. Perennial plantings are a central feature of permaculture design. Waddington continues, “Fruit and nut trees and berry bushes are of course very familiar perennial food sources for most. But other non-woody perennial food sources are often much less well known. Many people will also be familiar with perennial herbs that can be grown for culinary or medicinal use, or for other uses. And most will also be familiar with perennials like strawberries and rhubarb, and perennial vegetables like asparagus and artichokes, perhaps. But there is a huge list of perennial herbs, vegetables and edible flowers that might be considered for inclusion in permaculture planting schemes. Embracing perennial edibles native to or suitable for growth in your area is a wonderful way to grow your own in a lower-maintenance and more sustainable way.” Matt Hundley is a permaculture designer in Oregon. Hundley says, “Permaculture is a set of principles that help to guide a farmer towards regenerative decision-making on their land. By faithfully learning to apply permaculture principles, my soil grows with me. As I learn my land and the economy of my farm a little more every day, I can better apply these principles to rethink how I grow, with techniques like mob grazing, livestock integration, chicken composting systems, integrated annual and perennial cropping, agroforestry, cover cropping, companion planting, swaling, building diverse low-tech water catchment systems, etc.”

January, we have already had too many days of fire weather watches, and there have been fires all around us before Easter. I guess it’s no surprise I was elated at seeing water in other places. As winter has moved into spring, I have been elated by different sightings. Before losing those ponds, I had seen pine trees die up on the canyon top last summer. During the winter, I walked on increasingly crunchy pasture not from ice but from dryness. So this spring, I have marveled to see the first wildflowers and the first bits of green grass. How resilient they are to still have the resources to come alive again! I can’t fathom taking a chance on putting seeds in the ground when precipitation is so scarce and our water resources are stressed. Thank goodness for the perennials that endure. Liz Carlisle is co-editor with Aubrey Streit Krug of the new book Living Roots : The Promise of Perennial Foods. 2 Published in March 2026, the book collects the stories of contributors about their work with Food-producing perennial canes such as blackberries are common features of a permaculture design, often planted within easy access to the family residence so all members of the family can participate in harvest. Photo courtesy Matt Hundley

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Why might permaculture designers, like Waddington and Hundley, and Carlisle of the book Living Roots feel we need more perennial crops? Reviewing the six principles of soil health can give us some insight. As you may remember, those principles are: keep living roots in the soil as much of the year as possible, keep the ground covered, minimize disturbance of the soil, utilize diversity above and below ground, integrate livestock, and remember that every place is unique. Perennial plants are generally considered those that live for at least two years, growing from the same root system each year. Obviously, then, perennial crops help out with the first principle of soil health about keeping living roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible. Living roots are crucial to nurturing the microbiome

of the soil. Carlisle and Streit Krug say in their book’s introduction, “Perennials stay in place for decades — and sometimes centuries — precisely because their roots are so active … . Year after year, perennial plants allocate a quarter to a third of their solar harvest to their microbial mutualists, pulling carbon down out of the atmosphere and building up the terrestrial life support system commonly known as soil.” What I came to realize is that perennial grains are the amazing intersection of my deepest joys with some of the world's deepest needs. Here was a single change to agriculture that could enhance food production, improve farmer incomes through reduced expenses, and address environmental problems ranging from water pollution to climate change. – Lee DeHaan in Living Roots

Kernza, a patented form of intermediate wheatgrass, at The Land Institute in Kansas. Kernza is a perennial with value as both food crop and forage. Photo by Lee DeHaan and used via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.

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A prairie strip at Neil Smith Wildlife Refuge in Iowa. Prairie strips, a technique for reducing soil disturbance, are proven to mitigate nutrient and sediment runoff from crop and grazing systems. USDA NRCS/SWCS photo by Lynn Betts.

Lee DeHaan is a researcher at The Land Institute in Kansas and a contributor to the book Living Roots . DeHaan continues about the joy of his work with perennial grains: “… I have come to see another joy, working to improve the overall system of agriculture rather than focusing on individual problems. Often our solution to one problem makes another problem worse. For instance, many techniques to address environmental issues in farming result in reduced yields or reduced farmer incomes. Perennial grains are so compelling to me because they offer a means to improve the system as a whole.” I want something growing in the ground at all times, even if it’s a weed. – Matt Hundley

Hundley the permaculture designer continues about plants we often consider unwelcome: “Your average weed such as a dandelion is immediately sending about one third of the sunlight it converts into sugars and other root exudates straight into its roots where it is taken up by soil microbes that create that complex web of soil life we want. And when the rest of that plant dies when I’m ready to put in a crop, it breaks down and gives the rest of the accumulated carbon and other nutrients to the soil that will support my crop.” Over the course of the past century, agriculture and trees have had an uneasy relationship with each other. As tree cover has been removed around the world to make way for row crops and plantations,

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or perennial strips is a strategy that is showing benefit for soil, water and farmers. Carlisle and Streit Krug write, “One study in Iowa analyzed the impact of perennial strips on mitigating nutrient runoff and found that crop fields without strips lost eight times more nitrogen and 35 times more sediment. Another study assessed grassland buffers at the edge of a grazing system in Missouri, which reduced nitrogen loss by 68% relative to grazed land without a buffer.” The benefits of intact soil with high organic matter, biological activity and perennial roots are measurable. When you have external disturbances – like, for example, tillage or chemical triggers – you will clearly see negative feedback: degraded soil structure, plants more prone to diseases, decrease in yield [if you don’t have chemical inputs]. All of these are feedback from the system telling you “I don’t like what’s going on. Change or I’m done.” – Dr. Carla Portugal 4 Another principle of permaculture involves accepting feedback. Dr. Carla Portugal of the Soil Food Web Foundation continues, “So instead [of external disturbance], you boost up the system with healthy procedures like bringing back soil biology, letting the biology restructure the soil, work with cover crops to avoid any uncovered areas. The system will repay you with beautiful plants, a healthy system, the yield in time you’re even going to surpass the traditional treatment. So, give the system time.” I sometimes find myself apologizing or making a disclaimer to visitors who come expecting a farm with a white picket fence and turf like pastures. To most folks, our farm just looks like a jumble of grass and trees until you look and listen closer. - Wendy Johnson in Living Roots The fourth principle of soil health is to utilize diversity above and below ground. Wendy Johnson, a contributor to the book Living Roots , has slowly been converting her family’s farm in Iowa to have more diversity, including perennials. She says, “Perennials give me so much hope, because I know they will continue on. If we plant them, it feels like pieces of ourselves are within them, as

catastrophic emissions and loss of wildlife habitat have followed. – Carlisle and Streit Krug in Living Roots Keeping the ground covered, the second principle of soil health, is often accomplished with annual cover crops or mulch. However, perennials can also have a role. The article “Silvopasture: Revisiting Trees and Grazing” in the December 2022 issue of this magazine discussed the integration of trees and grazing as one example of perennials being used to keep the ground covered. The Forest section of the book Living Roots includes chapters about other types of agroforestry based on poultry, fruit, nuts and medicinal plants. In their introduction to the section, Carlisle and Streit Krug continue, “The climate case for agroforestry is a powerful one. A global synthesis of research on the subject found that soil organic carbon increased 40% in the top foot of soil when land transitioned from annual agriculture to agroforestry.” As we have learned in past articles, soils with higher soil organic carbon are valuable because they tend to be more resilient in times of stress and are more productive. Hundley says,“One of the permaculture principles is, ‘Catch and store energy.’ ” This means that you try not to let a drop of sunlight, water, or organic matter escape your land. This means I’m not leaving bare soil, because that means I’m losing all three of those things. So, that one permaculture principle caused me to make a decision to leave my soil in a cover crop until the last possible second, causing it to have little ‘solar panels’ pumping nutrients and organic matter into my soil. That principle also helped me avoid compaction of my soil – and the resulting water and nutrient loss – by keeping roots in the ground. And it kept more pollinators and beneficial predatory insects alive, balancing out the entire system so my pests are better managed. Now I don’t need pesticides and don’t have to suffer from those negative effects to my soil.” Many of the chapters in Living Roots discuss alternatives to the monocultures of North American agriculture, crops that are often heavily dependent on tillage. Minimizing soil disturbance such as tillage is the third principle of soil health. Putting some of the Great Plains back into prairie

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Perennial agriculture, then, can be a more natural and sustainable choice. Permaculture emphasizes diversity. – Dr. Carla Portugal Permaculture has numerous meanings, one of which is permanent agriculture. Perennials and a well-designed and diverse plant community are crucial for that permanence. Dr. Portugal says, “Diversity reduces vulnerability and maximizes resources. You need to reduce the vulnerability points in your system to keep the system resilient.” Permaculture designer Waddington points out that a resilient permanent system depends on layered perennial plantings. Those plantings are also “easier to maintain because all the elements

if we will continue on too … . We can’t return to the climate of the past, and there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed at stopping the worst impacts of the present climate crisis. But at least we’ll know that we believed in something that will return year after year after year, that will provide food and help clean water for many. And that is all we may need to feel at peace.” Another contributor to the book Living Roots , Valentin Picasso, points out: “Natural ecosystems have two important features: diversity and perenniality. They foster many different plant species that regrow every year. A truly sustainable agriculture, one that regenerates itself, must mimic the natural ecosystem in those two aspects.”

As in any regenerative system, livestock also have an important role to play in perennial agriculture.

Photo courtesy Matt Hundley

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