Cornish
Wilmot thinks oxen are “really, really cool,” which is why he chose the powerful bovine as his topic for a school project at the Ray School in Hanover. He’d even like to train an ox calf of his own, one day.
Fortunately, he was able to see dozens of oxen up close and personal on Saturday, when dozens of oxen — and horses, donkeys and mules — gathered at the Cornish Fairgrounds for the Draft Animal-Power Field Days.
He also met the oxen’s drivers, or teamsters, who showed him how they controlled the animals with the help of hand signals and verbal cues.
“To make them stop, you say ‘whoa’ … and ‘haw’ makes them go,” he said. He thinks he will have enough material to complete his school assignment.
The three-day celebration of agricultural heritage, which closes today after a live auction at 11:15 a.m., is also a biennial gathering of the Draft Animal-Power Network, or DAPNet.
The nationwide community aims to teach people about sustainable land stewardship through the use of draft animals. In addition to offering a host of workshops on the care and keeping of draft animals such as horses, mules and oxen, the Field Days also saw the raising of a small timber-frame house, the implementation of a forestry management plan — and a healthy number of horse-drawn wagons clopping up and down the fairgrounds’ dirt roads.
Though this latter activity may seem to harken back to pre-automotive days, draft animal power is “not to be confused with living history,” said Donn Hewes, president of the DAPNet board. Draft animals are not relics of an archaic practice, but rather an alternative power source that is constantly evolving to reflect developments in agricultural science and technology, he said.
But the farming community must also evolve from a demographic standpoint, said Gillian Goldberg, of Pittsburgh, Pa., during a 90-minute discussion for women teamsters.
Goldberg dreams of starting her own farm in the southwestern region of her home state — “straight-up Appalachia,” as she called it — but she’s having trouble finding land. When she does find a parcel of land she’s interested in, they “without fail belong to old white men” who explicitly doubt her capacity to run a farm, despite her years of experience, she said. Once, a farmer drove her around his property and thoroughly tested her knowledge of each piece of his farming equipment. A man wouldn’t have to prove himself in this way, she said.
But these experiences have also caused her to reflect on her own privileges. While a transgender person of color might not be safe in the situations Goldberg described, she herself is cisgender — meaning she identifies as the gender she was assigned at birth — and is white. She pointed out that all the women in the discussion group were white or white-presenting, too.
“The whiteness of rural areas isn’t an accident,” she said, citing land access laws that were not designed with people in color in mind. “We are the legacy of the people who wanted these places to look like this.”
Though some attendees had decades of experience with draft animal-powered projects, others were relatively new to the game — like event organizer Reva Sebolt, 68, of Vershire, who didn’t start farming until she was in her 50s. Though at first she “knew squat” compared with those whose families had been working with draft animals for generations, she felt warmly welcomed.
“It’s like a family … whose members are both practical, fun and committed,” she said, adding that one of these commitments is sharing their expertise with others.
“This (event) is about networking, but it’s also about educating people,” she said.
And at least two people left the fairgrounds with more know-how than they came in with. Sweecheng Lim and her husband, Beo Lim, started their homestead in Massachusetts about five years ago.
“We knew nothing,” said Beo. “Everything we had to learn. I liked to say I was always doing last year’s chores.”
But on Saturday, they learned how to build a stone-boat — a sled-like object that helps move heavy objects, such as rocks — and they look forward to applying this newfound knowledge. Until now, Sweecheng said, they’d been relying on “brute force” and crowbars to dislodge and remove stones from their fields.
Though some attendees, like Sebolt and the Lims, came to farming relatively late in life, the next generation of farmers was also well-represented.
Sixteen-year-old Jonah Shattuck, like 8-year-old Hudson, came to the Cornish Fairgrounds specifically to see oxen teams. He lives on a small hobby farm in West Brookfield, Mass., where he directs an oxen team of his own. Though he doesn’t anticipate pursuing agriculture as a career, “I’d like to always have a hobby farm going,” he said — preferably one powered by draft animals.
“I like them (because) they’re simple,” he said. “Once you know what to do, you pretty much just throw a yoke on them, and you’re set to go.”
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at eholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.