Draft Horses

Some of our family met in Lebanon last night for the Christmas parade. Two parades are held, one in daylight and one at night with lights on the carriages pulled by horses.

Some of those are draft horses or miniatures common to our area. There were 140 parade entries one year recently but I am not sure how many there were last night.

One friend, Ray, asked what background they were. From this article it looks like most of these parade entries were of Persian descent from the horse size and markings.

Grandpa trained and worked his last pair of Percheron horses that dad still used when I was little. I always joked we farmed like the Amish do today but we didn't know it back then.

Jim and Jane were a big pair of draft horses of mainly Percheron descent. Many of them are of darker hair color kind of like a brunette in hair color, looks black but there is a lot of red color to lighten it up in the sun. This team really looked more Belgian in color but Percheron in nature and size. Huge, easy going horses they were that would pull until the cows came home and then some more.

I wish I had a picture, I wonder if there are some in mom's attic. This gives me a good opportunity to call Uncle Roy and let him reminisce about the team as he drove horses on the farm and has that story where they ran away on him and lodged themselves at the railroad crossing in town less than a mile from the home farm.

It would be neat if I could plant that farm in 2017, that would be 100 years since grandpa planted it in 1918. That's a little far off but will be here before we all know it.

Life goes that fast but draft horses helped us get here before tractors became popular.

I realize now that grandpa also produced his own early hybrid corn on that farm by planting Bloody Butcher beside Reid's Yellow Dent and selecting the ears from that cross to shell and plant the following year. It greatly increased corn yields on that farm.

Ed