PLATE 119 Adam Foster’s horses
“A horse can back two-thirds as much weight as he can pull, but a horse hardly ever wants to back up. I never had many to back up. If they did, I’d just slap ’em with the lines to get their attention and get ’em to go on. I’ve tried to work a few saddle horses, and they back up.
“It’s all right to trot a little stump jumper [a saddle horse] when you get him out on the highways or trail riding or someplace like that, but I won’t let a big draft horse trot. He wasn’t made to trot, and he can’t stand it.”
Estelle Chastain recalls, “We had horses, but they was always for the farm. They wasn’t just riding horses or anything like that. They had to have them on the farm. They used them for the crops.”
TRAINING HORSES
Most people bought horses that were already trained or broken. These horses were then kept and worked until they were too old to continue. When age set in, farmers would take the old horses to a horse trader and trade the older horses in for younger ones. Some people, however, just enjoyed the challenge of training horses themselves. Hence, they bought green colts and trained them at home.
PLATE 120 Conway Watkins
“I’ll be seventy-six the twenty-first of September [1989], and I’ve been fooling with horses ever since I was about twelve or fourteen,” said Conway Watkins. “I’ve been trading horses ever since I first married in 1934. Farming and logging is just about all I’ve ever done. To make a living, I’ve had to work with horses logging and plowing. I worked them all the time.
“Back when I was growing up, there wasn’t many tractors in this country. We done it all with horses or mules. We used a straight turning plow and a team of mules to turn the ground. Then we had the cutaway harrow. We cut the ground and fixed it to plant [laid off the rows] with the laying-off plow (the single foot). We walked behind the turning plow, but we got to ride on the harrows. When we went to riding a cutaway harrow in that plowed ground, it took three good mules to pull it all day. They don’t make a cutaway harrow for one horse. They’re heavy enough ’til you have to have two [or three horses or mules].
“[When I first get a horse,] I usually handle him, curry [comb] him, rub him down good, and get him good and gentle. Then I go to putting the harness on him a piece at a time. I start with the bridle, then put the collar on, then put the reins on, and [just continue] to put the pieces on. I just work with him until I get him tame, used to me.
“The best thing you do when fooling with a horse is not to be afraid of it. He can tell the difference just as quick as you can. You don’t show it if you’re afraid of him. Just walk on in [the stable] to him.
“You don’t have to hit a horse if you’ll be good to him. I just make sure, to start with, that I’m not gonna let him get away from me. When you tie one, tie him with something [that he can’t break] where he can’t get loose. If he gets loose one time, you will always have trouble. If you’re hooking one [to a wagon or a plow], always keep your lines where you can reach and get ’em. Don’t never turn him loose. I’ve seen people back a horse in [to the wagon traces] and start hooking them up and their lines not even fastened. My lines is the first thing I fix, and then I keep ’em where I can get to ’em.
“I put my lines on him, but I don’t put them in no rings. I leave them straight back by the horse. I work him that way. You can learn one to rein easier that way than you can if you put the lines up in the rings. He can turn around with you easier. Don’t put the lines in no rings on your reins. Leave them loose. You’re holding one end [of the reins], and the bit has the other end.
“I break a horse quiet. [I don’t like to handle them rough.] Just let them pull a little load first. I had a lot of old truck chains and automobile chains here, and I just hooked the last horse I broke to them chains. I just let them drag. He didn’t pay much attention to them. I made two trips up there [on the trail] with him hooked to them log chains.
“I like to work them to a sled. That’s the best thing to hook ’em to. That’s better than a wagon or anything else, and I can ride on the sled. I’ve got me a good seat on it, and I just sit down. That’s the reason I use that sled.
“[To break a horse to pull a load,] I start ’em off light and just keep getting [the load] heavier and heavier. I go off with the sled around here, and wherever I can find a rock, I just pick it up and put it on the sled. I just keep on driving until I’ve got a pretty good load. That’s the way I start one off.
“If a horse’s mouth is sore, it’s because someone was mean with the bit or was too rough with it. The horse will get over [its mouth being sore] if you’ll put the right kind of bit on it and handle your lines right. They’ll get over that.
“I don’t use too rough a bit, just a medium one. I’ve got a bit out there that don’t hurt a horse’s mouth. It’s got a pretty long shank and three different places that you can fasten up your lines.”
WORKING HORSES
As recently as forty years ago, there was no such thing as a pleasure animal. Every animal had a purpose and a job (or jobs) to do. Horses were used season after season, from pulling plows in the spring to sleds in the winter. Aside from the daily farmwork, they were also expected to take the family to town in the wagon and to pull the buggy to church on Sunday.
“I train a horse to start a wagon steady,” Conway Watkins told us. “I don’t let it jump into the harness [jerk the wagon as it starts pulling]. After you’ve used them for logging, they don’t start a wagon right. They want to jerk it. If they jump into it one time, just stop ’em and try all over.
“If the horses are pulling a wagon up a hill, stop them to rest. Lots of people say that you’ve got to get over this pull here. If you get stopped, you can’t get started. If you’ve got too much on the wagon to get going again, then you had too much to start with. Pull them short and rest them short. Let them rest for short periods of time at several intervals as they are pulling a load up a hill. It doesn’t take but a few minutes for a horse to catch its breath; then you can go on again. I learn them to hold that wagon going downhill and uphill. If I stop them in a steep place going uphill, I make them hold it and not let it roll back. When I go downhill, I spread the horses in the tongue as far as they can be spread. I go downhill that way. The harness will help hold the wagon back off the horses.
“I worked my own horses [whenever I was logging]. I built a horse lot where they could get water and a shed big enough for them to put their feet and head in out of bad weather. [I’d leave them there] and get in the car and go home every night and be back in the next morning.
“The last that I cut and logged was on Warwoman for fifteen dollars an hour. I had my own team of three horses. Two of them were about twelve years old, and the other one was about sixteen. They were just big workhorses. I logged for ol’ man John Turner about 103,000 feet [of lumber] that year with horses.
“The first thing I had to do was to trim the skidding trail [a trail for dragging logs out] and clear the J-holes. A J-hole is a clearing on the side of the trail just big enough for the horses to turn into off the skidding trail. Sometimes the J-hole is on the left and sometimes on the right. You run your horses off the road into the J-hole. The horses turn off, and the logs are released to go off down the hill. [Sometimes the horses make their own J-holes] when they want to get out of the way of the logs. The horses hit them J-holes too, boys! You train one, and he knows what he’s doing. I’ve had one or two to pass it up, and they didn’t like that too good—them logs chasing ’em on down the hill.
“The horses age fast when you go to logging because it strains them. They have to pull hard all the time.”
MULES
Some would say the mule was king of farm life at one time. This importance stemmed from the versatility associated with the animal. It was able to perform most of the same jobs that cattle, oxen, and horses could accomplish.
Several people we interviewed remembered the multiple uses for the mule. Around the smaller farm, mu
les were good for plowing, laying off rows for planting, dragging harrows, mowing and raking hay, and pulling sleds loaded with cordwood, stovewood, corn, and other sundries. On larger farms, mules were handy for pulling reapers, bailers, combines, potato diggers, and “groundhog” thrashers. They were useful in cattle roundups as well. Settlers, developers, and other commercial businessmen used mules for clearing land, snaking logs for tan bark, pulling crossties and telephone poles, and turning corn crushers and sorghum mills. Mules also pulled hearses, carried the mail, pulled dirt pans in construction work, and turned grinders for clay to be made into pottery. The list of uses is seemingly endless. A local legend tells that some mules were so well trained that they could haul sugar and malt to the mountain stills alone, and then walk out alone, laden with the finished moonshine.
Of the mule’s proficiency, Ada Kelly wrote a letter stating, “To begin with, [the mule] helped in the clearing of land of timber so that agricultural products could be planted to produce food for people and animals. It helped to drag logs off the land for building houses and barns, and hauling the logs to building sites. This was in the age of log houses, before sawmills came into use. After they began sawing logs into lumber for buildings, the mule was busy dragging logs out of woods and hauling them to the mills. After they were sawed, they were loaded on wagons (which had been hewn out of wood) and pulled by mules many miles to some place where they could be dried, dressed, and readied for building houses. Then the faithful old mule would haul the lumber back to the building sites.
“In his spare time, he plowed land for crops of many varieties, and then helped to get the planting and cultivating done. Then he was there to help harvest and haul the crops to a place to be stored for winter use.
“Everything that was too heavy to be moved from place to place by man was moved by the mule.
“In the horse and buggy days, it was most often mules instead of horses that was hitched to the buggy, wagon, or whatever the vehicle might be. It was always convenient to hitch up the mule, or put a saddle on him to go to church or anywhere else that it was too far to walk.”
Because mules were so adaptable, they often brought a high price. Farms in Kentucky and Tennessee began to specialize in breeding them. Their young mules were taken south and sold in places like Franklin, North Carolina, where, claims R. L. Edwards of Clayton, his uncle once paid $400 for an untrained pair—and that was in a day when a dollar was worth considerably more than it is now. In fact, many claim that a good pair of mules used to cost more than an equally good pair of horses.
The cost led many farmers to begin breeding their own mules and breeding mules for their neighbors. Grover Wilson, a resident of Clayton and onetime sheriff, talked to us about this for several hours. He told us, “Some of them mules raised in this county [Rabun] were huge. Mr. Bill Blalock’s grandfather (Uncle Jesse) once had a pair that weighed twenty-seven hundred pounds. Most of the mules in the county were homegrown. There were two or three jacks, and they were owned by Mr. Jim Fisher, Mr. Sam Mitchell, and me. These were carried to farms by request and bred to farmers’ mares. After the mare foal produced a mare mule or a horse mule, the breeder would come back around and collect a ten-dollar fee.”
Another reason why farmers in Rabun County bred their own mules, aside from convenience and thriftiness, was their belief that mules from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, though bigger, were not as tough as the smaller “mountain mule.” Farmers in the Cotton Belt sometimes preferred the mountain mule too, having great respect for its stamina.
Farmers that did not want to raise their own mule could always buy one from one of the traders that came through the area at regular intervals with a drove of mules.
A favorite time for trading, buying, or just looking was on “Court Day.” The Superior Court convened in Clayton on the fourth Monday in February and the fourth Monday in August. The sessions lasted from four to five days each and drew people from all over the county. Not only were the sixty or seventy jurors present, but also spectators who often came in mobs to watch the excitement—especially if there was a case on the agenda that had captured everyone’s interest. Some people came from as far as twenty miles away, and since there were no cars, it was foolish to try to commute back and forth. These people stayed in the local hotels or in the homes of the townsfolk.
Due to the size of the occasion, it was always a good time to buy, sell, or trade for mules and other needed supplies. Mr. Wilson’s father often bought mule colts for $75 to $100 apiece when they were old enough to break, and then he carried them to Anderson, South Carolina, to sell again at a small profit.
An extra-good pair of mules often brought $400 to $450, with mare mules bringing $20 more apiece if they were better looking, more “blocky” and less contrary than the males. An average pair of mares commonly went for $200 to $250.
Using mules, as opposed to other livestock, had several drawbacks. Esco Pitts shared his thoughts on several of the disadvantages with us. “The use of mules was slow, grueling labor. Mules had to be fed daily throughout the year, whether they were working or not. Equipment such as traces, harnesses, collars, plow points, and the like had to be kept in perfect working order. And even working from sundown to sunup, the best mules could only cultivate four acres a day. The work could seem endless with two hundred acres to be cultivated.”
The expression “stubborn as a mule” was also accurate in many cases. Mr. Pitts remembers many mules who would not go near the end of a field if a ditch was there. The rows would have to be left unfinished, for there was nothing anyone could do that would make the mule continue. And, at other times, they would run away with him and be almost impossible to stop.
Conversations with other farmers in the county turned up other disadvantages. Some reminded us that mules get tired while tractors don’t. After two or three good rows, you have to rest a mule and the man left behind him!
Mules are far more expensive than most people will admit. They cost about a dollar a day to feed [a quart of corn or five ears, plus about ten pounds of hay]. In the spring and summer, they can pasture, but simply to have pastureland, one must figure in the cost of fertilizer, weed control, fencing, and other expenses. Wilbur Maney, a former Rabun County extension agent, added, “Figure a mule is costing you about a dollar a day to keep up; that makes about three hundred and sixty-five dollars a year. Add to that the repair for the equipment and shelter for the animal during the winter. Nowadays, for the same price, you could buy a six-or seven-horsepower Sears-Roebuck tractor that would do the same amount of work and do it faster—and after your initial investment, it would only cost you gas and oil. Where a mule can only plow an acre or two a day, a tractor can do the same in about thirty minutes.”
PLATE 122 Wilbur Maney
Grover Wilson cited the example of a friend who had once kept many mules. When asked if he still had them, the friend replied, “There’s not a mule on the hill now. I just can’t pay a man sixty-five cents an hour to plow a flop-eared mule.” He went to tractors.
Mr. Wilson explained that “even if a farmer wanted to keep mules, he would not be able to get anyone to help him plow, not even at a dollar an hour. The work is just too tough. No one wants to do it with mules when there are easier ways.”
Other farmers added that even on the smallest farms, where crops are grown not for sale but for home consumption during the winter, mules are uneconomical especially considering the price of today’s small farm tractors. When asked if these small farms could even afford the Sears-Roebuck tractor, Wilbur Maney replied, “No, but most of them can’t afford the mule either. They probably shouldn’t even be farming.”
Esco Pitts went to work for Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School and was soon named the farm supervisor of the school. As such, he was in the position of ultimate responsibility for the care and upkeep of the animals. His insights into working with mules were vivid. When he arrived at the school, they had two mules named Pete and George and two cows named Blanche and Bla
ckie. Pete was blind in one eye. Before long, the school had more mules [Kit, Mac, Bob, Mandy Red, and Blackie]. The school was almost run by mule power. The sorghum was ground by using mules. Building foundations and basements were dug out by mules, slip pans, and scoops. Logs were snaked by mules. Everything that had to be hauled—wood, corn, rye being taken to the stacking station for threshing—was hauled by mules.
In farming, Mr. Pitts remembered Mandy with whom he could lay off a long row “just as straight as a rifle barrel.” Two hundred acres were under cultivation, and he could remember seeing eight mules at a time in the fields, each followed by one of the students in the school. Plowing was done in the fall then, to turn the stubble under. If one waited until spring to plow, the ground would be so hard it would be twice as hard to work. Rye and Simpson clover were sowed on September 1. Mr. Pitts recalled the rest of the fall schedule. “Andrew Ritchie, then president of the school, would stand slowly in the dining hall and say, ‘This is our program: rye to sow, fodder to take, silos to fill, syrup to make.’”
In the spring, the mules dragged the cutaway harrows out into the fields and readied them for seed. Then the rows were laid off with a mule-drawn “shovel plow” or “laying-off plow,” and the planting would commence.
Bill Gravley told us, “I have always heard a mule will live all of its life just to kick you one time. So I was really kinda afraid of mules. I grew up on a little farm—about twelve or fourteen acres—and we always had a horse up until I was about thirteen years old. [Then] Daddy bought a mule, and that mule was about the same age I was—about twelve or thirteen years old. It was a mare mule. A little mule, it weighed about nine hundred pounds. To start with, I was afraid of it. I was afraid it would kick me or bite me or whatever, because I had heard so many stories about mules. But it turned out, she was better than the horses were. She was gentler, easier to work with. I learned how to plow with her, learned how to use a turning plow, and learned how to drive a one-horse wagon. I used her for gathering corn, hauling wood, pulling poles out of the woods for heater wood, and what have you. My grandpa said I could do more with her than anyone else could because I treated her easy and gentle. I didn’t holler and beat and knock like a lot of folks did. I reckon she learned to trust me, and she went anywhere I wanted to go and did anything I wanted her to do. I just had a good relationship with a mule.
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 24