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VICKIE STURGEON: The following edition of The Poet's Perspective is presented as it was broadcast over KRSW's regional magazine, Home for the Weekend. The Poet's Perspective was funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Commission.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In our growing scrutiny of the use of energy, American agriculture has been criticized as an excessive user of petroleum. It's estimated that in our country, it takes five calories of fuel to produce one calorie of food. In other countries, which utilize a labor-intensive method of farming, as many as 50 calories of food are produced for every single calorie of fuel energy. While that may seem extremely wasteful, John Rawlings, former staff member of The Countryside Council, does not believe the American farmer will change his energy-intensive practices as long as petroleum is relatively cheap.

JOHN RAWLINGS: Our present type of farming is based upon a low price of energy. You have commercial fertilizers. You have chemicals. You have large machinery. You have drying, artificial drying of grains, and all these things. All these things take energy.

Even as short as 10, 15 years ago, the amount of energy consumption isn't nearly what it was as it is now. So undoubtedly, it will begin to put a bind on the farmer. The farmers will have, undoubtedly, some preference because of the importance of food over other topics that may need energy. But what it may lead to, I just really don't know at this time except to say that the energy crunch will begin to affect the farmers, both in price and maybe an availability of resources.

VICKIE STURGEON: As you talk to farmers around the area, are they concerned about this, or are they are they innovating with new sources of energy? Or are they saying, well, I'll be the last? I mean, people have to eat, and I'll get the petroleum no matter what.

JOHN RAWLINGS: I think, unfortunately, it might be the latter. They either may not believe there is a problem or, the present, they are very satisfied with what they are presently doing. They're getting the chemicals they need. They're getting the fertilizer they need. The price actually may be a little bit down from what it was a couple of years ago, and the availability is better. So in general, I'd say they're not worried about it.

VICKIE STURGEON: Rawlings says that most farmers in our region are not yet willing to experiment with alternative sources of energy. And even among the oncoming generation of farmers, there is a feeling that they must maintain their present level of petroleum usage in order to produce enough food.

WALTER SILTY: You have to understand that, like Bob Bergland said, the United States farm is one of the most inefficient in the world as according to energy. But on the other hand, we are maybe the most efficient in producing crops from land.

Like in Russia, they have some land that's almost identical to our land, and we produce twice the acreage, and that's because of the systems that we have. And I think if they want us to keep producing and keep feeding a hungry world, we're going to have to be able to use things like herbicides, and fertilizers, and that. We can economize some. Sure, we've maybe been a little wasteful, but we're going to have to have something to work with and be able to use what we have to get the most out of the land.

JOHN PRINCE: And if they start shutting off our fuel, they're going to soon learn about it when they go to the grocery store and there's something there that should-- there's something that isn't there that should be. And the farmers are sitting out there in the field with no gas to run the tractors to harvest it. And I think pretty soon, they're going to finally get the idea that they can't be doing this to the farmers.

VICKIE STURGEON: John Prince from Underwood, South Dakota. And before him, Walter Silty from Porter, Minnesota. They both attended the Minnesota Rural Youth Institute, held at Southwest State University last August. Several sessions during that institute were devoted to alternative energy sources and farming techniques, but most of the young participants who planned to farm were skeptical that the farmer could actually reduce his petroleum usage. Dr. AJ Flikke agricultural engineer for the University of Minnesota, believes it is unfair to single out the farmer as an excessive energy user within the food production chain.

AJ FLIKKE: When you look at agriculture by itself, you see there's a-- statements are made that the agriculturalists use an excessive amount of energy. But I think to be fair to the farmer himself, you have to consider the entire picture, and that is that food production, which is on the farm, probably uses less than 3% of the total energy expended in the United States, not in the chain itself. And processing is 4 and 1/2%, transportation about 2 and 1/2%. And home preparation is about 4%.

So when you're talking about reducing the energy usage in agriculture, you have to look at the whole system that the farmer is going to use, the choices he has, and how he can reduce energy. And basic to this then is the question of the effects of all these things on the total food production, because we can reduce energy use in agriculture, but, most of the time, it's also going to reduce yields, the production per acre. And if food is the game and our necessity, you see we face a dilemma here.

VICKIE STURGEON: With our present production techniques, Flikke says that if the farmer saves petroleum in one area, he will have to increase its usage in another.

AJ FLIKKE: When you talk about reduction of energy in production, the one thing that would be feasible is less trips with the tractor over an area of land. And you can carry this to the extreme of no-till cropping schedules. But when you look at this, you reduce the energy that goes into the tractor, let's say, but in many cases-- in fact, I would say most of the time, you're going to have to use more herbicides. You're going to have to use more fertilizer.

And this brings up a very interesting thing that when you look at fuel use on a farm, that a major portion of that energy is used in things such as drying of crops. Specifically, if we talk about corn, probably 75% of the corn crop in the United States is being dried at the present, and that's increasing.

The other major use of energy in the overall picture is fertilizer. In the field operations themselves, a rather insignificant amount. The other places it's used is in transport, pesticides, and things like this. And any time you change a practice, a production practice, you have to look at what effect it has on the fertilizer inputs, the pesticide inputs, transport, and things like this.

And major concern to the farmer then is his yield because this is what he depends upon for income. If he gets a 20% reduction in yield by saving 20% fuel input, he isn't coming out ahead. He's losing. And it becomes pretty much a matter of economics.

VICKIE STURGEON: It's doubtful that the farmer can reduce his usage of petroleum as long as he is locked into his present technology. So some are advocating that our agricultural operations must be scaled down and that we turn to a more intermediate labor-intensive technology.

Why not bring back some of the people who have moved into urban areas and let them supply the human labor that would be needed? But Dr. Flikke, for one, does not believe the high cost of petroleum will force farmers to adopt a more labor-intensive system in the future. If anything, Flikke says, higher petroleum costs will favor the large operator with the bigger machines. David Benson, who farms a quarter section near Bigelow, disagrees.

DAVID BENSON: You hear a lot about how many acres-- when you hear tractor ads, how many acres you can plow. This tractor will plow or will cover 160 acres a day, or this one will do 200 acres a day, or whatever. That's the kind of thing. I guess what I want to know is how much you can do on a gallon of gasoline or a gallon of diesel fuel. I don't know that maybe some of the older tractors and in an integrated system would do better or just as well or better.

But I think that the engineering remark is really a single-factor analysis. It's not looking at the social health of the community, the viability of the community in which it live-- in which the farmer lives. It's just assuming that the only thing is the machine, and diesel fuel, and an operator. And I guess the operator gets pushed out. I guess I kind of laugh at it, too, because the farmers are getting the same sort of diseases now in terms of chronic diseases that the truck drivers get, which comes from sitting on your ass all day and maybe jumping out once in a while to open a gate.

But there's that kind of a thing. I kind of like to keep myself in good shape. And a lot of the older farmers were, I think, and are. It's a strenuous lifestyle, but I think it keeps you well-rounded physically as well as mentally. You can sit in your tractor for days on end, and covering acres and acres, and listening to the radio, and finding out how much you're losing. It's not much fun either.

KIM HODGSON: David Benson, who farms near Bigelow, Minnesota.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

Not so very long ago, petroleum-powered tractors were unknown on these prairies. Most of the energy used to perform heavy farm work was solar energy, captured by the plants the farmer grew and converted into mechanical energy by the bodies of the men and the horses who worked the land together.

Although it meant harder work for the farmer and less productivity per farm worker than mechanized farming could achieve, from the poet's perspective, the age of horse-powered agriculture had much to recommend it. More interdependence among farmers, for one thing, and, for the individual, a greater sense of being part of a living system.

Moreover, in its endurance, patience, and willingness to work, the horse is seen as a model for the best attributes of the individual-serving society. And finally, on a deeper level, the poet sees the horse as a stand-in for our physical, natural selves or as a symbol of our real or desired power. These are some of the layers which are uncovered as we look at horse power through the poems and oral histories, which are the poet's perspective of Joe and Nancy Paddock.

JOE PADDOCK: This was written by a man by the name of Clark Mollenhoff, and it's called "The Farm Horse Passes."

A curry comb and old check rein,

The curb bit for the bay.

The farm horse ghosts still linger there,

In shadows, bare and gray.

The big black's hair is matted in,

The brush, upon the wall.

The main hair of a young roan mare clings to the single stall.

The unused harness rots away, and hames are turned to rust.

The empty manger gathers chaff.

The grain box fills with dust.

The double trees and neck yoke lie, unnoticed in the shed,

Except when curious children's hands stir memory of the dead.

The massive-bodied sorrels and roans no longer fill the stalls.

The quiet is no longer pierced with trumpet stallion calls.

Some stalls are rigged for feeding calves.

Pigs desecrate the box where broad-beamed Belgians stood and munched with straw up to their hocks.

On down the road, five miles or so, an old team walks the lane,

The remnant of the massive power that plowed this rolling plain.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

KIM HODGSON: Clark Mollenhoff's poem, "The Farm Horse Passes" appears in a book called Summer Boy by J. Gordon Bergquist of Willmar, Minnesota.

JOE PADDOCK: Gordon also talked a little bit philosophically about what the-- this was in his foreword-- about what the horse meant and what the passing of the horse meant, really. He was talking about the agriculture of the 1920s.

And he said, "the land demanded power, manpower, womanpower, and horsepower. The farm demanded a balance of people, and livestock, and draft animals to sustain itself. The passing of the draft horse in favor of the tractor doomed the balanced farm as we knew it. Farms began to specialize in grain production. Today, the sole livestock may consist of a cat or a dog, while packaged milk, butter, and eggs are purchased in a gleaming supermarket."

He talked a little more about the horse further on. He said that, "horsepower may mean one thing to an engineer. But to a farmer, it meant his limitations were really how many hours a day his faithful horse could put one foot ahead of the other as he leaned into the collar.

Evidences of horsepower, to a boy's eyes, were broken white oak, single trees, double trees with the center pinhole worn oblong and finally causing it to break. It was represented in tug chain links worn thin and by the heavy horse collars worn out. Even the hide and hair would wear out on the horse." Then he goes on to say, "what an example of combined patience and willingness the horse sets for his human counterpart to follow."

[SOMBER MUSIC]

NANCY PADDOCK: I'd like to read a poem of Thomas McGrath's about the horse. It's called "Used Up."

I remember the new-dropped colts in the time when I was a boy:

The steam of their bodies in the cold morning like a visible soul,

And the crimped hairy ring of warmed grass, first circle of sleep.

Spider-legged, later, they ate sugar from my shaken, scary hand.

In a few more years, they were broken: their necks circled

With a farmer's need: with the dead leather legends of collars of their kin.

Gelded, the wild years cut out of them, harnessed to the world,

They walk the bright days' black furrows and gilded seasons of use.

Now, dead; swung from the haymow track with block and tackle

Gut-slit, blood in a tub for pigs, their skin dragged over

Their heads by a team of mules. Circlet of crows:

Coyote song:

And bones

Rusting coulee moonlight: lush greenest spring grass where the body

Leaped.

Three acts and death.

The horse

Rides

Into the Earth.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JOE PADDOCK: Well, I think that when we talk about the mountain man, for instance, in dream symbolism-- and this, of course, dream symbolism, is the same symbolism that we find in great art, archetypal stuff-- the mountain man is the idea of the person who has found his completeness. The mountain man is the complete man. He is both human and animal. He has his physical self. His physical presence is alive in him. He feels a sensuous joy. And yet, he is also has the spiritual and intellectual clarity that a human being is capable of. So he's completed.

NANCY PADDOCK: I suppose, because you have the human qualities deriving their strength from the animal qualities, and yet still in control, which, I guess, brings me to a poem of mine that comes out of the dream. And it's called "Dream Horse" because in this dream, a horse appeared and knocked me down.

And you can probably get a lot of different meanings out of this. But I guess, for me, it was that the more basic qualities of my life, the more elemental, animal qualities had really been lost, and I needed to be brought back to them. It's called "Dream Horse."

Nine nights without sleep

My spine, a column of fists, refusing to let go

But sinking at last, out of weakness, into the dream chamber of the gray mare

Tame, greeting me as though my own

Only as tall as I, she comes too close.

Dark eyes, warm breath on my face,

Lifting a hoof, soft and unshod, she presses my thigh with firm gentle weight.

I sink slowly to the ground, unable to free myself,

Heavy four legs, muscled and warm,

Dappled gray hair over my legs, my arms,

I know helplessness, stillness, rest.

Dream horse,

Come, reclaim me.

Bring me home.

Child and mother of my deepest valley,

Ride me.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

JOE PADDOCK: There's another dream horse poem that I'm going to throw in here if I can remember it, symbolism somewhat different. It's a little poem by Kenneth Patchen. He says, "wrote them out of a dream one night, 10, 12 years ago now. A pretty good horse, most ways, except in he won't let me get off." Says, "I might wake him up."

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Here's a man who was a county agent in Renville County for 42 years named Frank Svoboda. "When I came here, 100% of the farmers had horses. A horse was a pride then. You take these older farmers, they took a lot of pride in horses. Yeah, they had some good horses around this country.

Windhorst Lumber had a couple of darn awful good teams. They delivered all their stuff with team and wagon. They had a barn just across the railroad track from the depot. Ah, there were a lot of farmers around here had good horses. These were Belgian breeding, I think, Windhorst had. Oh, there were quite a few Percherons too."

He went on to tell me a little bit about how the farmers bred horses. He said, "you see, a group of farmers would get together and form a stallion club and buy a stallion. They'd hire a man to travel him. They paid so much for each colt, and that went into the stallion club.

Oh, they operated up into the '30s quite a ways. There was a big Belgian stallion here. Steve O'Neill had him traveling in here. I would guess around '33, '34, he was traveling.

He had his circuit, you know? He had to keep a book, a record, of when the mares were coming in season. He didn't want to be there all season. So he had that down in that little book of his. He knew what day he should be there or approximately what day he should be there.

Of course, you've got to know the vernacular of the horseman. The first time around, they tried him to determine the heat period, then after that. But everybody had colts. I mean, everybody raised colts. Every farmer around here, I think, had a few good broodmares."

I think that that's probably a good example of ways in which farmers used to work together that you don't see now. I think the very fact of using a horse or of having horses demanded this working together with one another. He goes on to talk about the price of horses. And I think this says something about the symbolic value of a horse, because they never got cheap, not even in the Depression.

He says, "you know, a horse never got cheap. Oh, god, I can remember as a kid, farmers never seem to think anything about paying $200 for a horse, a good draft horse. And even when it got down to the Depression, if somebody wanted a team, why-- oh, it didn't go up to that $200 figure. But when cows were worth $20, they'd be paying $80 to $100 for a horse. No, a horse never really lost its value in all those years."

And then he got into an interesting thing about the transition period when the farmers had to give up their horses. And this wasn't an easy thing for a lot of them to do. They had a strong emotional attachment to the horse.

He says, "oh, horses were fading out of the picture pretty fast after the Depression period of '32, '33, '34. They went out awful fast after that. Oh yeah, you had a lot of guys that would say the horse would come back, I remember. No, I didn't believe that.

In 1936, '37, I went fishing with an old farmer down here. I remember still, he said, mark my word, Frank, horses will be back. Horses will be back. For a long time, everybody had to keep one team to get around in the winter and to get through the mud. But gradually, why, they got rid of that one team. And pretty soon, they were horseless. The horses died, I guess, and they just never replaced them."

I remember another man I was interviewing. I guess it was Bob [INAUDIBLE] again, telling how his father had cried when he shot a horse. And I doubt if they have those same feelings about the tractor.

So I think from the poet's perspective, you have this organic living thing. There were a lot of problems tied up with it, but there was more human feeling, and it demanded more human relationship to the world around. And so certainly, I think farming with horses was a more poetic time. It was a more poetic experience.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

NANCY PADDOCK: Mary Zaske, who was quite a small woman, had a lot of plowing to do when she was younger, and she had to take care of the horses herself. This is her telling about that.

"There was some kind of a fly. Oh, I just hated to bridle up the horses. Oh, they'd switch. Nose flies, such big things, you know? Horses was afraid of them old things. They must have been hard on them. They'd just throw their heads and, oh my god, so disgusted.

Well, sulky plow was only three horses, but the gang plow was four. They usually had two leaders, two horses on front on the sulky plow. But I couldn't handle them, all them lines. So then they fixed it so that I could. They put them all in one breast, side by side. But one horse had to walk in the plowing, and that was kind of hard for the horse too. A gang plow plowed more than a sulky. Sulky didn't plow much.

Yes, the horses minded me. They'd stop. When I'd hit a stone, they'd stop right there. They wouldn't go no further. And then when I'd hitch them up, you know, they really minded real good. They were so tame. They were really tame. Oh yeah, I liked them.

But we had one bronco that always held her head so high. Oh, she was a cute one. And she'd see me coming with a bridle, then she'd put her head way up. I had to pull like everything to get her up to the-- I went in the manger. Sometimes, I have to stand in her feed box that's kind of higher yet to put her bridle on. But those two old gray horses, they were so nice and tame. They didn't do that."

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JOE PADDOCK: Here is Dick [INAUDIBLE] whose father was a blacksmith and who, himself, was a blacksmith and finds that he spends most of his time now-- I think he just recently retired, but spent most of his time welding small shoes onto whatever applies fertilizer, chemical fertilizer, to the fields toward the end of his days. But here's his description of he and his dad working on horses in the old days.

"Dad wasn't afraid of any horse. We used to get these big Western broncos. Old Bill O'Neil, north of Olivia, and Bill O'Halloran, and Steve O'Neil had them. And the canning factory, too. They used to pull all their wagons with horses.

We had them Western horses rear up and go right on through the plate glass window in the shop and land outside. They were vicious, I mean. And dad wasn't afraid of them. He knew what to do. But you had to be limber. Your body had to be limber. If you do it once a month, you'd never be able to do it.

I was probably 10, 12 years old, and dad had what he calls a twitch. It was a piece of wood with a piece of rawhide on the end of it. Dad would put that leather around the horse's snoot and twist it until it got real tight. And then he would stand, then he would hand it to me. I'd be standing in front of the horse, a little bit to the side, dad working on the horse's foot.

So this one day, he was putting on what he calls never-slip cogs. That's a horse shoe with real sharp points on it so, in the wintertime, they wouldn't slip on the ice. These cogs was probably an inch, inch and a quarter long.

Well, dad had just put two, three nails in this shoe, and the horse made up his mind to put his foot down, and that horse stepped right on my foot. The big cogs went down through my shoe between my toes, and I couldn't pull my foot out, and I was screaming bloody murder. It wasn't hurting me a bit, but I knew that horse was standing on me. The shoe was above my foot, but the cogs was holding me to the floor.

Well, dad took a little hammer and hit the horse on the knee, and he lifted his hoof, and I slid my foot out of there. I wasn't hurt a bit, but I never touched a horse again with that twitch. I never held another one. And I was probably 12 or 13 years old at that time."

[SOMBER MUSIC]

NANCY PADDOCK: Harold [? Michael ?] talks about plowing with horses and some of the suffering that the horses went through. "Poor old farmers, those dust bowl days. Get on their corn planter and go down through the field planting corn. They got 20 feet away from where they started, you couldn't see them. The horses would squeal, make a noise like somebody squealing. They couldn't stand it any more.

And one year, we had so many mosquitoes, the horses wouldn't work. They'd squeal. One spring in particular, about 1926, you didn't dare go near the end of the field, where there was grass. You'd scare up those mosquitoes, and they'd just swarm up, and the horses would go crazy.

The horses would just rear up and come down, break the tongues and shafts out of the machinery. You couldn't do nothing with them. A lot of horses would run away. They'd go around in a circle just fighting mosquitoes and squeal. Wet, that year. And there was a big open ditch run down through here too."

[SOMBER MUSIC]

JOE PADDOCK: It wasn't just farmers that used the horse as a draft animal, as a work animal. For instance, the rural mail deliverers had to supply their own teams, as a matter of fact. And Bill Moran told me about a couple of teams that he had, and especially one that he loved a lot.

He said, "you had to supply your own horses and feed. I had four horses. You rested your teams every other day. One was a big team, Hambletonians, around 1,100 or 1,200 pounds.

Then I had two small horses, about 800 pounds. One was a runaway, and the other was a bulky one. I got the one for $30, and I paid $15 for the other. When I got that one home, the bulky one, he was lousy. We used kerosene and grease and just about took all the hair off him to clean him up.

But this was a wonderful team. You had to hitch them up facing the barn, then we'd back up. Otherwise, the bulky one wouldn't go. We'd back up, and then they'd go. Then we'd stop at the post office, where the present theater is, and I'd set the lines right next to the whip in the cutter-- or the cart, and I could load up.

When I first started to carry, parcel post was limited to 4 pounds. Anyway, I'd pile the stuff in the sled. Then I'd wrap up in blankets and be ready to go. I'd better be ready. The minute I got in the buggy, the minute I got a hold of those lines, they were off. And when I hit a mailbox, I'd better have the mail in because they just wouldn't stop.

In heavy snow, this little team could go like rabbits. The roads were never broke. I had to break my way. I had sleigh bells too. And on a cold, clear day, you could hear them for a couple of miles. They were sweetest chimes, six to a string. Nice to hear on a horse when you travel.

The bulky horse, coming up near a team, he'd start to run. But the minute we'd got past, he'd slow down. They were like little rabbits. In the heavy snow, they'd get tired. And I'd talk to them and stop them, and they'd rest. I really couldn't picture it for you how really wonderful they were."

I think that there is a whole lot of the feeling of the horseman there. And another interesting thing, and this is one of the advantages, I think, of this creature, was that, once, during a high mail storm, or a high--

NANCY PADDOCK: [CHUCKLES]

JOE PADDOCK: Once, during a snowstorm, he couldn't see anything. And yet, the horses always stopped at the mailboxes. They'd stopped, and he'd wonder what the deal was at first. And then he'd look, and, of course, there was the mailbox. And he could put in the mail when he was unable to see.

In another case, a rural mail carrier got sick during a storm, and so he had to go out, and he didn't know the route. And he just gave the horses their head, and they took him to every mailbox on the way, and he never missed a mailbox. And so they did have the advantages of intelligent creatures in a way.

NANCY PADDOCK: A car would never do that for you.

KIM HODGSON: Service was probably better then than it is now.

NANCY PADDOCK: It would go right off the road.

JOE PADDOCK: I'm sure it probably was, yeah.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

NANCY PADDOCK: James Wright has a poem about the kind of tenderness that a person can feel for a horse. And it's sort of a mutual thing often. "Two Horses Playing in the Orchard."

"Too soon, too soon, a man will come

To lock the gate and drive them home.

Then, neighing softly through the night,

The mare will nurse her shoulder bite.

Now, lightly fair, through lock and mane,

She gazes over the dusk again,

And sees her darkening stallion leap

In grass for apples, half asleep.

Lightly, lightly, on slender knees,

He turns, lost in a dream of trees.

Apples are slow to find this day.

Someone has stolen the best away.

Still, some remain before the snow,

A few, trembling on boughs so low

A horse can reach them, small and sweet.

And some are tumbling to her feet.

Too soon, a man will scatter them,

Although I do not know his name, his age,

Or how he came to own a horse, an apple tree, a stone.

I let those horses in to steal

On principle, because I feel

Like half a horse myself, although

Too soon, too soon, already. Now."

[SOMBER MUSIC]

JOE PADDOCK: They're gone now. And man's-- if our immediate forebears were nothing else, they were practical people. And so where did they go, as a matter of fact? Where did the horses go? This is a little picture of where the horses went. Stanley Schnelli told me this story.

"There was a fellow by the name of Lang, Frank Lang. He lives over in the northeast part of town. He and I was butchering horses for a mink farm. And Frank heard about a horse up by Atwater, a good horse. Went up there, and, god, he was a pretty horse. We was going to butcher him.

But when we went up there, why, the fellow who owned him says, I don't know how the hell we'll get him in the barn. So you can shoot him. And Frank says, we'll shoot him out in the pasture then. Well, he says, you want to be damn close to a fence because if you don't kill him the first time, he'll kill you the next.

And Frank says to me, I'm going to shoot him. I says, all right, Frank, go ahead and shoot him. So we started out to the pasture and got out maybe 40 to 50 rods. The damn horse looked up and he seen us, and he started coming.

I says, how are we going to get out of here? Then I says, you got the gun. You fight the horse. Be damn sure you hit him the first time to kill him. And Frank waited until the horse got pretty close, and then he shot him. He hit him just right. Just as pretty between the two eyes that you could hit a horse. It dropped him.

But that fella said, hell, I wouldn't go out there in the pasture for him. Oh, he was a pretty roan horse, but he was-- well, they call them maneaters at the time. He was just a spoiled horse. When they broke him, they let him block him. He made mink feed."

[TENSE MUSIC]

NANCY PADDOCK: I think about the time that the horse was disappearing from the scene. People were being very practical and progressive. And you didn't want to admit, or a lot of people didn't want to admit, that they had feeling for these animals. And maybe it was necessary to be very practical then.

George Roundhouse is talking. "Do I miss horses? Well, I make a point to dismiss them because there was no place for them. Something of no use just don't belong. If they can't be used for something, I don't think there is pleasure either. And horses have to be used to be any good. Can't just use them occasionally. The horse gets spoiled."

And then there's Mary Zaske the woman who was harnessing the team that was too tall for her. When we moved off the farm, we brought two horses to town, black and a gray. 1940. Well, we had them quite a while. I think pa got rid of them. Goodness, we seen too many horses in our time."

[SOMBER MUSIC]

KIM HODGSON: Horsepower, The Poet's Perspective with Joe and Nancy Paddock. The Poet's Perspective portion of our program is made possible in part with funds provided by the Minnesota Humanities Commission.

[SOMBER MUSIC]

GUS BENSON: First off, when I came to this country in 1925, it was just about all horses. Once in a while, you had tractors here, see. Few of them had, but not very many of them, no. So, I do a lot of plowing, and harrowing, and discing, and with horses, yeah. And when I was in Nebraska there, then we-- sometime, they used to have eight other horses on the plow, three-bottom plow, and plow all day.

KIM HODGSON: One of the places where you can still find horses today is on the farm which Gus Benson farms with his son, David, near Bigelow, Minnesota. Gus is a man who spent most of his 75 years working with horses. Farming now near Bigelow, he has fond memories of growing up in Sweden, when the horse was still the basic means of transportation.

In the early '20s, Gus served in the artillery unit of the Swedish army. In his company, each soldier sitting atop the lead horse in a team of six was responsible for hauling a 75-millimeter cannon. For war maneuvers, units of the artillery would join those of the cavalry. In noisy procession, they would travel out into the Swedish countryside, the shod hooves of some 3,000 horses and the iron wheels of the artillery wagons clattering through the cobblestone streets of villages.

Once on maneuvers, the horse-drawn cannons could get into spots in the timber that today's trucks could never get through. During those long encampments, Gus says, the soldiers would also look to the horses for recreation.

GUS BENSON: We had some races here. And then you're supposed to jump some ditches and hedges. And then we had a hedge, and then on the other side was a big ditch with water in, see. And then I was on a horse race [INAUDIBLE]. And all at once, the horse balked, and over I went in the water.

And [CHUCKLES] then I got out of there, and was going to go. And the horse just stood there, looked at me. And then I went on the horse and continued the race. And if you fell off, you lay still, and the horses just jumped right over. Nobody got hurt.

KIM HODGSON: When he came to this country in 1925 to farm, Gus and his cousin, Emil, encountered some uniquely American horses.

GUS BENSON: Broncos, we used to get them from Western part of Nebraska, see. And then we used to break them for riding horses. And sometimes, we used them for draft horses. But they are a little bit light, so-- well, they work pretty good, see, but it was best for riding horses, see. After you once got them broke, and then they was very good horses. And he had a good wind all the time, see, and you could depend on them after you broke them right.

NANCY PADDOCK: But when you got them, they were completely wild?

GUS BENSON: Oh yeah, completely wild. Yeah. You never had any-- never had a halter-- I mean, a saddle or nothing on. First off, to get used to be used, tie a sack of sand on the back, see, and then let them buck.

So they got tired, and then put a saddle on them. And [LAUGHS] then you see [INAUDIBLE] He didn't have no stirrups on because that's the risk to have it, because if you get caught and if he buck you off, then you won't get caught, or you won't get hurt. Then you-- that's the way it goes.

NANCY PADDOCK: When did the horses begin to disappear from around here?

GUS BENSON: It was around '36 and '37. Then they start to get more and more mechanized and had more and more tractors, see. And then they started to have row-crop tractors, and the [INAUDIBLE] weeding, and all that work with the tractors, see.

It was in '36 we got sickness amongst the horses, sleeping sickness. All at once, he was out and working, and the horse started some kind of stagger. And then he got sleepy. And then that horse, if he got sick, he never mount anything, if he got over it. Otherwise, he died. At that time, we lost so many horses, see. Then that's when they start to use more and more tractors, see.

KIM HODGSON: Gus Benson had horses on the farm until the early 1950s, when he, like all of his neighbors, gave up the horses he had left and began to rely entirely on tractors. Four years ago, though, Gus's son David, who has principal responsibility for farming the family's quarter section now, bought two Percheron mares for use in the fields.

Today, with the aid of natural increase, David owns five Percherons. And he believes there are practical economic reasons for using horses. He'll also tell you that he simply enjoys the feel and tradition of working with horses.

DAVID BENSON: The tractors don't reproduce themselves no matter what you say about the old John Deere. They're not quite that good. But the horses, they're alive. And if you want them, you can have your replacements raised.

And they demand a different type of feeling, I think. You can't treat them like a tractor. Or well, you can get away with treating a tractor very poorly for a while if you can afford to, but you can't do that with a horse because a horse will protest instantly because it gives you feedback right away.

I guess I like them, first of all, and I enjoy working with them. They do a good job for me. It always gives me a good feeling after hauling manure for a whole day. I've spread, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 tons of manure, which is not a lot, of course, according to a big type of manure spreader. But if you look at the petroleum that it took to do it, it wasn't really a lot. I guess there's really not too much petroleum in harness oil either.

So it's a pretty clean way of farming. It feels good. It's quiet. And you'd be surprised, it's really a nice thing. It really is.

NANCY PADDOCK: What do you do with them exactly?

DAVID BENSON: Well, I haul all the manure with them. I do basically the light work, the work that I can't-- I only have the team. Well, I have the colts, of course, but I don't work more than a team right now. And I don't know if I'll maybe-- if I'll have four head of horses working at one time. In terms of four work horses active, it would probably be the most. I think that'd be plenty for a quarter.

But right now, I work a team. And we haul all our manure, which is, I suppose, about-- it's getting to be 150 to 200 loads a year, about a ton of load. And we mow our hay and rake the hay with them. And they're constantly in use, I guess, in terms of picking rocks, fixing fence. We have livestock. It's a livestock farm, and we fix a lot of fence.

The horses are-- if you're picking rocks, for instance, you don't have to climb up on the tractor, and start it, and then get it to go ahead, and then stop it again. You just say, get up, and they walk ahead a little further. And you can work with them in that way. But we put up some loose hay with them too. But it's mostly light draft work, harrowing, pulling a land roller. The grain drill that I have actually would need four horses on it.

So there's a limit. But I guess there's a part of the farm work that they really work well with. They don't pack the soil in a row like a tractor wheel does. So if I'm land rolling after a crop is in, it's nice and even. There aren't any furrows from wheels or anything like that. It's a nice feeling. It really is.

NANCY PADDOCK: It's not just stubbornness? I mean, there are things they do even better?

DAVID BENSON: Oh yeah. I think they-- my dad is always concerned of whether they're earning their keep. And that's a good thing to be concerned with because you should be using them. They're just going to get fat and sassy if they sit around and don't work.

After they've been sitting for-- or not sitting, but after they've been out to pasture and resting for a month or so, they're in a big hurry. It always amazes me, I guess, and it amazes other people, too, how they really do love to work. It feels-- they take off with that first load of manure in the morning. They're raring to go.

And of course, by noon, after they've hauled a lot of work, they've done a lot of work, they're a little bit more tired. But then right after the noon rest, they're right out there. They really like to work. It's a nice-- it's a good feeling to feel the power it can-- it's just like a-- it's a transfer of power into those lines. And it's a good feeling controlling them. Yeah.

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ARNOLD HOCKETT: I was quite interested in something out of the ordinary. And I sort of seen a spotted horse once I liked real well, and I bought it. In those days, it didn't take quite so much money to get a horse.

And as I got-- it must have been a year or so with just the one. And I found another one that looked a lot like it. I bought it. So I thought it was in business, and they both happened to be mares. So we raised colts from them, and it wasn't long till I had more horses than I needed while I was at home yet. So I'd sell them and get something else I thought I needed.

And then when I started for myself, I needed more horses, and I just got-- seemed like it was easy for me to get horses. And after I got quite a few of them, I got to dealing in the horses, which kept them going and coming all the time.

And I don't know. We just always was working horses then, and I just never did quit. I just thought I might as well use them as long as I had them around, utilize the waste feed on the farm, which was quite great. In those days, we operated a lot different.

KIM HODGSON: Arnold Hockett farms about 250 acres near Estherville, Iowa, doing most of the field work with draft horses. He also raises them to sell. Hockett has owned as many as 150 horses at one time. Now, he's down to 12. He guesses he has owned and cared for over a thousand horses in his lifetime. And he's seen their popularity as well as their numbers swell and diminish.

ARNOLD HOCKETT: In the '30s, we got that sleeping sickness disease, which killed horses [INAUDIBLE] like flies. And that's when people started changing to tractors. And then it just seemed like they just kept getting rid of them.

Took quite a while for some of them. Stayed in there for quite a while, which kept them for years after they quit using them, and they finally gave in and let them go. And after they practically got rid of all the good, purebred breeding stock, why, somebody woke up to the fact that they were getting just about clear out of the picture.

So few people started taking interest in trying to get good horses again, which was quite a job because there weren't many of them Those that were starting to herd again didn't want to spare them very bad. And it just took quite a while. But I think the horse population is getting quite great again as far as for what need there is for them.

NANCY PADDOCK: When everybody else was switching to tractors, why did you keep horses?

ARNOLD HOCKETT: Well, I made more money off of horses than any project I had on the farm. And I liked them, and I got along good with them. And I just enjoyed it, and so I just kept them, which I'm real glad for because that's about all you get out of life, is what you like to do. And I don't know. It just gets in your blood, I guess. Yeah.

NANCY PADDOCK: Well, with the big tractors, and the big machinery, and everything they have today, what practical use can a team be on the farm?

ARNOLD HOCKETT: Well, to me, they can replace all of that machinery if you just want to operate a little smaller and with a lot less expense. You get the same price for your crops as they do and don't have the depreciation, or the interest, or nothing. It's-- use your own fuel. I think it's a real way to farm if you're going to farm on a small scale.

But I realize you can't-- you don't have time enough to operate big and you couldn't hire help and make it pay. First place, you couldn't get horsemen. And if you didn't have, you just couldn't make a go of it that way. At least, that's my opinion. And you don't see anybody doing it that way. So they just don't think it would work, but--

NANCY PADDOCK: Do you have a tractor? Do you use one?

ARNOLD HOCKETT: I've got an old WC Allis tractor. That's probably got a value of about $125. And we use it on the baler a little and do a little plowing and a little tillage work, just when we need to. And otherwise, it's all the tractor I need. If I needed a better one or a bigger one, I'd get it. But it does the job, so I just let the horses do the rest.

KIM HODGSON: While he admits that his crop yields are a bit less than those of farmers who use more machines and petroleum, Arnold Hockett says that, in the end, he comes out ahead. For one thing, his cost inputs are much smaller. But more important to Hockett is the pleasure he gets from farming with horses.

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VICKIE STURGEON: You've been listening to The Poet's Perspective, a series of nine programs funded in part by the Minnesota Humanities Commission. The program featured Southwest Minnesota regional poets, Joe and Nancy Paddock. And the series was produced in the Worthington studios of Minnesota Public Radio station, KRSW. Staff members at KRSW responsible for the project were Kim and Judy Hodgson. And I'm Vickie Sturgeon.