Horse Progress Days, July 3-4, Oden, Indiana

[EditorBob]

Information provided by Dale K. Stoltzfus.

Anyone with the slightest interest in the heavy horse industry in North America has got to be aware of the event called Horse Progress Days, it is an anachronism, but to the past or the future?

The mid to late 1800s with the frenzied forming of breed associations in almost all aspects of the farm animal industry is often thought of as a time when Horses and Progress fit together like hand and glove, and they did. It is important to note, however, that growing portions of the general farming population and others interested in a different approach to farming (based on record attendance of 18,000 at the 2008 event in Mt Hope Ohio) are buying into the idea that the word Horse and Progress do actually belong together in this day and age.

This year’s event to be held July 3rd and 4th in Oden, Indiana will be the 16th consecutive one in as many years. Every year the event is held in a different place, but always in locations where there are 70 to 100 head of well broke farm horses available to pull the equipment. Horses accustomed to being worked on a daily basis.

Beginning in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with every passing year, equipment for horse farming became more and more difficult to find. Many pieces used with tractors could be retrofitted for use with horses, but as tractors got bigger and bigger the challenge became greater and greater. The New Idea Manure Spreader Company, for example decided that they would no longer build their ultra popular spreaders. Horse farmers, mostly Amish, asked themselves what would happen when they could no longer buy spreaders and parts as needed. The first step in finding a solution was to buy all the parts left over from the company and its dealers and put them in one or two locations where they could be bought as needed. Next, some enterprising farmer/businessmen studied the parts and came up with ways to reproduce them and make manure spreaders of their own for use with horsepower. That was probably 30-40 years ago now. Today, ingenuity, business sense, hard work, and a demand for a good product have resulted in numerous shops being set up in horse farming communities around the country to manufacture horse drawn equipment. At the 2008 event 6 manufactures of manure spreaders displayed 9 different models, many of them superior in many ways to the ones produced when horses were in their heyday.

In the early 1990s Elmer Lapp, a horse farmer in eastern PA and Maurice Telleen editor of Draft Horse Journal in Waverly IA, along with a few other interested persons decided the time was right to develop a field day where newly manufactured pieces of Draft Horse Equipment could be demonstrated in actual field conditions. Farmers interested in using the equipment would be able to see how it worked and talk to the manufactures. The first event was held in 1994 in Kinzer, PA. Many good things have happened as a result of Horse Progress Days. Manufacturers have begun to use it as a place to introduce newly designed equipment, as was the case when the Pioneer Company of Dalton, Ohio introduced a plow prototype in 2006 which became a part of their offering of plow models in 2008. Or when White Horse Machine of Gap, PA introduced their newly designed forecart that could be changed from a tongue for hitching a team of horses to a set of shafts for a single horse without the use of any tools, or when I & J Manufacturing, also of Gap, introduced a unique roller system that can be used to practice no-till farming without or with minimal use of herbicides, or when Esch Manufacturing of Leola, PA introduced their new no-till drill. In 2005 Charles Pinney of Great Britain demonstrated a multi-use forecart of his design with an engine that could be mounted or removed, depending on the task at hand. Guests to the event come from many places throughout North America and around the world. The 2008 event included guests from 15 different countries, two from as far away as Kenya and Australia. The 2009 event expects guests from many countries in Western Europe as well as the African countries of Uganda and Mali. You should be there too!

Also an important part of the event are the many vendors selling all things Draft Horse related and many valuable seminars providing education about working with the horses and equipment.

To receive a program guide with more information about the event and interesting articles about horse farming, send $5.00 to 1006 Log Cabin Road Leola, PA 17540. You can also visit the Web site at www.horseprogressdays.com.