By NANCY VORIS
Indiana Correspondent

ODON, Ind. — David Kline and Chet Kendell love to swap stories.
Kline says when it’s time to make hay, his only cost with equipment is a little grease on the wheels. Kendell tells of the time he was making hay and the neighbor girls wanted to ride the wagon.
“I told them no, but if their dads and brothers wanted to help me, I would give them a ride later,” he said. “I had 16 men show up to help.”

Kline knows a family that put up 2,200 bales in one day with the help of some of the young girls from their church. “Of course, the girls were as strong as Mary Lou Retton,” he said, speaking of the Olympic gymnast.

What could be so economical and so attractive at the same time?
Horsepower, and if you dismiss it as folly, just hang around these guys for a while. The men were featured speakers at the 15th annual Horse Progress Days (HPD), an annual gathering of work horse enthusiasts exploring the latest equipment innovations and supporting the effort of small scale farming and land stewardship.
Kline is an Amish dairy farmer from Ohio and is also an author and publisher and editor of Farming Magazine. Kendell of Ogden, Utah, is “English” and made the switch from tractor farming to horse farming in the 1990s.

The two came together at HPD 2005 where they combined their knowledge and communication skills to present a seminar titled “Horses vs. Tractors, a New Look at an Old Discussion.” They love to dish out information to a crowd, especially the stainless steel-addicted farmers who are thinking about farming with horses. The result is an entertaining and enlightening look at the economics and sustainability of horse farming from both the Amish and English perspective. Their talks are so informative that they are invited back for the event every year.

“You have to have the right attitude,” Kline said. “You can’t go out to the field with the attitude that it is all about timing. When you do a field with horses, it is mentally relaxing.”

Kendell was a Michigan State University graduate with an agriculture degree when he moved back to Utah and began farming. In the ’90s, he told his wife she could choose which one of his passions he could pursue: build and fly his own airplane or work the farm with draft horses.

She chose the horses. He started working with horses in 2000 on his farm raising fruit and hay, and in 2005 sold his tractor.
“Horse farming can be a viable way of life, especially for small farmers,” Kendell said. “The economics are there; you certainly can make money with horses.”

Kendell believed in horsepower so much that he went back to Michigan State and told them that what he learned there was not applicable to agriculture today and its high costs.

As a Ph.D. candidate, he chose the economics of farming with horses in Michigan as his course of study. When his thesis was reviewed by a committee, they passed him simply because no one had done research on the subject before. “It doesn’t fit in their framework of analysis,” he said.

Kendell said that the USDA and academic community ignores statistics from religion-based agriculture groups. The Amish, for instance, is the largest homogenous group of farmers in the country, and the Mormons are the largest agricultural landholders.
“The Amish are stringent at cost control,” he said. “If using horses at their full reproductive capacity, a farmer can net an average of $100,000 more over the course of the farm.”

Kendell looked at the 2007 Michigan Equine Survey and found that although the number of horses used for racing is down dramatically and the number of breeding, pleasure and competition horses is straightlined, the number of horses used for work more than doubled in the past 20 years. “Agriculture in America is changing and changing drastically” he said. “Horse-powered ag is here to stay and growing.

We all need to talk to other farmers and get their ideas.”
Horse Progress Days was created for that purpose, and one of its missions is “to show draft animal power is possible, practical and profitable.”

HPD is a Friday-Saturday event packed with demonstrations and seminars.

Field demonstrations included spreaders, plows and tillage; produce; no-till equipment; haymaking and logging. Arena demonstrations included sheep herding, draft horse shoeing, wagon travel, plow and planter seminars and safety hitching.
Seminars were also held on harness fitting, gentle and traditional horse training, horse conformation, horse health and grazing. Equipment dealers demonstrated the latest in horse-drawn implements, including a new horsepowered treadmill that would run household items including a washing machine, cooler, and grinder.
Tours to local farms and businesses are scheduled on Thursdays before Horse Progress Days.

Indiana will again host HPD in 2010 in Northern Indiana, followed by Pennsylvania in 2011, Michigan in 2012, Illinois in 2013, Ohio in 2014 and back to Southern Indiana in 2015.

For more information, go to www.horseprogressdays.com