Coming through the Rye

My title is borrowed from one of Frederic Remington's most ambitious sculptures. Here is my own man coming through the rye, and an image of Remington's original work.

Our day with horses in the rye field was quite a bit more serene than the one Remington depicted in 1902.

You may remember our friend Kevin. He wanted his rye stubble plowed, so he called every teamster he knows. Word of mouth spread the news of a plowing day, until twenty horses and mules, a half dozen plows, and fifty or sixty spectators were assembled Sunday afternoon.

One guy even brought his Shetland pony team. The weight of his plow was hardly enough to pierce the sod, so he mostly slid along the surface, gathering rye grass in the plow bottom. I don't think this would have worked for Laura Ingalls Wilder's pa.....he must have had bigger horses and a heavier plow.

Watching a day of plowing like this gives you a lot of respect for farmers who made their livings this way in yesteryears. The plow John was on cuts one sixteen-inch swath at a time.

This is a pretty big field to be plowing sixteen inches at a pop.

Fortunately, Kevin has lots of friends and Charlie has a bigger plow. This one is a two-bottom, so it cuts twice as fast as John's.

And it takes twice as many horses to pull it. Kevin and Charlie combined horse power to hook up their three-bottom, just before the rain struck. This big gun needs eight horses to lug it through the turf. They had time to do just a couple of rounds before a torrential thunderstorm arose and ended the party.
In frontier sodbusting days, if you farmed more ground, you needed more horsepower and bigger equipment. Some things never change.