The DAPCast from the Draft Animal Power Network investigates the intersection between sustainable land use and working animals. Hard to pigeonhole, our podcast will inspire you to create the change you want to see both in the world and in your animals. It will provoke your thoughts on sustainability, and also give you practical tips for getting big heavy animals to do what you want them to do. If you've ever had a twinge of curiosity about draft animals, or even if you're just interested in sustainable agriculture and silviculture/agroforestry, the DAPCast is worth a listen. Maggie Smith hosts Season 1 with editing by Louis Ménard and Alexia Allen and music by Pier-Rick Boivin.
The Draft Animal Power Network is a membership-based nonprofit organization nonprofit organization that aims to highlight ongoing efforts of people who are educating, mentoring, and building community around animal-power and sustainable land use. We are based in the Northeastern U.S. but are growing all over the country and internationally. We host an annual flagship event, Draft Animal Power Field Days, as well as many other small in-person events and virtual discussions. Find us online at www.draftanimalpower.org.
Join Maggie and Jared in a conversation with Taylor Van Zyl, a professional carriage driver, horse trainer and trader, rodeo cowgirl and all-round horsewoman in Arizona. She travels up and down the West with eight Percherons, doing public and private events and rodeos. She tells us stories of flipping Gypsy Vanners, taking her carriage business to Hawaii, training all her horses to be ridden by a person wearing a giant inflatable unicorn suit, and she dispels rumors about Scotch shoes. Her th...
18 Oct 2024
Love Them Through It
Anna Peck works with oxen in northern New York. She was kind enough to stay late in her office at work to record our interview. Anna has a unique story: raised by her sister, she started showing cattle and then oxen in high school on the Vermont-New York state line and fell in love with it, piecing together advice from various mentors to teach herself to train oxen. Lately, she prefers driving single oxen and using the three-pad ox collar developed in Germany over the bow yoke common in the U...
20 Sept 2024
Experimental Archaeology & Draft Cattle in Germany
Claus Kropp has a the kind of job you only get it if you make it for yourself. He works as the founding director of the Lauresham Open-Air Laboratory at UNESCO Lorsch, a medieval abbey site in Germany. There, they have a full-scale model of a medieval village, filled with historically accurate buildings and animals. Claus works the land with his oxen and practices "experimental archaeology," which you will hear explained in the episode. He tells us working with oxen puts him in flow, and you ...
3 Jul 2024
Field Days 2023 Retrospective
We’ve got a slightly different type of episode this time around. Since registration is about to open for Draft Animal Power Field Days 2024, the podcast crew looked back at audio gathered at Field Days 2023 at Shelburne Farms, VT and created an audio collage of sorts. In a corner room of Shelburne Farms’ incredible Breeding Barn, I interviewed Jared Woodcock, Eric Westergard and Rick Eshuis. The indefatigable Caralyn Roeper did our guest introduction. Bear with us on the audio quality; there is some human and animal background noise going on from the event outside.
Jared Woodcock is, in his own words, a father, farmer, forester, and ecologist. Among many other things, he manages private woodlots with horses under the moniker Timberdoodle Horse Logging. Eric Westergard is an ox drover, logger and carpenter in West Virginia and a perennial feature at Field Days despite the distance to his home turf. And Rick Eshuis manages the farm at Tillers' International in Scotts, Michigan. He is a longtime horse teamster who volunteered with Tillers' for many years before becoming an employee, and his passion for the work can be heard loud and clear in our interview.
Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Field Days in Glenville, NY, September 27th-29th. Friday features day-long intensive workshops focusing on forestry, fieldwork, mowers, and horse and oxen basics. Saturday is a mix of shorter workshops on all types of topics, and Sunday has a mix of family-friendly programs and the DAPNet’s annual member meeting. You can learn how to register to attend the event (or sponsor, exhibit or volunteer at it) at draftanimalpower.org.
Editing for this episode was provided by the stalwart Louis Menard and fabulous Alexia Allen.
28 May 2024
I'm Still Doing What I Wanted to do When I Was 12
Jim and Maggie discuss logging with horses (which he started doing as a child, and went into business in right after high school), haymaking, setting high expectations for your animal-powered operation, working stallions, his equipment choices for the farm and log landing, and much more. As we discuss in the episode, Jim might be part of the minority in the draft power world at this point – he grew up within the culture of working animals. I think his no-nonsense attitude and incomparable work ethic are not unrelated to that. Jim’s horses are seriously strong and well behaved, and it’s not by accident. Be sure to stay to the end for a very solid piece of advice for anyone working with or hoping to work with draft horses.
We address a couple of vocabulary words in the beginning of the episode, but here's one more: scoot. Scoots are large sleds made for pulling loads of logs.
2 Apr 2024
We're Not Luddites, We Just Like Horses
Maggie interviews Michael and Karma Glos of Kingbird Farm about why they use horse power in their organic market garden, the eras of horses on their farm (including their love for Fjords), marketing horsepower to the public (or not), the economics of draft power, and raising their child around animals. Join us at their kitchen table for this laugh-filled conversation (and please pardon their pet birds chirping in the background). Find out more about Michael and Karma and their farm and products at https://kingbirdfarm.com/.
2 Apr 2024
The Art of Working With Draft Horses
Maggie Smith interviews her friend and mentor, Donn Hewes of Northland Sheep Farm. They discuss hay making equipment, horse (and teamster) training, mules, the Suffolk Punch breed, and the art of working with -- and building a life around -- draft horses. Find out more about Donn, his farm and collaborations and teamster training opportunities, at https://www.northlandsheepdairy.com/.
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5.0 / 5
16 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
14 ratings
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