"Can YOUR OX pull this?”
Living in a male dominated household there are certain things I have just had to come to grips with, such as ravenous appetites that are never satisfied; creepy, crawly, slimy, things being hauled into the house in dirty little hands or pockets; discussions of gross topics; a toilet seat never left in the down position if one has to use a restroom other than my master bath; and the inevitable testosterone sporting, competitive, machoism, that leads boys into such things as wrestling matches and bike races.
Over the last several generations men have turned toward proving their machosim by using debt to acquire larger and more powerful things. I think men, (and women to a certain extent), have been educated away from what really matters in life, and have filled that void with artificialness and speed.
Here on the Homestead we are training the machosim of our six boys into meaningful, non-debt laden, family-oriented, head-of-household, stewards of the land, competitiveness. We are reverting to our ancestors’ modeling of "real" men and women. We need to be raising MEN and WOMEN. Men and women have been distracted away from the pride and fulfillment in raising a family. So, we have integrated a euphemism into our classical educational structure. "My oxen can pull more than your oxen," or "How much can my oxen pull"?
Kit fell a tree the end of February from which to build our barn doors..
This Douglas fir had a larger-than-normal taper and slight sweep at its base. It was 93 feet tall and had a 36-inch butt. We later cut a foot off the bottom log which made an eight-foot log with a 32-inch base tapering to 25 inches.
I couldn't get the whole tree in the picture, but this gets you a little idea of what we were doing. We asked ourselves, "Is it possible to haul out a large tree with a young team of oxen? The tree was cut into 8-foot and 7-foot lengths to keep the weight for transport as light as possible. The 7-footers are for my barn doors, and the 8-footers for any standard building projects we might need in the future.
As soon as the log is free the team is brought in to spin the log into a more advantageous position for loading onto the sled. The sled reduces friction and allows it to slide on top of the snow when encountered.
The guys placed the sled on the downhill side of the log, and then rolled the log into place.
Here is the epitome of a dream tractor, idling between use without burning fuel, gaining in value while parked instead of depreciating, and can be sold for more than you paid for it!
In fact, while searching for information on oxen logging, we came across a study conducted by FTP International out of Finland and compiled by Mark Seymour. The APPRODEV oxen logging project was conducted in East and Central Africa. The information presented in the study was for by forestry students, logging officers, or contractors running, or establishing an oxen logging system.
APPRODEV noted that for "various reasons, economic, environmental and so on animals are used for skidding to some extent in most countries of the world. For small logging operations they are often cheaper to use than machines and even in developing countries where labor is relatively a low cost input they are cheaper then machines for large scale operations.” The information contained in APPRODEV seemed to fit our situation and would be worthwhile for other small homestead families to check into as well.
Kit's chaining method redistributes the load stress from the iron ring and bar at the front of the sled and transfers it to the sled frame and log. This chaining method allows us to pull larger trees with a lightweight sled, thus using it more as a logging scoot or lizard.
Starting with the top of the tree, Kit and the boys, slowly worked their way down the tree getting progressively larger as they went. This built up everyone's confidence as they hauled a slightly larger log with each successful trip.
Finally, they pulled two largest logs up out of the creek with Kit's truck, as we didn't want to give the ox team a job they couldn't do. The larger log was rolled onto the sled first, while the smaller log was left in place to prevent the larger log from getting away and rolling back into the creek which was flowing high due to melting snow.
From APPRODEV - "One large sawmill in Zambia receives some 120,000m3 (m3=424bd ft) of logs per year from a skidding operation consisting mainly of 50 pairs of oxen and manual sulkies. This oxen system was introduced to replace a mechanical skidder operation. ... In Malawi, over 90 percent of skidding in Forestry Department plantations is done by oxen. Tractors were gradually replaced by oxen from the mid 1970s and up to the present time no new tractors have been introduced for skidding." The average production rate for a team of trained oxen on the production site for three hours was 5.3 m3 or 2,247 board feet, moved an average distance of 75 meters on flat ground.
Getting set to chain it down. The first logs were sledded out a week or so earlier while the snow was still fairly deep. But as you can see here the ground was now exposed in some places. The boys were commissioned to shovel snow into a sled and haul it to the skidding sled providing a trail from it to the snow covered landing area about 100 yards away. This was a great idea and made a heavy pull work smoothly and easily.
The snow trail worked marvelously. Once on the packed snow the issue was keeping the sled from going too fast and running over the team! Granddaddy helped us with the last two logs and had a peevee on the log to steady it as it was kind of top heavy.
Smiles attest to a successful pull, a challenge met and another debt-free machoism proven.
But now we shall show another challenge that was met and overcome.
On this day they were pulling out a decent sized log, with no problems expected.
However, the melting snow, and a slightly different path through a large depression allowed one runner to suddenly drop to one side - and being top heavy, the rest was history as they say.
Now bear in mind, that the three generations pictured here, might tip the scales at 350 pounds, TOGETHER!
After several attempts using different strategies they finally managed to right the sled and log without having to unchain.
Finally they made it to the landing just as it was starting to get dark. Proud of hauling big logs, proud of solving problems, proud of the team hauling their largest tree so far, proud of a log deck moved by oxen power, proud of a job well done. With the help of some digital sepia coloring, the machoism displayed could easily be mistaken for that of one of our ancestors!