One of our foundation mares, hard at work, bringing home a cherry tree used to heat our home in 2010.

We heat our home nearly exclusively with wood, and that wood is nearly exclusively harvested with horses. I do this for a few reasons. To be for certain- I don’t think I could afford to heat my home any other way. But that is only a small part. I take wood as an opportunity to carefully restore the land around my home. The farm used to be a mix of oak savanna, maple-basswood- birch forest and these forests have turned into a tangle of regrowth following a clearcut. As I harvest wood to heat my home, I can remove these over crowded tress. Releasing them for faster and stronger growth. 

The time I spend bringing wood in with the horses readies them for the variety of uses they will be put to in the future. Working horses in the woods develops a steady, nimble and thoughtful horse. Steady, because there can be no rushing nor spooking while they pull that log that follows them all through the woods. Nimble, because under a constant draft of a log, they have to carefully place their feet to their best advantage. Thoughtful, because each turn of logs presents a new challenge, an ever changing obstacle course. All of these attributes will help them later in life. 

In this picture, that is what I’m trying to encourage. Sage has plenty of motor. I was asking her to slow up a little bit, no need to rush, we’re going downhill and this log is easy enough to pull. Work off your hind end. 

Lastly, I love the independence and self reliance of heating my own home this way. I’m thankful for that and all the help the horses provide along the way.

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac