Three Cart Horses

Six weeks of summer spent almost every year of childhood on our widowed grandmother's farm was for me a foretaste of paradise. We were there for haymaking in July and while oats and barley were being harvested in August. Our uncle, helped by a farm hand or two, was the farmer and his partners were three large-boned, muscular horses. If he ever considered replacing them with a tractor, that thought was quickly deleted.

Each horse had his own straw-strewn stable with a half door. When the top half was open he could stand and watch all that went on in the farmyard. Sometimes we, children, would gather windfall apples and, one by one, on the palm of an outstretched hand offer them to those horses in residence. Apples were titbits, interesting additions to a diet of oats and hay.

From the yard a gate led into the Yard Field, the road side of which was a mile long, or so it was claimed. It was never ploughed and abounded in red and white clovers, scarlet pimpernels, bird's foot trefoil, purple knapweed and many other wild flowers. Sometimes the horses, whinnying with delight were led into this bee-humming meadow to romp and graze. In their wake they left horse dung and that, we were told, was the reason field mushrooms could be found growing in this field. We threaded them on to a long grass stalk, brought them back to fry in butter and savoured a taste that is so much better than that of cultivated mushrooms.

Our stubborn uncle's death put an end to farming with horses on that farm. Is there anywhere left in Western Europe where horses pull carts and farm machinery? Is there anyone left with the understanding and skills needed to work with these breeds? Anyone who can fashion their harness? There was once a saddler in the town where I live. Horse brasses mounted on leather hung outside his shop while he adapted his business to produce robust leather school bags. At the other end of the town was a forge. My father once brought me to see the blacksmith shoeing a horse amid a shower of sparks. Soon afterwards he diversified into other types of metal work.

People still keep horses, more lightly built animals for recreation. It is the work horse which has disappeared.