The following piece was published as “Horse Teams Putting Up And Feeding Hay” at “Old Ones Dream” October 16, 2013, and as part of a piece of the book “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” published April 14, 2022.
When I signed on to help with harvesting the 2013 hay crop at the Shade Ranch in the Little Missouri grasslands south of Medora, North Dakota, I knew that horse teams were used there and so I had visions that came straight from the pages of Ivan Doig’s 1979 memoir, “This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind,” and his novels about homesteading and ranching near the Rocky Mountain Front.
Although Kim Shade does use a horse team to feed hay in the winter, for the harvest he uses aging tractors and equipment to “put up” several hundred acres of hay for as many as 400 head of cows and yearlings. Kim claimed to not know how many acres it was but by time and motion I calculated the acres to be in excess of 400 and the two of us got it cut and baled or stacked in 18 consecutive days interrupted by three heavy storms and some mechanical failures. It is easy to see that it would have provided employment for many horses and people if it had been done with horse teams. I have posted earlier this year about the 2013 Shade Ranch hay harvest in “A Good Slow Rain On the Great American Outback” and “The Best Things Can’t Be Told.”
As I talked with Kim about haying with teams he said that the guru is a man named Buck Bucholz down in the Nebraska Sand Hills. When I started the research for this post, I discovered that there is not much out there on the subject. At the web site for Rural Heritage Magazine, I did find a post written by an “rdennis” about a horseman named Buck Bucholz or “Buck Buckles.” Here is the post quoted with permission from Rural Heritage Magazine.
Buck Bucholz
Posted by rdennis at 2012-02-13 10:26:56
Got to thinking after my last post on here, I mentioned Buck Bucholz from down in the northwestern corner of Nebraska. He is one of the few who was still using teams to put up and feed hay. He is a legend in that area and around these part and a hero to many of us who know about him and his horsemanship. Maybe you folks have never heard of him.
I have a friend, who, years back, made an appointment to go see Buck and maybe buy a team from him. It was middle of the winter and Kim, my friend, got there a bit before daylight. Buck stepped out of the house and told him to come in and have a cup of coffee and maybe a bite to eat. They did. Then they walked out to the barn where 6 Percheron’s were standing, already harnessed, in their stalls as Buck had already been out before Kim had arrived.
Buck opened the big doors wide and then walked up and untied every horse in succession and they walked out the door by them selves. Kim said when they got to the last one, the turned him loose and then followed him outside and there were all of the horses standing in the yard, lined up as they would be for 6 abreast. Buck walked up and hooked all his lines and cross ties up and then drove to a hay sled and they went and fed cows.
Buck told of having a set of teams one time who were so good and well trained that he decided to see just how long he could drive them while feeding and not have to pick up a line. Just use voice commands alone. Someone asked how it worked out., He said, “Worked real good for about a month then I just had to pick up one line to help straighten out one horse.” I do not think he was lying or bragging. Just stating facts.
Yes, that is horsemanship.
Response by Uncle Joe at 2012-02-13 11:11:49
rdennis:
You are right. He is an amazing horseman. We have his name as Buck Buckles, however.
We have featured photos of Buck and his Percherons several times in our draft horse calendar. Here are two photos taken by his wife, Joan, so you can all see what rdennis is talking about.
Joe
Response by Keith at 2012-02-13 22:40:13
Nice pictures. What is the apparatus in the second photo?
Response by Bret4207 at 2012-02-14 07:35:05
Nice to see some drafty Percherons. No horses on stilts there.
Response by Marshall at 2012-02-14 08:14:58
Keith, In the second picture that is a knuckleboom with a claw on the end. He gets a claw full of hay and swings it around and drops it on the ground. That is the way he feeds his hay.
Response by Klaus Karbaumer at 2012-02-14 10:13:20
Joe, I have to confess that years ago, when I still lived in Bavaria, I used the second picture as one of the transparencies for the overhead projector in presentations I gave to local horse clubs about the amazing things that were going on in farming in the USA, since the reputation of US farming was that it was all tractorized and that horses had completely disappeared.
Response by rdennis at 2012-02-14 10:39:39
Keith, as Marshall said, that is how he feeds the hay. they call it a sled and pull the hay on using the team, with a chain or cable that goes from the far side of the bed of the sled, around the stack and back across the bed to the horses. As the horse move forward the hay moves on to the sled and the sled can kind of be drug under the load also, they tell me. I have never done it that way, tho’ I used to load lose hay from Haybuster stackers, with a needle and thread. The bed of the sled can be tipped to the ground, from side t side, so as to make it easier to load the hay. works good on them big flats they have in that country. Not so good up here, tho’ I think I could make one work. They did not use to use the hydro fork on the front, just drag forks or pitch forks. One man can feed a lot of cattle with this rig.
Sorry Uncle Joe, I wondered about my spelling of the last name. But knew if I spelled it that way most would understand the way it is pronounced. Never thought about you having pictures of him. Somewhere out there on the internet is a nice video a TV station made about him a year or so back.
Speaking of hydro forks. I had a friend who fed with teams in Northern Colorado. Wagons until the snow got too deep, which was soon in most winters. They put up and fed the big square bales. they had a hydro fork made and setting on a set of runners with a gas motor to run it. You pulled up next to the stack and then started the hydro fork and used it to load the big bales onto the bed. When you needed to move it, if it wasn’t frozen down, you could push and pull with the fork to slide the unit closer or farther away for ease of loading. Looked like a slick set up from the pictures I saw.
The apparatus in the first picture is called a Beaverslide. The horse team pulls the slide full of hay up the ramp, and that is how the hay gets hoisted to the top of those large loose haystacks. Click on this Beaverslide link to see the explanation.
When I first read this post I was pretty sure I knew who the writer was referring to when he credited his friend Kim. Then it occurred to me that “rdennis” might be Robert Dennis and Robert Dennis sounded mighty familiar. Closer examination (Google) reminded methat Robert Dennis is Kim’s cowboy-poet-and-songwriter friend and it was his latest CD that Kim played in the pickup truck.
