A walking plough (click image to enlarge, click to shrink)

A John Boughen Story:
Using a light pull on the reins to a horse's bridle, on the appropriate side of the bit of the bridle, and saying 'gee' to the horse, means that you want the horse to turn to the right, and 'haw' means to go left. Generally these commands were and are only used for heavy farm horses like Clydesdales. These were the horses that were used on our farm until about 1955 when the last team my Dad had was sold to a Quebec logging company to work in the woods in the wintertime. That was a sad day for our family especially my Dad. When my Dad started farming around 1916 there were no tractors on our farm.
Some of the names of our horses I remember — Fanny, Barney and Gene, my favourite.
My first farm job was leading Gene on the hay fork rope in the summer of 1947. I was 5 years old. I can still remember doing that very clearly, and I can still hear my Dad Harvey calling out 'whoa' to Gene and me while he was up on the barn floor on the wagon of hay that was being unloaded at the time. This hay was loose on the old flat rack wagons and a hay fork was pushed down into the loose hay on the wagon, then the bundle of hay would be pulled up to the peak of the barn and carried along a track over the hay mow where the hay would be releashed from the hay fork and fall down to the mow. The hay fork would be pulled by the hay fork rope (a heavy 1" rope aproximately 220 feet in length). This rope went along the peak of the barn out over a pulley and down to the bottom of the barn wall, through another pulley, snd out along the ground to the whippletree of the horse harness. Gene was such a good horse at doing this job that as soon as she felt the weight go off the rope and Dad yelled out 'whoa' she would stop pulling, which was very important at that stage of the job.
And I can still hear Dad saying to Barney and Fanny 'gee' and 'haw' as he was bringing them around to line them up to go up the gangway with the load of hay, and saying 'giddyup', and away they would go with the greatest pull on their tugs, and Dad, of course, riding on top of the wagon and ducking just as the wagon went under the top of the barn doors. And then Dad pulling on the reins to stop the horses on the barn floor, or else, if they kept going, they would go through the south barn doors into the barnyard, and that would not have been good.
More names of the horses he had over the years — Dandy, Prinny, Dick, Frank, Flossie, Fly and Queen.
Dad had these names of his horses written on a separate piece of paper that he had paperclipped to the first page that I had noticed here tonight. He wrote on the bottom of this paper, 'Memories of years ago, my old horses, dear old horses,' and then his initials H B (Harvey Boughen). I know Dad missed his horses terribly.
When Dad sold the last team around 1955 it was a very sad time for him and, of course, for our family.
I have a great deal of respect for horses. Horses helped to open up the country around here in the early 1800's, pulling logs, clearing the land, providing transportation (on horseback, on wagons, buggies, stagecoaches), plowing the fields, planting the fields, etc.
We owe so much to the horses, so thank you so much horses and thank you Gene, my favourite horse.



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