Horse-Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labor Saving by Wendell Berry

FIVE YEARS AGO, when we enlarged our farm from about twelve acres to about fifty, we saw that we had come to the limits of the equipment we had on hand: mainly a rotary tiller and a Gravely walking tractor; we had been borrowing a tractor and mower to clip our few acres of pasture. Now we would have perhaps twenty-five acres of pasture, three acres of hay, and the garden; and we would also be clearing some land and dragging the cut trees out for firewood. I thought for a while of buying a second-hand 8N Ford tractor, but decided finally to buy a team of horses instead.

I have several reasons for being glad that I did. One reason is that it started me thinking more particularly and carefully than before about the development of agricultural technology. I had learned to use a team when I was a boy, and then had learned to use the tractor equipment that replaced virtually all the horse and mule teams in this part of the country after World War II. Now I was turning around, as if in the middle of my own history, and taking up the old way again.