Draft Horses in the Forests of Pennsylvania: An Old Tradition Lives On
by Donald L. Gibbon
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Autumn 2000

A game I often play when I’m driving through rural northern Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania is to look for houses that are not connected to the road by power lines. No electricity means it’s almost a sure bet that it’s an Amish farm. . .and that means there will be horses in use. Most commonly visible are the high-wheeled buggies, out on the highways with their big orange triangle warning signs, often drawn by a single high-stepping mare. But in the nearby fields you can usually see the Amish farmer plowing, spreading manure or doing any one of dozens of normal field chores with his draft horses.

“Work horse” is not just a figure of speech here. So, in this part of the country it’s not too unusual to see draft horses being used for more serious purposes than pulling heavy sleds in county fairs. And scattered across this same countryside are wood lots whose owners prefer using horses for skidding logs rather than bringing mechanized equipment into the forest to harvest their timber.

Most owners who choose to use horses to log their land make that choice because they have a deeper idea of forest health, a longer-term view. Choosing horse-logging is really a matter of preference, because it may actually be as much as 25% more expensive in the first instance than to use motorized skidders. But the first instance doesn’t tell the whole story.

Troy Firth, a timber manager from Spartansburg, Pennsylvania, who owns several pieces of woodland himself and manages others for their owners, is one such deeply caring man. He is fond of saying that “a good harvest takes both excellent silviculture and excellent mechanics.” For him, that means horse-logging every time.

“Silviculture” is the management of the trees, just as agriculture is the management of the crops on a farm. It involves choosing which trees to take and which to leave behind. In the first stages of taking over the timber management responsibility on a new piece of property, Troy’s first step will be to remove many trees which are simply never going to be very valuable (they may be diseased, or genetically inferior, or simply badly placed relative to other trees). The idea is not to “high grade” the property by taking out only the most valuable trees at first. What remains behind from this first cut determines the future value of the property.

“Mechanics” is the process of getting the trees out of the forest. An experienced horse logger can make that process far less damaging to the soil and to the trees that remain behind than can be done with mechanized skidding. Horse logging lessens solid compaction and reduces “collateral damage” to other trees. Perhaps one of the less obvious benefits is that it is so quiet! Charlie Knapp, one of Troy’s nine contract horse loggers, says that his is the only job in the woods that doesn’t require ear plugs!

The horses used in these teams are not particularly fancy nor necessarily purebreds, though they can surely do the work. Good temperament is their most important feature, apart from strength. Prices for the individual animals have ranged from $500 to $2,500. Generally they are Belgians or Belgian-Percheron crosses. The equipment is simple. A two-wheeled, pneumatic-tired logging cart or sulky with quite standard harness is the centerpiece. It is interesting to see how little leather is used in the harness today, with much of it now being nylon composite instead. Some harness is even made from conveyor belt material. Some is called “bio-plastic,” a very smooth material used where chaffing and consequent hair loss might normally be a problem.

Ray Blystone, one of the other operators shown here, has been in the horse-logging business only two years, although he has had horses since he was a child. He ran an auto repair shop for some fifteen years and finally got fed up dealing with the public. Now he spends days on end in the forest, sleeping in his horse trailer, with only his “feller” (the man who drops the trees) and occasional visits from the boss to interrupt his relatively public-free activities. It can be a pretty severe life. For example, he has custom-built himself a small pot-bellied stove for his trailer for use in the winter, but he tells of a time when, even with the stove roaring, he woke up to find his hair frozen to the trailer wall!

Charlie Knapp, on the other hand, has been horse-logging for decades. He’s 51 now and got his first Shetland pony in the third grade. He actually started logging in 1965. He traded a Holstein cow to an Amish farmer for his first draft horse. Charlie has made a number of modifications to his gear that improve the safety of the operation. One is a quick-release latch for the load. He installed it when he heard of an accident with an Amish farmer’s team, in which one of the horses had slipped and fallen in deep mud and the other horse had fallen on top of him, pushing him under the surface. The tension on the load stayed so taut that the farmer couldn’t release it and the bottom horse actually drowned in place.

Charlie designed a modification of the hitch, similar to one which had been used to secure loads on the big horse-drawn logging wagons. Here the loads were released sideways by simply popping the latch free. One tap of the hammer frees Charlie’s cart from the load. This is illustrated in the attached photographs. He also makes the grabs used hard-wood skidding and the skip hammers used for driving them into the logs. Inquiries about these products can be addressed to him at 43840 Thompson Run Road, Titusville, PA 16354.

Another interesting feature of logging carts is the seats on which the operator rides. Charlie’s is another of his home-designed devices, in which the supports on either side are tremendously flexible, absorbing much of the shock from riding over the rough surface of the forest floor, bumping over stumps and diving down into deep holes.
Release

The forester starts the process of taking logs out of the forest by marking the trees to be removed. The feller then drops the trees, being careful to orient them so that the horses can get to them. The feller designs a skid road into the process, clearing the first trees in a more or less curvy line through the forest. The feller cuts all the trees onto merchantable lengths, that is, it is his job to decide how much of each tree will be capable of being made into high-grade lumber, perhaps how much into veneer, or what will be destined to become pulp for paper or just pallet material. The skidder then has to drag those logs out. First, he has to drive grabs into the ends of the logs and hitch the logs to his cart with chains. Then the team has to turn the logs around so that they are parallel to one another. Then the skidder backs the team over the logs and shortens up the chains so that the butts of the logs are slightly off the ground. This way, when he drags them, the logs will slide easily and not gouge into the ground. Finally, off they go to the log landing, and right back again for another load.

It’s a real joy to see them work. The horses choose carefully where to set down their big feet, stepping around logs, debris and rocks with remarkable agility and precision. Experienced teams know the business as well as the skidders do and they need virtually no guidance to get into position. They clearly enjoy the pulling part of the job and even have to be held back when the load is set. Commands from the skidder are very soft, conversational, (“Back, Chet.” “Gee, Prince.” “Haw, Fred,” and so forth), except at the high-energy moments, when only short distances need to be covered and the pulling needs to stop suddenly. Then the commands may get a bit more vocal! (Whoaa!) The teams get frequent breaks, and usually are watered at creeks or springs nearby in the forest. They spend the night on a picket line near the trailer.

While there is no over-arching draft horse or horse-logging organization in Pennsylvania that keeps track of such data, it appears that there are some 30-40 teams operating in the forests of the northwestern part of the state, according to Troy Firth’s best estimate. Horse-logging is for people who really care about the forest. Pennsylvania’s State Forests cover more than two million acres, one of the largest state systems in the country. The stewardship program of the Bureau of Forestry provides a powerful example for the private landowners in the state, as do the State’s own “green certified” forests, over 2 million acres of them. There is some real hope that horse-logging will become even more widely used, as the State Forests in Pennsylvania move toward a full implementation of “eco-system management” in their new Forest Plan and the general level of caring for the land rises statewide.