Any regular reader will know I have a soft spot for draft horses.
I must say the interest is one which surprises me a little given that on the farm as a kid there were no horses, if you don't count Trixie, a rather small Shetland Pony which ate hay and grain but never seemed to be of much use beyond that.
Of course there were my father's stories about working horses when he himself was a school-aged boy. He loved working in the field when he was barely a teenager behind a team of horses. His love was deep enough he quit school part way through Grade 8 to work the fields.
I suspect those stories were the kernel which sprouted my interest in draft horses.
Then as a youngster I spent many summers showing livestock at summer fairs. When you are just a kid there is no way that walking through a barn full of draft horses their sheer size left me in awe.
And once those horses were in a showring, the silver on their harness shining, it was a spectacle which always caught my attention.
Even today I am in awe of the big horses, and still love watching them. It amazes me to watch the horses at work, in particular the draft horse pulls at the annual Grain Millers Harvest Showdown. Watching a well-trained team leaning into the harness, and pulling two, three times their own weight is actually awe-inspiring.
So a couple of years ago when I heard Merlin Ford was working toward a book on the influence draft horses have had in the development of Saskatchewan, I was immediately intrigued.
I met with Merlin back then, and found him a definite kindred spirit when it came to draft horses. He was a man with a respect for the big horses and their contribution to not just farm, but in logging, cartage in our towns and cities and just about every other aspect of provincial development requiring a power source.
It took Merlin a long time to ferret out draft horse history from across Saskatchewan, but he kept at it, and recently released Horses, Harness and Homesteads.
The book is loaded with information, and more importantly page-after-page of historic pictures. It was a major undertaking given the draft horse has been part of developing Saskatchewan from the time of the earliest settlers before the region was actually a province.
"One of the challenges in compiling this book has been the amount of information that could be included. Horses played such a vital role in our history that it would be virtually impossible to cover it extensively in a book of this length," noted Merlin in the forward to the book.
The book is one anyone with an interest in horses, the early days of our province, and rural history will want to check out.
I tip my hat to Merlin for his hard work in gathering this history before it was lost forever.
Check out www.clippityclop.ca or you can email him at clippity.clop1@gmail or call 338-2132.
