Thursday Evening at Willis Miller's

We had a great evening at the Millers. They had guests staying for several nights in their bed and breakfast. Another friend was coming from Florida the next day for the big Mount Hope Spring Auction. This was the only really free night they would have and we ate the leftover chicken dinner from a group of twenty foreigners they had for lunch this noon. They seem to have very busy lives and our dropping in without notice could have been overwhelming but they seem to take everything in stride.
Supper was great with the best mashed potatoes you can ever have, chicken, salads, sweet vegetables, and fresh bread. We were glad Kathy didn't have to prepare anything special.
I asked Willis about the no till farming he started last year. He explained they use Aerial seeding with oats or rye mixed with turnips. The long tap root of the turnip will decompose over winter and the void will allow soil aeration while the decomposition adds nutrients to the soil. The aerial seeding can be sown into a field of corn while the corn is still growing, this allows for crop growth overlaps and will keep soil erosion down. Not to mention the time savings of no plowing and harrowing to prepare the fields.
Willis is also getting mule fever. Mule fever is a desire to farm with mules. His dad had a couple of mule teams when Willis was young. When tractors became popular in the area years ago. English farmers stopped breeding draft horses thinking they were a thing of the past.They began selling off harness and tack equipment which the Amish were more than happy to buy for a song. The reduced number of work horses began to take effect as old work horses were retired and soon there was a horse shortage. The price of the limited supply of draft horses drove prices too high and some Amish farmers began to use mule teams and found them to be more than adequate. Willis says he has seen mules the size of his Belgians when bred with draft horses.

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. All male mules and most female mules are infertile.

The size of a mule and work to which it is put depends largely on the breeding of the mule's breeding stock. Mules can be lightweight, medium weight, or even, when produced from draught horse mares of moderately heavy weight.

An aficionado of the mule claims that they are "more patient, sure-footed, hardy and long-lived than a horse.

The virtue of the mule is that a mule has the size and ground-covering ability of a horse, but is comparatively stronger than a horse of similar size and inherits the endurance and disposition of the donkey father. Mules also tend to require less food than a horse of similar size.
The mule possesses the even temper, patience, endurance and sure-footed ness of the donkey, and the vigor, strength and courage of the horse. Operators of working animals generally find mules preferable to horses: mules show more patience under the pressure of heavy weights, and their skin is harder and less sensitive than that of horses, rendering them more capable of resisting sun and rain. Their hooves are harder than horses', and they show a natural resistance to disease and insects. Many North American farmers with clay soil found mules superior as plow animals.

Mules are generally less tolerant towards dogs than horses are. They are also capable of striking out with any of their hooves in any direction, even sideways if needed.

Mules exhibit a higher cognitive intelligence than their parent species. This is believed to be the result of hybrid vigor, similar to how mules acquire greater height and endurance than either parent.

Mules are highly intelligent. They tend to be curious by nature. A mule generally will not let the rider put it in harm's way.

Willis says mules are not stubborn as people tend to think but are smart, he says they will try to out maneuver you. He told the story of a young man who came to work for him on the farm. When the young man saw Willis was working with mules he laughed at them. The mules evidently took offense and the young man could not do anything with them. He couldn't even get them to take a bridle. On the young man's last day as the mules were coming into the barn, Willis was taking the tack equipment off from a one of the team and the young man tried to take it off from the other. As he reached around the mule it raked him right down the leg, Willis said he pretended not to notice but the lad just may have been repaid for laughing at them.