Feature for NH Union Leader special equine section, on the NH tradition of horse pulling

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Pulling their weight: Draft horses make
a show of strength
BYLINE: LEWELLYN HALLETT Special to the Sunday News Special to the
Sunday News
DATE: September 7, 2008
PUBLICATION: New Hampshire Sunday News (Manchester, NH)
SECTION: LEISURE
PAGE: G4
AT THE 41st annual Stratham Fair last month, almost 300 fans lined the rail
and filled the bleachers Saturday night to enjoy the horse pull. Here's a
glimpse of what fair-goers leave the midway and the food tents to see: A team
of three Belgian horses circles the arena, their withers taller than a man's
shoulders. They are majestic but their names are humble, like Tom, Bob, or
Shorty. The nearest horse pricks his ears at the stone boat loaded with blocks
weighing 300 pounds each. The teamster holds the reins to one side and a
crew of three "eveners" walk behind to carry the evener, a steel bar that
hitches the team to its load.
In front of the stone boat, the horses dance in place, massive shoulders and
hindquarters flexing. At the teamster's signal, their huge hooves step back
almost daintily to bring the evener into position over the boat's hook. The
eveners drop it down and jump clear.
The team plunges forward into their collars, hit the weight and dig in. The
teamster leans into the hip of the near horse and pushes with them. Their
heads come up and haunches stay low as they slide the heavy boat down the
pit.
By the last round, the stone boat will weigh more than 10,000 pounds. The
horses' feet churn through the sand until there is no more forward momentum
and the harness goes slack. The hitch is over. Applause breaks out.
John Hutton of Lee is organizer of the horse pull at the Stratham Fair, and he
serves as chief official and announcer. He sits at the mike in the officials'
booth, wearing a straw hat and calling each pull. In between hitches and
contestants, he explains the details of the competition.
Each team has five minutes and three hitches to move the load the required
distance in one continuous pull. The successful teams qualify for the next
heavier load. Weight is added until only one team can pull the distance, or the
team that pulls the heaviest load the farthest is named the winner. Teams are
classified by number of horses and their weight.
Many teams are family owned and represent generations of enthusiasts. Sue
and Allen Smith of Raymond and their daughter, Rhonda, competed at
Stratham, and theirs is a family of at least four generations of horse pullers.
Sue's earliest memories are of attending fairs with her father, Rodney Walker,
a top puller and founding member of the Eastern Drafthorse Association, the
largest such organization in the country with 1,100 members. Sue now serves
on the association's board of directors.
Her father and grandfather before him were in the logging business, using
horses to remove downed trees from the woods. Sue remembers her
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grandfather telling how one logger would say, "My horse pulled out a tree this
big" and another would reply, "Well my horse pulled out a tree that big."
Competitions were arranged to see whose horse was strongest, and this
competitiveness is still carried on in organized horse pulls.
Sue's husband, Allen, was a NASCAR fan when they married, and Sue wasn't
sure she could convert him, but now he's into horse pulling as much as she is.
Their daughter, Rhonda, 24, has a young horse of her own that she is
competing with this year. Sue observes that the daughters are often the ones
who carry on the family's involvement. Rhonda's boyfriend, Shad Fitzherbert,
has been drawn into the fun and drove the Smith's team at Stratham.
Having more family involved makes the work easier. Every day after their full-
time jobs, Sue and Allen work their five horses for three hours, or seven miles
pulling a light load of 500 to 800 pounds, increasing the weight as the season
progresses and the horses "harden." Sue says they've been blessed this year:
They're in the house eating supper by 9 p.m. instead of 11.
"It's a commitment you have to make to compete and finish in the money," she
said. "We compete for money and ribbons but mostly it's braggin' rights for
that day. Cause one day it's mine, next day someone else's. "
When Sue was a kid, her family would go to a fair to pull horses every
Thursday through Sunday, come home for a few days, and go again. Her
father kept 10 to 12 draft horses and did his own shoeing and other work.
Times have changed. Like most families that pull horses now, the Smiths work
full-time jobs, don't have time to shoe their own, and can't afford to keep as
many. But Sue says, "I can't imagine my life without it. Even with the high
cost, I couldn't give it up. We do without some other things so we can have the
horses."
There are a number of draft horse breeds used for pulling -- Belgians,
Percherons, Shires, Clydesdales, Suffolks -- but Belgians are most numerous
today.
Draft horses earn their keep at John Hutton's Coppal House Farm in Lee,
which is both a working farm and an "agri-tourism" business with wagon rides,
corn maze, and haunted house.
He says, "I use both tractors and horses, whichever is most efficient. For our
pumpkin harvest, the horses work best. They can learn to go forward a short
distance, stop and wait until we're loaded, go forward again. It's much easier
than getting in a tractor and starting it up to go 20 feet, then stopping and
getting out again." He thinks the use of farm horses is making a comeback,
especially as the cost of fuel rises.
In the Northeast, the horse-pull season starts in April in Syracuse, N.Y., and
culminates in mid-October at the Round Up, three days of pure horse-pulling
excitement. According to the Eastern Drafthorse Association Web site, this is
the most prestigious horse-pulling event in the country. New Hampshire will
host the Round Up this year at the Cheshire Fairgrounds in Swanzey, near
Keene, Oct. 17-19, and the best pullers will come from near and far. Check
www.easterndrafthorse.com for details.
Copyright, 2008, Union Leader Corp.
The information on this site is copyrighted and cannot be reused
without the permission of The Union Leader.
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