[BfloGuy]

I never realized that there were so many FReepers from the city. Because only city people could read this article and believe it. Now, I don’t doubt but what these nitwits in Wisconsin have embarked on their own little save-the-earth-use-oxen experiment, but let’s not get carried away by extrapolating that it’s a widespread trend.

[cripplecreek]

Thank you.

These aren’t people who farm to live. This guy sounds like he farms to be close to mother earth.

[Elendur]

i’m from the city, but i see clearly from your comments, (and mylife and Venturer), that this is BS.
...feeding an oxen corn for a year, must cost more, than diesel gas at planting and harvesting times.
(not even considering the amount of time, vet care, etc.)
i don’t doubt some do it for other reasons, but not financial. ...the idea that large numbers of commercial farmers are trading tractors for oxen, is clearly more fantasy from liberal global warming types.

[hoosierham]

The 80 acre farm supportinng a family was possible in this area up to the 1960s.The farmer had typically a dozen cows,about the same number of pigs,a couple dozen chickens,and raised corn,hay, and soybeans for sale and for his animals. His wife and children tended a large garden. They bought little more than flour ,sugar,salt, and a few other items at the grocery.The wife sewed their own clothes,including making many items from cotton print feed sacks.(No, not burlap...that is just for the monks!)The farmer had one tractor of 20+ drawbar horsepower and their one automobile was used for going to church on Sundays and the weekly Saturday trip to town ,but kept in the toolshed or shelter mostly. They had one or two AM radios and probably a black-and-white TV that was a truly major purchase.Every tool,appliance, and article of clothing was used until worn out,not just out of fashion.

The leisure most people take for granted didn't exist.

One important difference is those farmers didn't have to pay 7% sales tax and many other taxes were lower.Those farmers and their town cousins weren't yet forced to support the tens of millions on various federal and state welfare handouts nor huge foreign aid grants to the enemies of America.

Just payment of the current property taxes is a burden on most people these days.

If we really want simpler lives,we must reduce the government at all levels.

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

“I never realized that there were so many FReepers from the city. Because only city people could read this article and believe it.”

Amen to that!

Farmers will have to work harder? Most idiotic statement on the thread, obviously made by someone who has never plowed behind a mule, or even watched someone plow behind a mule. I have done some of one and a lot of the other.

It will take millions of healthy, able-bodied, mostly men until we can beef our women up to Russian peasant standard, who will plow from daylight to dark to put in a crop that will still not equal modern agriculture. And then the same number who will harvest the crop. And many in between those times to hoe the weeds out of the crop.

(Go look at the population and acres-farmed history of North Dakota for proof. Why was North Dakota’s population so much higher in the early 1900s than today? Horse-drawn agriculture required huge numbers of poorly paid physical laborers. More acreage is farmed for more bushels per acre today by just a handful of mechanized farmers.)

How could this oxen scheme possibly work? Aha! The ‘Rats favorite political party, the Kmer Rouge, worked it out in Cambodia! Take millions of people from the cities and make them work the fields. I am quite sure that you can find a lot of “intelligentsia” in Madison that admire the Kmer Rouge.

These are hobby farmers who are NOT going to force their children to work the fields dawn to dusk and will soon give this up. It’s hard to work behind a plow in old age, most can’t do it, even if willing. Without a LOT of children to carry on (because some will run away), this kind of farming dies out easily.

Oh, and what if all those 8 to 10 children do want to continue farming? They have to somehow get their own land, because this measly 40 to 80 acres won’t support them when they have their necessary children.

No doubt they will sell their hobby produce for a great deal of money in Madison and other elite enclaves, but only in comparison to the evil produce of modern farms. They won’t be able to compete in the general marketplace, because they won’t have enough product. Ever.

This is complete economic silliness by Utopian fools.

[Tammy8]

I know next to nothing about farms, always lived on cattle ranches but I didn’t believe the part about farmers turning to oxen. Sounds to me like one idiot couple decided to do this. I know what it takes to maintain oxen, mules, horses- whatever would replace the tractor and have some idea there is no way this would work in the real world.

As high as fuel and other costs are for ranchers now I don’t hear any of them planning on doing things the way they were in the 1800s on the ranch. It simply would not pay because production would fall so far.

For those of you that do believe this- I can help you buy a horse or two to commute to work and you won’t have to buy any more fuel. Any takers?