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PhilG

Ay thought here on the overwhelming power of draft horses, mules and oxen to be used in many applications ?

DavidIAm

They're not very compact or efficient, and the regularity of their maintenance tasks is atrocious. On the other hand, they're self-replicating and powered by easily renewable energy - they even self-harvest it if given the time. They even output manure which can be used to digest methane.

Overall, I think they only make sense when the personal cost of the overhead is minimized, such as having large easily-accessible pasture land handy, and the power requirements at hand are small in volume. It doesn't take many solar panels or much of a water flow, or a very large fire under a steam boiler to generate more power than such animals can create.

As long as we have interstate highways and fossil fuels in adequate supply, the supply chains will keep running and it'll be easier and cheaper to maintain power equipment than it is to maintain livestock.

PhilG

Hi David,

you need to maybe do a little research on this i see :)

With a few basic steel tools you can really bridge the gap from raised bed hand work to multiple acre farming and production with very long term sustainability, even take a wagon into town. to me tractors are good for the heavy lifting but for the day to day harrowing, tilling and mowing its hard to beat horses. A couple of the implements I have seen on OS web sight may work for horse applications, i know horses aren't for everyone but if your into it the pay off is huge.

Matt_Maier

Actually, from a BTU perspective part of what OSE is trying to do is bring down the cost of a tractor until it's effectively got the benefits of a horse. You know, as long as you abstract the variables to a certain extent.

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