Backyard Green Films is on the route home on the Great American Cattle Drive 2020, with another 2,000-odd miles to go. As it happened, we recorded this episode from the banks of the Mississippi River, only an hour from Pepin, Wisconsin. Some of you might know that spot as the original starting point for Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the beloved Little House books. Her adventure with a wagon pulled by oxen was much more difficult than ours should be, and any kind of of journey is a big idea to tackle. But pioneer girls had to be tough in those days, and apparently that characteristic still lives in the spirit of the American girl.
Our podcast today is with Andrew Van Ord, of Ox Hill Devon Farm in northwestern Pennsylvania. He breeds Milking Devons, makes equipment for oxen, and passes on the family skill set — driving (oxen) — right on into the next generation. Andrew was the last of our American Milking Devon Cattle Association interviews on this trip, and he helped us to get a new perspective on what it meant to be a teamster, the outside-the-standard-box uses for cattle in all kinds of pulling adventures, and where he thinks it might go in the future. And he practices what he preaches. When we got to the farm, Andrew’s daughter Lily — and her little heifer — were already up and working to pull a tire up and down the gravel road in front of the farmhouse, with a stubborn fortitude and a pioneer spirit that was hard to miss. Who says a girl (and a heifer) can’t play the same game as the big boys (steers)?
As we leave the banks of the Mississippi River, and drive our own little wagon westward, we are grateful for reminders of the past, the ability to live in the present, and the possibilities for the future. And the reminder that they can often live in one place, if we let them.
Westward, ho!
Links:
www.oxhilldevons.,ocom
www.milkingdevons.org