Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 7 · column 1 of 8 · from the scan, no model involved
By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rippahannwk 1N«t*b Staff Writer
“Get a horse!” ( The familiar shout that greeted the Model T Ford so many years ago is making a comeback. Horses and buggies may never reclaim the highways from Motor City but draft horses, descendants of the magnificent beasts that carried knights in shining armor into battle, have returned to Virginia farms.
Handsome Percherons that thundered across Camelot’s jousting fields, leggy Clydesdales recognized nationally and internationally as the symbol of the Budweiser Brewery, giant Shires with their feathred feet, solid Belgiums and chunky Suffolk Punches are cantering out of the pre-automotive past into a present once the solid domain of king tractor.
Tractor dealers aren’t going out of business under the advance of pounding hoofs. The gasoline engine is still the prime source of farm energy but teams of Percherons are replacing a John Deere here and an International there in helping the farmer plant and harvest.
Jackie Estes is in the forefront of the movement that’s hitching Old Bob back up to the plow. When she’s not sorting mail, Amissville’s postmaster is in the pasture across from Mills’ Store at Estes, bouncing around on a training sled behind Stinky and Kit, her two-year-old draft horse fillies.
Stalls in the Estes’ barn are double-sized, designed to give plenty of room to draft animals that top the scales at a ton or more. The fillies share the stable with Kate, the black Percheron mare that was Jackie’s first draft horse, Kate’s two-year-old gelding son Flapjack and another mare bought solely for breeding to one of the purebred draft stallions now standing the Piedmont area.
92.8%