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 11 · column 1 of 4 · from the scan, no model involved
‘We plowed corn from 7:30 in
the morning ’till late at night...9
He considers himself lucky for all the good experiences. Keyser recalls the time at an early age when his younger brother, Lee, wasn’t so fortunate. Lee fell off a colt he was riding, got his foot caught in the stirrup and was dragged across a field. “We thought he was dead,” Keyser says, “until he got up, rubbed his head and started laughing.”
Keyser says he learned all he knows about horses from Tom Lee of Washington, who he worked for from age 12 to 20. “At first, (the work horses) were so big, Jim (Lee) had to help harness them, Keyser says, smiling.
Despite youth and a slender physique, Keyser learned to work with horses quickly. “We plowed com with horses from 7:30 in the morning ’till late at night, just stopping for lunch,” Keyser recalls proudly. By the time he was 16, “I’d take ’em by myself up in the Old Bently Mountains to drag logs,” he says.
Today, Keyser is considered by Nelson Lane, for whom he works, among the best in the county at teaching horses to work, then teaching people how to work them individually or as a team.
With Keyser as a farmhand, Lane didn’t hesitate about a year-and-a-half ago, when he wanted to purchase some Belgiums and train them to work. He just looked to Keyser for guidance, purchased four and a jack during a trip to Kentucky, then let Keyser take the reins.
“None were ready to work harness; they were green broke,” Keyser remembers.
Before he ever hitched a harness to the team of Mollie and Julie, though, Keyser says he did some “advance preparation.” He had to find out first if
86.7%