Draft Horse in the vineyard

The team, relaxing between plowsGuebwiller, Alsace
The horses are making a comeback in the vineyard after years of mechanization frenzy. While horses could have kept playing an important role during the high-tech glory years of the 1980s' for vineyards planted on steep slopes or narrow terraces, there had been a negative image of backwardness associated with horse-drawn plows I guess, at a time many vignerons embraced modern tools in the cellar and in the vineyard. The use of weedkillers between the rows also allowed to drop plowing. Now, plowing is back, and the image of the horse isn't passé anymore. Here and there, horses are replacing tractors in the vineyards, and this, not only in estates led by colorful vignerons that raise the eyebrows of conventional growers : some of the most prestigious estates like Romanée Conti are said to also use horses for their vineyard work even though they don't communicate about it.
Alsace, like many wine regions of the world, has vineyards on steep slopes and/or with rows too close from each other to allow a tractor. As taking care of a horse takes time and has a cost, some growers prefer to work with service companies like Francis Dopff's for the vineyards that can't be worked with a tractor.
Francis Dopff, whose farm is located in Orbey at an altitude of 950 meters in the Vosges mountains bordering the Alsace valley, can come with his van complete with a couple of horses inside plus several draft plows depending of the type of slope or soil he's going to work on.

On their way to the vineyardI joined Francis Dopff and Pierre-Jean near Guebwiller, the work of the day was on a steep vineyard up the slope overlooking the village, with the wooded cap at the top. It belongs to an estate which farms organic and with biodynamic principles : Domaine Dirler Cadé, based in Bergholz. Bergholz is a village sitting right near Guebwiller, it's the village that you can see in the background on one of these pictures.
Francis had parked his Toyota with the horse trailer at the back lower where the slope wasn't steep yet. That's also good, I guess, for the horse to experience the area, get a feel of the place through this small walk to the vineyard before doing the hard work (It doesn't seem to be hard at all for her_ it's a mare by the way). There's already a draft plow in place up there that they left the other day, so they just bring this other one, which is slightly different, just in case the soil needs this one too. Making a U-turn with the horseWhen I arrived near Guebwiller on my motorbike (from Strasbourg), the first horse I saw on his way to his work was Schlumberger's (picture on left), a winery whose big lettered sign can be seen on Guebwiller's slopes. I initially thought Francis was up there driving his horse on this tractor but he later explained me that this winery, which has a 140-hectare vineyard surface, has a permanent couple of horses to work on its vineyards. I came across this tractor with the horse while riding up on the dirst road but could park the bike on a stable spot to take a picture.
Let's rewind a bit and see how Francis came up to be doing this job as a living :
Originally, Francis lives in a farm further east in the Vosges mountains range, in an area covered with forests, not very far from the Rhine valley, but not in the immediate vicinity of the Alastian vineyards either. His farm sits in Orbey, a village somewhere in the Vosges east of Colmar, and there was for example some 44 kilometers to drive with the horses and the tools to come work here in Guebwiller. Francis Dopff happened to having been led to work gradually with horses. At the beginning he kept a couple of horses to haul timber in winter, after which he was asked by fellow farmers or lumbers to help recover timber in diffucult terrain. He soon had more work in this field than he could handle and he bought more horses and eventually gave up his other activity which was keeping a goat herd and making goat cheese and he decided to set up this draft-horse service company. Horse plow on the Alsace slopes He still has a few farm animals on his farm, but he makes his living with the draft horses now. Initially, he and his horses were working only on the deep forested slopes of the Vosges, until 12 years ago when he added this vineyard plowing by coincidence : As his area in the Vosges is blanketed with snow much of winter, he had to find timberyards and clients far from his farm in winter, and he happened to have one particular such works to do in the Villé valley which is north from here in the Vosges but at a lower altitude. To do these several days of timber moving, he stayed at his sister's place and the horses were kept for the nights at the farm of a former timber hauler who happened to be next door to the chief viticulturist of Zind-Humbrecht. Zind-Humbrecht had just turned organic and they had been thinking at the time to use horses for their vineyard tasks. The vineyard manager who could see each evening Francis bringing his horses back to the farm to rest after a workday was intrigued and asked him if he might accept to do some plowing for the winery. That's how all this second career started... Reaching the end of the rowZind-Humbrecht, after working for about 10 years with Francis' horses and service company, invested in their own draft horses and by the way their horse man there today is a young guy that Francis Dopff trained on the job. Zind-Humbrecht was his very first winery-client, and from then on by word of mouth, other growers came to him and he expanded his winery list.
The technique is of course very different from the timber hauling, and he learnt much from Charles Imber, a man who worked a long time at the Eco Musée d'Alsace, a reconstituted Alsatian village made with old country farms dismantled elesewhere in Alsace and rebuilt in the musée compound (see the official website), with many interesting things to see, even if the place smells too much the tourist trap for me. Whatever, Charles Imber whom he contacted, happened to have been very familiar with horse-draft plowing in the vineyard since the age of 14 and he literally taught him everything he knew on the subject. He lended him several of his own horse-drawn walking plows. There are so many model, you don't do this with a single plow type, itdepends of the slope, the condition and the humidity of the soil, the grass thickness and so on... Francis Dopff walking and guiding the plowThen, he looked here and there for people who still had such disused walking plows in the backyard of their farm and people were happy to help him put the job back in track. By word of mouth, he learnt from such or such grower that this or that person had a horse long time ago for his vineyard and might have some tools resting somewhere. All the while looking for other plows, he met interesting people and even potential customers, growers who discovered that they could make use of his service company for a particular vineyard of theirs. He remembers a widow who had kept the horse-drawn plows of her husband in her attic because she didn't want them to go to the scrap metal yard. She came several times to see how Francis worked to check this was for real before giving him her prized souvenirs...
He now has a collection of such walk-behind plows and he doesn't even know how many they are, he adds, laughing. He now understands better his needs and which designs are better suited for each type of work. He even helped design a plow at the tool manufacturer Boisselet : They grouped with several other wineries using draft horses for their vineyards so that they could order 4 pieces of the same-design walk plow, which helped bring down the cost. He is also having another plow in the plans, it will be made by another company, Damien Zussy located in Katzenthal in Alsace. While looking for his whereabouts, I found this other small innovative company, DMP Concept, which invented a machine for the palissage (watch the video demo). This region rocks, I tell you. Of course, I'm biased when I speak of Alsace because I graduated in Strasbourg and lived there a few years, but this region really rocks.
If that was not enough to justify my regional chauvinism, I must add that I have ancestors (mother's side) who lived in Betschdorf in northern Alsace near the German border in the 19th century (with a grand+++++ mother who didn't know a word of French)... Pause between two stretches Pierre-Jean who helps Francis Dopff here is a young trainee detached for a limited time from the CFPPA, a State agricultural school dealing with farm animals and horses which is located in Montmorot in the Jura. This school opens on different career opportunities but he has yet to decide which, even though it will probably be about horses.
Francis Dopff had also contacts with Equivinum, a Burgundy-based company where they could have plowshares made for the yellow draft plow that I saw in use that day (picture above). This draft plow is swiss-made and was originally designed to be pulled by a chain hoist, but it actually works well with horses. Equivinum made a set of plowshares for this tool.
Between the vintage plows that he could find here and there, and the exchanges he gets from the manufacturers of the region, there's apparently some sort of rebirth of an industry and of the know-how regarding the horse-drawn walk plows, and some innovations made possible by the technology could further improve the efficiency of this traditional tool. Just look at our modern bicycles, including the awsome recumbent bicycles and think that basically they all are a by-product of these basic bicycles of the early 20th century... The team - Rhine valley in the backgroundWhat is amazing here is that Jobin, this nice and quiet horse seemed to handle his job nicely and smoothly. Francis Dopff brought this mare to help her learn the job and alleviate the workload of his other, older horse, which stayed in the van that day (the window was open, don't worry). This other horse is his main battle horse for these plowing jobs and he wants to have others trained on pair so that he is not bearing disproportionately all the effort. Speaking of this other horse, Morny, Francis Dopff says that he can plow soils in the most difficult conditions but with the years passing he wants to spare him from the routine jobs and use him only when confronted with tasks too tough for the others. Francis Dopff has a pool of 15 horses to choose from in his farm, but he says that horses like humans have their taste and their specialization and he works mostly with Morny, the 22-year-old elder and powerful horse in the trailer, and Robine (seen on this story) and her younger sister which is 4 years old. The other horses are trained for timber hauling in difficult terrain in the Vosges forests.
Robine has been obeying beautifully all the orders that Francis uttered on a fatherly tone. She seemed to enjoy the numerous pauses, the wind, even the sound of the occasional tractor working further down in the vineyards. I'm not very knowledgeable in horses but this animal looked happy and in good spirits. Baby grafted vineAsked about his vignerons-clients, he says that he works roughly for 15 growers, with very different types of jobs and frequencies : it may be a winery calling him every three years bo remodel a terrace, or more regular vignerons who call him every year for several weeks of work. The tendency is more different growers, each with very precise tasks that they can't do with conventional machines. The growers who have a large need for his services end up one day or another to either buy a small caterpillar machine or to buy horses themselves, like Zind-Humbrecht did, or also Sclumberger. He has excellent relations by the way with these wineries and with their horse team. Schlumberger's horse master for example helped him at the beginning to make estimates for clients, something he was not familiar with, as he was mostly into timber hauling.
When he has several days of work in a row for a particular grower, or for two wineries close to each other, he sometimes sleeps at the vigneron's home or in one of their outbuildings. He says that it helps him get faster on the vineyard, it's better for the horse too, and he always gets these great wines with the samely-great home-made dinner in the evening without having to fear the breath checks on the road. This human part of his job is something he loves, the vignerons around here are friendly people and like to share the good life. I would love this job....
The main season for his vineyard plowings is autumn if the weather allows it, and spring, roughly from mid-april to mid-july. Said differently, there is a first group of plows to make between mid-october to march, plus another important tasks to do between april to mid-july. Pierre-Jean, walking ahead of RobinePierre-Jean can be seen walking in front of the horse here, but that's usually not necessary to have someone else on the job : Robine, the young mare on the picture is still learning the job even if she seems incredibly at ease with it and obeys gently every order. Francis Dopff speaks to his horse in Alsacian, a German-sounding dialect that people with knowledge in German like me understand a bit.
Speaking of his horse trailer, Francis Dopf says that it is big enough not only to contain the two horses but also the 5 walk plows that he brings routinely on his jobs : the soil condition, the slope, the grass change drastically, even on a same vineyard several months apart. For example these days the earth dried faster than usual for this season because of the wind, and in some instances the ground is so hardened that he has to resort to his high-powered other horse, the one who stayed in the trailer that day. You can see this paricular horse on some pictures of Francis Dopff's website, particularly the one at the bottom.
No machines could do that (picture on right) : Robine drops a few delicacies on the ground when it pleases her; the result of her grazing in the Vosges mountains will enrich the vineyard soil and make this place alive...
Another thing : Francis Dopff says that sometimes people say it must be very hard for the horse to do this draft-plow work, and he usually answers : "see, for a week you have seen several horses alternating in front of the plow, but that's always the same guy handling the wheel behind". He has a point, here, this is a very hard work to handle the plow, and he is alone at this place, while the horses are often rotated. The heat is the real enemy for the horses, in the middle of summer, with the insects, the horseflies. He usually doesn't work in the hot afternoons in summer to preserve his horses. This video shows the very first minutes after the team left the parked trailer van.
Robine, a 5-year-old mare is led to the vineyard where she'll have some plowing to do. Francis explains while pausing a minute that we head to a lieu dit or climat up there on the slope. the walk plow they climb with is a secondary plow that they brought just in case, they'll put a newer one behind the horse, this other one was already in the vineyard since the previous day.
See the ease with which the horse pulls the plow further on the video when the real action begins, it barely seems to notice there's something slowing her down in her back. Working with a horse, especially when it is being trained, asks for many pauses, which makes also the beauty of the job. The mare herself seems to enjoy these moments with the breeze and the view...Francis Dopff338A Blancrupt, 68370 Orbeyphone/fax : 03 89 71 26 83francis [dot] dopff [at] gmail [dot] comFrancis Dopff's website

Comments

[Iris]

once again a remarkable reportage, Bert, I communicated it immediately on facebook and twitter - it's a pity, that the Voges are so far from Lisson - it's just what we would need here - we tried ourselves, so I know all the stories about finding the tools and so on, but we were never successful in working with our horse on the steep hillsides and small terraces - it needs a real horseman, like Francis, to do so and we weren't...

[Steve L.]

Neat story!

[Brian Smith]

Do you have any resources for horse drawn vineyard equipment in the US?

[Mordelet]

For your next visit in Montlouis sur Loire, we will be pleased to present to you our horse, working in our vineyard.

[Rusty]

great article, thank you, I am evaluating converting to and using draft horses for vineyard management in Australia. I believe it will happen as I can see so may upsides, I just need to work through whether I can cover all viti operations using horses in a 1.5m row vineyard. The most challenging seems to be how I carry out spring and summer spraying. Vineyard is already biodynamic BUT I've got some significant equipment modifications ahead of me. I also know that Pontet Canet (BDX) have several Normandy breed horses working their vineyards, (1 horse/8 acres I am lead to believe). Anyway, great stuff and thank you once again, Rusty. PS My grandfather used Clydes many years ago, he has long since passed away, oh to draw from his experiences…I'm hoping its in my blood :)