Vernou-sur-Brenne, Vouvray (Loire)
I spent one day recently with trainees and their teacher Philippe Chigard (pictured on right and left), they were learning the skill of handling a massive plow horse and holding tight the different walk plows used
for the vineyards.
Horse plowing is getting more and
more popular these days, it has everything for it, it is beautiful, an ancient craft where you feel one with your parcel and at peace with the universe, getting drop by drop the inner peace of these huge but sweet animals.
Of course the orgnic farming and especially the biodynamic farming help a lot in that direction, because with the latter there's the visionary understanding taught by Rudolf Steiner that it is utmost important that a farm, like a living organism has all its farm animals animating it because it echoes on the things you grow. Of course there's the image also which is fashionable nowadays but no matters what, this is a great trend and it's heartening to know it's growing. I spent a few hours years ago with another expert on draft-horse plowing, Francis Dopff, this was in Alsace and he was also training young people in the skill. Dopff was working for top biodynamic domaines in Alsace was also doing horse skidding in the Vosges, extracting logs in steep terrain with uneasy access for heavy machinery (his website).
I was surprised that among the 8 or 9 trainees in this master class, most were women. Walking plows behind a horse is indeed very physical but it doesn't deter young women from applying, very encouraging indeed, I was told that usually it's roughly 50 % men/women but this year saw a larger contingent of women applying. This course is part of the Amboise Wine School curriculum (Traction Animale) which includes draft-horse handling which includes walk plowing for organic farming as well as skidding logs in the woods and doing horse-drawn carts. Philippe Chigard (he is also a vigneron with his own tiny vineyard) who is teaching these skills at the wine school says that alas this will be the last year because the school direction decided to revamp the whole thing and will terminate the horse-plowing part in spite of the growing number of candidates for this program. But don't worry, he says, he'll keep teaching these skills one way or another, and if you're interested you can contact him through his Facebook page.
Philippe Chigard works for 10 different vignerons, he gets the help from an associate who joined him. They plan to add more surface but will have to hire if they do. This draft-horse plowing session took place at the Clos de la Meslerie near Vouvray, the small domaine (4 hectares, only Chenin) is managed organicly by Peter Hahn and his wife.
Peter Hahn is an American
who decided to change his life and settled in this quiet corner of the Loire in a beautiful mansion in the woods with the vineyards all around (more later on Peter Hahn, his domaine and his wines), they and their two children enjoy this beautiful scenery every day, a big change for Peter who lived in New York in his previous life.
Peter Hahn decided a few years ago to begin using a horse for his plowing, at least for a part of the surface, doing this on the whole surface being an option. Read Chris Kissack's piece on a previous plowing session here and the growing number of vignerons using horses. In this other interview, Peter says that his wife and children are active in the domaine, Juliette helps at the basket press and his son drives the tractor.
The training program started in october and ends up in late march, covering the aspects of draft horse work, plowing, log skidding and cart pulling. Walk plows present different levels of difficulty, some of the walk plows need less guiding than others, as you can see in the first part of this video : Pascal can even lift his hands from time to time, the plow behind the horse doing its job by itself. Pascal was probably the trainee with the most experience, he is a former lumberman and you feel he's totally at ease with the whole thing. Later in the video you can see Philippe giving a few tips to his students. The nice thing also with horse plowing is that the animals drop randomly their manure here and there, contributing naturally to the soil's life. The weather has been dry for a while but ir rained enough this winter and the undersoil is humid enough to make the horse plowing easy. In other seasons like near summer it's another story, a really dry soil makes it impossible to plow, sometimes even with tractors, you just risk breaking the blades.
Here Philippe Chigard helps attach the plow properly, i think this one is an inter-cep, meaning it plows with horizontal blades under the wires between the vines. Tractors also do this type of
plowing like here Didier Barrouillet on the vines of Clos Roche Blanche a few years ago, but it's surprising to see the same mechanism on a horse plow, with the evading blade that retracts when it touches the rootstock.
This model is actually a prototype made by Jourdant who is according to Philippe the best maker for these horse-drawn tools today. Jourdant is located in Dun-le-Poëlier in the Berry, on the southern flank of the Loire Valley. You may know another walk plow maker, Equivinum, a company that was set up by Oronce de Beler, a multi-talented man who now makes wine in Burgundy and raises rare-breed pigs for meat.
Here you can see how old these vines are, and while certainly more fragile than younger vines, old vines offer a clear advantage : old vines were planted and raised before tha advent of herbicides, in a time when every farmer really worked in his fields and vineyards and didn't rely on shortcuts and chemicals (the weedkillers and industrial fertilizers became mainstream in the 1960s' or 1970s' I would say). For this reason these vines grew vertical roots searching for nutrients, while the "modern" vines were keeping surface roots (unharmed by plows because no more plowing) basically waiting for their liquid fertilizer-dope.
Here Pascal is enjoying another vineyard job : burning the heap of canes along the parcel after the pruning. Beautiful bonfire, makes its part in the whole picture, and as usually the pruning season may be really cold between december and march (and humid, the Loire is usually damp and wet), this helps the vineyard worker make a break and get warm.
Here is another type of plow, the décavaillonneuse, this can also be done by a tractor but behind a horse that requires more energy and command on the horse. A décavaillonneuse makes a deep cut along the row and pushinh the clods with the weeds in the middle of the row. It's pretty tricky because the horse mighty pull can take away an old vine if the tip of the blade rips on the wrong side. Chloe was quite good at it, with this horse that would stop stubbornly for no reason. Good old horse, I think I heard it was 19, not the oldest in the group (20) but still old enough to decide it needed rest all along the rows... The tricky thing with this plow is you have to hold it firmly in spite of the irregular pull and keep the plow right enough but not too much, it's very physical and muscular type of job, I'm pretty sure the horse has it easy compared to what the walker has to endure.
Here you can see how difficult it is, especially with Orphée, a capricious horse that likes to stop for no reason and takes time to obey when told to go on. Philippe walks behind Chloé to help her handle the plow and the pull the right way. I said the work seemed very easy for the horses but when you looked closer they were sweating, maybe not as easy as it looks... At the end of the row each of them would feast on the fresh grass.
Here in the middle of this video, Emily (in white) handles another décavaillonneuse, the horse is pulling willfully but this is indeed a challenging
type of plow where you have to check every rootstock. Emily is the wife of Vincent Roussely, a 4th-generation vigneron at Clos Roussely, with a 8-hectare surface, all farmed organic, it is located in Angé in the Loir-et-Cher, east of Saint-Aignan. Clos Roussely is part of Les Vins du Coin, a natural-wine group in the cher Valley (they hold a tasting every late january).
Emily told me that they were thinking about having a draft horse themselves for part of the vineyard work.
If i remember she said they had already donkeys for the children, and the draft horse would be a continuation in that regard. The children were now older and she could have time to take care of this part of the farm work.
What a nice setting for a picnic. Of course, the weather helped, the temperature went up to 27 C (80 F) that afternoon (the following days were much cooler). Even picnic is a good time to learn, the trainees ask many questions. Some of them enrolled this program for the log-skidding part or the carriage-pulling harnessed horse teams part but turn out loving this walk-plow part, and Philippe saw more than once trainees change direction later, sometimes realizing that there were more opportunities to work plowing vineyards for vignerons than doing log skidding.
Part of what Philippe told his trainees during the lunch was about the importance of knowing what you do, it's not just a question of manning the walk plow and handling the horse into obeying, but you have to know the vineyard and think about the
consequences for the vines. These trainees don't necessarily know how to prune for example (an ideal way to learn how a vine feels and behaves), so in the future if they just work for other vignerons they need to have some knowledge about the particularities encountered in the different parcels they'll have to work with. The best would be to recognize at first glance what the vineyard needs and use the plows in accordance. Usually the parcels that are horse plowed are usually older, so it's one more reason to be careful.
Speaking of the plows, Philippe Chigard owns a few of them, either new (often copies of old models found in a farmer's barn) or old ones. He renews his stock of plows, as he routinely gives one to the trainee that plans to begin working with horses in the vineyard. He'll give one for example to Philippe (the trainee) who will work in the Côte Rôtie (Rhône).
This was lunch time for the horses too, this grass is so good, I guess in their stable much of the winter they get their dry hay and every plowing session is an opportunity to get some fresh grass, in areas devoid of any chemical sprayings. I find fascinating watching a ruminant feeding and chewing grass, such a big animal delighted with simple grass.
After a few hours the work seemed to advance on the parcel, although it would have certainly been faster if two experienced workers had been manning the plows instead of trainees, but this is part of the job, training will bring more people in the trade, which will be beneficial for everybody. They would finish the parcel the following day.
Phiippe says that he's been working for 7 years here and over the years he's seen the vineyard improve, but there's still a vigor issue, the vines could yield more grapes in spite of their age and he'll change the strategy with Peter : Peter has a few bee hives behind the hedge, they'll sow Faassenii, a flower highly appreciated by bees which on top of that is a great natural fertilizer for the soil, this should help the vine get more generous. In the beginning Peter had sowed Fétuque Ovine, a weed that helps detoxify the soils, but in the long term this vigorous weed was becoming a heavy competitor with the vine and making its life difficult, so they had plow deep in order to get rid of it. He says there's no recipe, you have to listen to the needs of the vines and adapt your strategy along them.
Philippe here (not the teacher but another trainee) comes from the Beaujolais and will work in the Rhône from what I remember, he has a clear project on what he wants to do, was very easygoing. He plans to go work with a horse on the steep slopes of Condrieu and Côte Rôtie, and Philippe Chigard will give him a plow (if in the next months yopu spot someone walking a plow behind a horse over there that could well be him). Here he helps Emily at the beginning of a row. At one point Philippe Chigard showed me (on this video) how they use two horses in line to pull plows that need more traction (see this video), very ingenious, they got the inspiration from old pictures.
Here on this picture you can see how they proceed, Anne-Sophie does the laterals first, plowing along the vines with the décavaillonneuse, then they'll do the inter-cep under the wires and lastly they'll scratch the middle of the row (watch Tessie below). Hope I don't misread the process.
Here Tessie is walking the plow for the middle of the row, an excercise less tricky than when you pass close to the vines (where you risk taking off one of them) but this is nonetheless also very physical and tensed, you have to keep the blades indide the earth and in the middle. Notice how this horse is easy, pulls with enthusiasm and barely stops once.
Nouche is Philippe's dog, was very discreet all along the day, doing his business in the woods nearby and coming back along the vineyards to rest and watch the company. Never heard it bark, a gem of a dog. I understand Philippe Chigard brings it all the time in his plowing sessions. Good dog, obvious at first glance.
Part of the job is also at the end of the work to take off the harness and all the equipment from the horse, this is a routine that means a lot for the horse too, it knows there'll be some good grains to eat in a bucket.
There were different types of harness by the way, this one is traditional, leather made but they also has modern, all-metal ones that were as efficient and comfortable for the horse. Philippe says that the old ones need regular homework with wax and with all he has to do already around the horses (including visits to the veterninary) he can spare on the waxing time with the new models.
This one looked very happy and compliant as Pascal was brushing its sides, I understand that it's one of the things horses prefer, some sort of massage for them, look how it seems to be waiting for the brush. A day of hard labor is immediately forgotten in these circumstances. These small things are important when you manage horses, I can't but remember this visit at Olivier Cousin and how it was fascinating to watch him exchange with his horses.
Wonderful story and videos! Very educational!
Posted by: Tom Casagrande | March 24, 2019 at 09:26 PM