Drafting his team: W.Va. farmer tends his land with help from working horses

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. — It’s Monday morning and there are finally blue skies at Green Gate Farm.

Along with most of the Tri-State, the farm has been putting up with downpour showers. A farm needs rain, but when you have horses in the barn — they also need exercise.

Inside Lars Prillaman’s barn at Green Gate Farm, off Persimmon Lane in Shepherdstown, are three Percheron mares itching to get out and see some sunshine and maybe do a little pulling.

The draft horses are more than just pets — they’re working horses and are an intricate part of the operation at Green Gate Farm that only uses real horse power to till and maintain their fields.

In the barn, there are four hooks with names — Jenny, Tulip, May and also Joshua, a Morgan who doesn’t plow, along with their harnesses. It had been raining for such a long time that Prillaman decided that it was too wet for any plowing, instead they could use time to exercise. That morning Jenny and Tulip were up first, first harnessed as a team and then hitched to a tool that helps them with exercise — a large tractor tire, a pallet and a paver stone.

“It’s pretty heavy and creates some drag,” he said. “It’s like CrossFit for horses.”

Hitching up to horses

With his relationship with the horses, Prillaman can tell if it’s a little heavy that day for the horses and will drop the stone or maybe the pallet. The exercise keeps the horses healthy and willing to work. However, with a couple of acres of the roughly 20-acre farm dedicated to the garden, he promises that in their lifetime the mares were probably made to work much harder than he makes them work at his farm.

“We give them lots of breaks. I’m perhaps easier on them than maybe more experienced teamsters are on them,” he said. “I want it to be a way that everybody enjoys doing it —horses included. Some folks say a single horse can plow an acre in a day, but that’s in good plowing shape, it’s about body condition, too. We don’t plow that much at one given time. We only have about two acres of garden space, and that’s not growing produce at once.”

Prillaman became interested in agricultural after being an apprentice at Smith Meadows in Berryville, Va., with owner, Forrest Pritchard. Although Prillaman joked that he “wasn’t his most stellar apprentice,” it really started the first sparks of his interest in farming.

In April 2010, Prillaman purchased Green Gate Farm, taking another year to restore it to “livable conditions.” He started first in 2012 with raising broiler chickens, but after an intruder wiped out a lot of his chickens, he stopped. He met his girlfriend, Leslie Randall, in 2013, and they started to produce the CSA, or community-supported agriculture, at the farm. They then switched to hogs, starting with four; today they have 30. He said they dabbled into raising sheep, but realized he didn’t have the infrastructure set up yet, but still has two for the kids who come for tours at the farm.

The newest addition to the farm is a 100-foot-long high tunnel that has about 700 bed feet of produce. Prillaman said Randall oversees that aspect of the farm, while he tends mainly to livestock and his horses.

Prillaman is so passionate about using draft horses that he hasn’t used a tractor on his land since he and Randall used one in the spring of 2015. That June they purchased May, their first horse. May was “the horse that could do the job I wanted to do and was in the right price range.”

“We had done all the main garden work with our tractor. So we didn’t have quantities of garden work for her until the fall when we really closed out fields, and that was really good work for her to do. Really since then — we really haven’t used a tractor for any of the major farm work since then, any of plowing, the harrowing, the discing, getting seed beds ready and stuff. There are still some chores that we do with the horses. There are some pieces of equipment that I don’t have set up yet to use with the horses, so I still use a tractor with that.”

He said he was “sort of gifted” Tulip who started out west before making her way to the East Coast. She originally was a riding horse, but said because of their newest horse, Jenny, she’s become good at plowing.

Jenny was purchased before Christmas from an Amish farm near New Oxford, Pa., and he said “she’s willing and patient.”

“I’m a new teamster. I didn’t grow up doing this. I’m learning how to do this,” he said.

So having a horse like Jenny has been a blessing.

“She’s calm no matter what I’m asking her to do especially when I have her and Tulip together. It sort of helps everyone stay calm,” he said.

And with Tulip, who is new to being worked, he’s had a few scary moments with her as a runaway.

“I’ve had older teamsters tease me saying you’re not driving horses until you’ve had a runaway,” he said with a laugh, noting that Tulip has bolted twice.

But he credited Jenny for helping guide Tulip.

“Since Jenny got here, she’s really teaching her now, I can’t claim any of that,” he said.

Horsepower for CSA

At Green Gate Farm, they offer two CSA programs.

At the beginning of the year until April, Prillaman said customers pay a lump sum up until the beginning of the season, usually around May. There are two shares, he said, a full share costs $670, which includes eight to 12 items a week, or a half share costs $425, and includes six to nine items weekly.

During the spring the farm offers spinach, arugula, lettuces, chard, kale, collards, radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, peas, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, onions, and fresh herbs. During the summer and fall there will be tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, lettuce, chard, kale, collards, spinach, potatoes, melons, winter squash, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, and fresh herbs.

This year, the CSA is already capped, but they also offer a Market Debit Program where members pay a lump sum and then go to the Charles Town (W.Va.) Farmers Market at 100 S. Samuel St., from 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays or the Shepherdstown Farmers Market, off South King Street, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays. There members purchase what they want and it’s subtracted from the debit.

Building a relationship

Prillaman said he’s still learning along with his horses.

“While I’m learning how to do this, Jenny’s done it all. May’s done it all and Tulip’s just learning. I’m kind of getting the best of both worlds as a teamster learning, I have a horse that as much as one can trust. And I know that she is steady in about any situation that I’m going to ask,” he said. “And Tulip’s got as much mischief in her that I have to learn how to deal with a horse properly that isn’t confident in herself or me yet. That takes some time. It’s been an exercise in patience that I don’t come by honestly. So I’ve had to learn to develop patience and I don’t naturally have that virtue.”

This fall, Prillaman has bigger plans as he has leased 12 acres from a neighbor and wants to grow his own hog feed. But, he said, he’ll go slow with the horse, doing only a couple acres at a time.

Compared to using a tractor, Prillaman said it takes about the same time.

“On a task, it doesn’t take extra time than it would a tractor,” he said. “The extra time is really just harnessing, checking out their feet and that they’re clean and comfortable.”

His horses aren’t shoed because of the work they do, but they do get a regular visit from the farrier to make sure the hooves are in good condition. As for feeding, he tends to feed them beet pulp because it’s high and fiber and mixes in some sweet grains. It’s been good for Tulip who is a healthy but tends to slim down saying that she’s “a hard keeper” because of that.

However, Prillaman said “she was worth it, I’ll tell you that.”

And, he said, he’s seen how Tulip — who he said is the queen of the barn — along with him has learned.

“After we’ve done some work, she has a different stance. Not a worn out stance, but she holds her head a little higher. Maybe I’m imagining that. But she’s learning something every time we go out and she’s almost a completely different horse than she arrived here. She’s bossier in some ways, though,” he said with a laugh.

When it comes to using draft horses, Prillaman said there’s “no income to gained because we’re using them to power the farm, but we are gaining marketability because people are interested.”

Instead, it’s about being out in the horses in the field.

“It’s exciting for me. I love the relationships I’ve built with them, I’m building with them. I feel like it has a been a real great way to get kids connected with agricultural. Kids love tractors. I did too and I do as well. When you’re out there, it’s quieter. On our scale, it is economic. I feel like the way that we’re doing it — and his isn’t a slight to people who don’t want to work with horses — but I feel like the way we’re stewarding the land, using the land. These girls generate all the fertilizer for all the food they eat. And that’s a cycle. The manure gets compost and then gets spread on the field and the soil becomes healthier and healthier.”

And, he said, people are willing to pay a little extra because they know where their food is coming.

“I feel that more and more people are figuring out that our food system is broken and are more and more interested in finding local and responsible farmers who are growing actual food,” he said. “And I get the sense that more and more people are willing to pay what it actually costs to grow food.”

Want to know more?

Green Gate Farm is at 1665 Persimmon Lane, Shepherdstown, W.Va.

Find Green Gate Farm at https://greengatefarmwv.com/, on Facebook at /www.facebook.com/GreenGateFarmWV/ or follow on Instagram @greengatefarmwv