25 Years Ago
Late Winter/Early Spring 1978
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Spring 2003

(From the Spring 1978 Draft Horse Journal and general news sources of the period.)
Cover

The cover picture of that Journal shows Charley Orndorff, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, standing on a hillside looking over his band of registered Belgian brood mares. He was 81 years old at the time and still very active in mind, body and the draft horse trade. The Orndorff stable ran around 45 head at that time.

His two main helpers were granddaughter, Christina, and grandson, Corbly. Those apples did not fall far from the tree. Now, 25 years later, Christina and Corbly are still going full bore in the business of breeding outstanding Belgian horses. Christina is in her second term as director of the Belgian Draft Horse Corporation of America.

The photograph had appeared as the cover to a Roto-Graphic section of the Pittsburgh Press for August 14, 1977. I don’t remember how it was called to our attention, but it looked like a cover so I wrote them and obtained permission to use it. They did and they sent me a bill for $350. I thought ‘holy smoke’ that is a pile of cash for a picture. It knocked me right out of the apple tree. I could have bought a fairly good stud ram for $350. I’d never before paid anything close to that for a photograph. But I really liked the photo and the people involved so I paid the bill and resolved to be more careful in the future. Never regretted it for a minute–Charley was a great guy, very deserving of being on the cover, and we will reproduce it here for old time’s sake.

We were advertising Wendell Berry’s then new book, “The Unsettling of America,” published by the Sierra Club. It is still in print and deserves to be. Also a book called “Wanderings of a Country Boy” by John Hahn, a rancher friend from Nebraska. We peddled quite a few books those years but weren’t intent on running a big book store. Our guide rules were simple. We sold them only if (A) we knew the author personally and liked him or her, (B) had written it ourselves and needed to get the press run paid for, or (C) had read the book ourselves and liked it so much we felt compelled to share it with as many as possible. That is not the way to grow a big book department. Stocking them also took a lot of room.

We hadn’t as yet started calling the Spring issue the “Brood Mare issue” but we may as well have. Our featured story was on the great Belgian mare, Shirley Lee. That is a real Cinderella story and I included it in the Century Of Belgian Horses In America book several years later. She could have easily gone undiscovered.

She was foaled in 1930 down in Poweshiek County here in Iowa. Lewis Hansen, a horse buyer and shipper from Nevada, Iowa, found her. She was by then a 2 year old and had not even been registered. Hansen was bird-dogging for H. C. Horneman’s new stable at Kenfleur Farm. It is a long tale and I’m not about to retell it here other than to say she was one of the best show mares and brood mares that ever lived at Kenfleur. Certainly one of the greatest mares, in every respect, in the entire country. By 1944 the draft horse business was heading south fast. Kenfleur liquidated its Belgians. That fall she was transferred (probably gifted) along with several others to Purdue University. She had three more foals after that and I suspect she died at Purdue.

The big news in the spring of 1978 were the sales–and the sale reports. The draft horse trade was back from the brink and booming. There were three big breeder sales at that time; the Eastern States Sale in Columbus which was in its 16th year, the granddaddy of them all, the Indiana Sale in Indianapolis with its 30th annual sale, and the Tri-State Sale in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was in its 24th year. They were the barometers that set the tone for the trade.

The horses averaged $2,238 at Columbus, $2,347 at Indianapolis, and $2,146 at Cedar Rapids. The three sales combined moved about 580 horses to new homes–and they were going everywhere, not just trading in the Midwest. The horses at Columbus went to 22 states and three Canadian provinces; at Indianapolis they went to 11 states and two provinces and from Cedar Rapids they went to buyers in 15 states and Ontario. Those three well managed and regulated sales contributed greatly to the “return of the draft horse.”

In every case there was a show the day preceding the auction. Breeding horses were outselling geldings and the demand for mares was hot, to say the least. Mares were the hot item as more people more or less suddenly decided to become draft horse breeders. The “hitch-itch” was present and growing but had not yet become an epidemic. Perhaps the best yardstick to use to illustrate the mare market is found in the fact that NOT ONE of the forty head that failed to reach the $1,000 mark at Ohio was a mare. Not one.

As an Englishman would say “It was a jolly good time to be a draft horse breeder.” It was a market that was overwhelmingly Belgian with a growing Percheron presence. The other breeds were not shut out–they just didn’t show up. And they didn’t show up because their numbers were still struggling. The Percherons took heart when one of their kind topped the 25th Annual Ontario Sale and Pull, ironically started and sponsored by the Ontario Belgian Horse Association.

Another sale took root that spring. The late Howard Johnstone came up with his first Centennial Farm Spring Sale. He held it at the beautiful Kansas Free Fairgrounds in Topeka.

The Waverly Midwest Fall Sale here in Iowa run by Bill Dean attracted about 340 head of heavy horses and mules and had several tops including four horses over the $5,000 mark. The folks at Lake Odessa, Michigan, had their 3rd annual sale and sold some 200 head of horses with a $3,050 top.

Ezra Yoder reported that the 2nd Annual Draft Horse Sale at the Topeka, Indiana, Auction Mart attracted 130 head with a pair of two year old fillies bringing $7,200 for the pair and a pair of older mares bringing $7,000.

Yep, it was time to get the accordion player to belt out “Happy Days Are Here Again.” I’ll put some of the photos from the sale toppers on these pages. State and Regional Draft Horse Associations were also sprouting up everywhere. One thing leads to another and nothing succeeds quite like success–both old and trite sayings, but certainly true in the draft horse trade of 25 years ago.

We will let a page or so of photos from that issue do the rest of the talking.

Top selling stallion, either breed, at Indianapolis was this grey, Ostralien’s Arbitrator who sold at $4,650 to Ken Brown, Lenore, Manitoba, from Roman A. I. Yoder, Millersburg, Ohio.	This family consigned by Otis S. Otto, Tuscola, Illinois, consisting of May Farceur and Bell du Marais and her stud foal, brought a total of $10,000 from Everett Hildebrandt, Waverly, Iowa.	The champion Belgian stallion at the show and the high selling Belgian stud was this fellow, RKD Bruce, consigned by John M. McKeehan Farms, Greencastle, Indiana, to Ronald Riemer, Chilton, Wisconsin at $4,600. I believe both these horses proved to be good breeding horses.
The top selling mare at Cedar Rapids at $6,100 was also the reserve champion of the show. Van’s Nora Nola, a 3 year old, consigned by Freeman Detweiler Sr., Hazleton, Iowa, and selling to Lester Detweiler, Albany, Wisconsin. She outsold the grand champion by $1,300. So much for ribbons.	This pair of registered Percheron mares topped Al Fenske’s consignment from Blue Earth, Minnesota, at $5,525 apiece to Lynn MacVey, Rolfe, Iowa. I think he was still in FFA. What I want to know is where he got the money.	Waverly has always been a “team friendly” sale–more so than the breeder’s sales. Few, if anyone, were more successful at fitting pairs of geldings and selling them at Waverly then Dick Hennen, Shakopee, Minnesota. Here he is with a pair of Belgian geldings that he sold at $3,050 apiece at the 1978 sale to Ted Wiggins, Niles, Michigan.
There were no Shires in these auctions of 25 years ago but the breed was mounting a comeback with horses imported from England. This photo of the Shire mares, Greenwillow Moxie and Newton Dainty appeared in the half page ad from Sally and Dick Hurt, Ricshar Farm Shires, West Jefferson, Ohio. The copy read “The only Shire team to be shown at the 1977 Ohio State Fair.”	Here is a Belgian stallion and mare excavating dirt from under the Gibbs Farm Museum House in St. Paul, Minnesota. The horses were owned by George Rice of Meadowpond Farm, Hugo, Minnesota. It says “Photo courtesy of the St. Paul Dispatch, St. Paul, Minnesota. I think they charged us maybe ten bucks.

On to the national and world news where no attention at all was focused on the surging draft horse trade in North America. Not even in agriculture which was rapidly morphing into agribusiness. That was far more than a semantic or spelling change. Farming was becoming a different creature. So much so that grain and cotton farmers were between a rock and a hard place. The commodity markets were distressed.

The demand for bigger subsidies would not go away and finally, on March 29, 1978, President Carter gave in to the tractorcades and proposed higher commodity subsidies. His proposal also included paying corn and cotton producers to idle some of their crop land, and to pay wheat farmers a higher subsidy if they did not harvest part of their spring wheat crop. This was quite a different position than the Carter administration had taken a mere two weeks earlier. But this was an election year and the heat was being turned up on farm state congressmen.

Just a few years earlier secretary of agriculture Earl Butz had been calling for fence row to fence row planting. I guess he had massive exports in mind. We were going to feed the world and the world would be grateful and the American farmer would be a hero. Sure enough. Butz was considered a brilliant man by many, including himself. He was a very effective speaker. As for the chronic trouble spots of the world it reads like recycled news. Nicaragua, which Cal Coolidge had dispatched more marines to (twice) was still a boiling pot. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who had become president in 1967, was facing nothing but difficulties. Following the slaying of a prominent editor of a paper that was critical of him, there was rioting in the capital and a nationwide strike. His response was to prohibit radio and TV from even mentioning the strike. About seven months later he was ousted by the rebels and a couple months after that he was killed in an ambush. We broke diplomatic ties with the country but didn’t send any marines this time.

Instead we kind of left it to sort itself out. It was pretty messy. By late 1970 the Sandinistas (rebels, communists–you choose) were in charge of the government. In 1980 Mr. Carter lost his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan and U.S. policy took a 90 degree turn. And we became very involved, mostly in a clandestine way, but there was no question which side we were on.

Trouble, trouble everywhere, especially in the so called third world countries. The middle east was the middle east. There was plenty of terrorism to go around.

There was a major tanker disaster off the coast of Brittany dumping 100,000 gallons of crude oil into the sea, a lot of which drifted up to the Channel Islands where our Guernseys and Jerseys had originally come from.

Everything wasn’t terrible. Just most of what got into the newspapers. The U.S. finally opened its doors a bit wider to refugees from IndoChina where the Vietnam War had left so many folks out on a limb. Sweden became the first country to curb aerosol sprays to slow down the destruction of the ozone layer. And if you were a PAC 10 football fan the University of Washington Huskies had upset mighty Michigan in the Rose Bowl–27-20.

And, as always, there was the bizarre. On March 2, 1978, somebody stole the casket containing the earthly remains of Charlie Chaplin from its grave in Switzerland. The old comic actor had died on Christmas Day. If you know anything about the current whereabouts of Charlie Chaplin and his casket, please let us know here at DHJ. We will pass the information on to our chief of police and protect your privacy.

ALSO FROM THAT SPRING 1978 DRAFT HORSE JOURNAL

And finally– THE LITTLE WELSH STALLION THAT COULDN’T BUT DID.
From Robert W. McKinney Lewisville, Arkansas.

“Enclosed is a very rare photograph, and I hope in my case that it will be even more rare in the future. In order to have a picture like this you need: (1) To be a breeder of both Welsh ponies and Belgian horses and (2) you need a piece of land with terraces on it. Then, if you are as lucky as I am you may become a breeder of Belsh or Welgian Draft Ponies, whichever is your preference. Us Belsh Pony breeders are flexible that way.

The cross was accidental (I had previously considered it impossible) but since he is here I thought I might try to use him on some Welsh mares of drafty conformation. Who knows, we may get some good heavy draft pulling ponies out of those terraces yet? The colt’s Welsh grandsire is “Texas Bright Light” and his Belgian grandsire is “Flash du Marais”–a horse owned by Daniel W. Miller. I suppose one could say he is “well-bred.”

Since I am going to be very careful in the future (I cannot imagine anyone crossing these two breeds on purpose), I have thought it over and decided to call this horse a Welgian. Belsh sounds too much like Belch.

K. The “Welgian” colt owned by Robert W. McKinney, Lewisville, Arkansas. The young man on the leadstrap is Todd McGlendon.