Farm Team: Horsepower and Teamwork at the Iowa State Fair

[Jim Stuart] The Farm Team Competition at the fair, so you've seen the draft horses with their fancy show harnesses and clean fancy wagons. Well, this is, this is back to the farm. We'll have horses with their work clothes on and doing the kind of events that the horses would do back on the farm.

It's a draft horse, but it can be anything. It can be mules, it can be crossbreds. We're not picky about that here, but today you're going to see all draft horses. So your Percheron breed from France, your Belgians, Shires are here. Calmness is more than strength in our thing. They're known to be gentle giants, and, and that's what we're looking for— something that's calm and collected that'll stop when you say, “Whoa.”

We're going to start off with a carriage turnout class, and that would be for people who have a carriage business doing weddings and stuff, or hayrack rides, or that kind of thing. The antique machinery class is old farm equipment or construction equipment pulled by horses, and it's judged by just whatever the judge likes.

[Tony Garrett] I brought up a wagon for the antique class that's kind of unique, and it's for hauling wheat bundles out of the field. Yeah, during our antique class, everybody writes information about what they're pulling and the history behind it and what it is and what it was used for. And so the announcer goes through each and every one and announces it during the class.

[Brenda Coulson] It's been a family event. That was my youngest grandson, Corbin, and he's 8 years old. It was 57 years ago when I was 8. That was the first implement that my dad taught me how to ride on and drive. He liked it, but he said, “It was really slow, Grandma.” He wants to go a little faster.

[Jim] We have a feed team race, and we're gonna hook our horses to a sled, and we've got a couple bales of hay and 4 buckets with simulating feed buckets, and 2 teams are going to race against each other. And we limit it to a trot, but the judge will say, “Go.” They're going to go down through the course, put bales of hay on a pad. They have to have the bale of hay clear on the pad. And then they're going to pour feed in a bucket at the next station. You’ve got to have horses, not just go fast, but they have to stop and stand while you're picking up your hay and pouring your feed.

We'll do a log pull where we'll run a log around pylons. Not speed, it's more precision to get through the course.

We have a barnyard pull, we call it. It's like back when they had to move chicken houses and hog houses, they would move them to new ground. And a cultivator class. So we'll put down some Solo cups on the ground and got a cultivator. You gotta drive, straddle 'em and try not to knock down any cups.

[Brenda] I love the elderly and watch the smiles on their faces when they're thinking about when they used to do their farming by horses and stuff. So I just like the environment.