Sharing knowledge and support so future generations can choose to work with draft animals in order to fuel livelihoods, promote land stewardship, and grow community.

OUR SHARED PURPOSE

We are draft animal practitioners of all ages, teaming up to share support, resources, and learning opportunities for everyone interested in the timeless traditions of training and working with draft animals. Founded in 2011, we are preserving wisdom and advancing new solutions to caring for the land, producing food, enlivening communities, and earning a living. 

Together, we can create the gentle path to a more human, natural, animal-powered world.

A working community of  people and animals.

OUR STORY

Timeless ways still work

WHY DRAFT POWER?

APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY

Live power is both applicable and viable  today.  Be it through draft horses delivering broadband infrastructure to rural areas, agritourism keeping small farms viable, or oxen providing both power and fertilizer to CSAs, working animals are still a  feature of our  working landscapes. 

ECOLOGICAL CONCERNS

Animals are a applicable source of power for human beings. Although, unlike many common sources of power, consume annual and perennial plants and therefore are naturally solar powered engines. A well oiled relationship between human and beast can provide many if not all the ability of a small tractor.

QUALITY OF LIFE

Working with draft animals offers the opportunity to truly be part of a team developing a relationship built on trust and mutual respect unlike any other.  Humans have cultivated these relationships with horses, oxen, and dogs for thousands of years, and they still offer satisfaction and joy to modern teamsters.

SCALE

Live power is both applicable and viable  today.  Be it through draft horses delivering broadband infrastructure to rural areas, agritourism keeping small farms viable, or oxen providing both power and fertilizer to CSAs, working animals are still a  feature of our  working landscapes. 

ENGENDERS COMMUNITY

Working animals and animal husbandry as a whole is a craft that books will only take you so far. Many of the old timers would elaborate or suggest that it is in fact an art, impossible to quantify nor value. This makes the knowledge of working animals simple and plain a shared knowledge and by definition word of mouth. Or in this case word to leather-in-hand.

ACCESSIBILITY

Draft animals, especially cattle and donkeys, can  provide a lower barrier to entry for reducing human labor and increasing productivity  in places where motorized equipment is unfeasible or unavailable. 

Our Board

We are an incredible group of volunteers. Above and beyond our daily work with draft animals, managing farms, livestock, and forests; board members put thousands of hours into organizing, educating, and building a community around animal power and sustainable land use. Meet us here. . .

John Smolinsky

  • he/him), President, Finance and Fundraising Committee Co-Chair, ebforestryservices@gmail.com, Cabot, VT

    John was introduced to working animals in 2010 when he started at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, VT. He went on to intern with Carl B. Russell, 35-year horse logger in Bethel, VT. Following his internship, John started his own small logging business using a Belgian draft horse. Earthbound Forest Services focuses on low volume, high frequency harvest within the parameters of a silvicultural management plan. John focuses on putting the ecological integrity of the forest first by using his horse’s special draft capability within a harvest. The goal is to work with landowners so that they can understand how harvests provide long-term health and strength to the forest’s economic engine within a healthy and strong ecosystem.

Ivy Pagliari

  • Ivy Pagliari (she/her), Secretary, Hitchpointfarm@gmail.com, Walden, VT

    Ivy began her draft animal journey in 2008 with a bull calf given to her by the farm she was working on and the help of the internet.  From 2016-2020 she worked as the teamster for Tillers International assisting with their draft horse and ox classes as well as growing small grains and producing hay with live power.  In 2020 she returned to Walden, Vermont with her team of Shorthorn oxen where they help in the garden, make hay, and pull wood.  Ivy enjoys all things draft including preserving techniques and equipment for working animals, developing the capacity to do as much as possible with draft animals in her life, and supporting others on their live power journey.    

Ian McAfee Snider

Emily Brown

  • Emily Brown (she/her), emilymdeyoung@gmail.com, Boylston, NY

    Emily is excited to join the Draft Animal Power Network Board of Directors this year! Emily has already been working alongside the DAPNet board of directors and has been instrumental in the planning, management, and execution of our organization's annual field days. She has worked this year as a coordinator for our forestry and woodlot intensives and she has been attending our weekly meetings for event planning. Emily grew up on her family's farm where they raised grass fed Herefords, it's here where her love for agriculture, animal husbandry, and the outdoors was fostered. Emily attended Paul Smith's College to study in their forestry department and found herself spending a lot of time down at the horse barn and gardens. After taking a course in draft horse management, with Teaching Teamster Bob, Emily became infatuated with working draft horses. She was hired-on to work as a paid barn hand, sleigh and wagon ride driver, and continued to learn more about utilizing draft animal power in farm and forest settings. Upon Bob retiring from the college, Emily was asked to work as an Assistant Barn Manager, alongside Sara Dougherty. Emily was a critical component in keeping the draft work on campus alive! Since graduating with her undergraduate degree, Emily has gone on to manage log yards, purchase a small homestead, and has been making handmade soap using the lard from her herd of Kunekune pigs. Emily has a background in horseback riding, draft animal forestry and farming, as well as woodlot management.

Maggie Smith

  • (she/her), Vice President, Communications Committee Chair, margaretsmithlonglake@gmail.com, Ithaca NY

    Maggie grew up in a near-total absence of horses or farming, in the middle of the Adirondack Park in New York. In high school, exposure to Essex Farm planted a draft-power seed in her heart, and experiences in college sold her on organic agriculture. In spending seasons at Northland Sheep Dairy and Natural Roots CSA, she saw how the two things could be integrated and there was pretty much no turning back. Maggie currently lives in Trumansburg, New York, where she is in her second year of independent part-time farming, growing edible dry beans on borrowed land with the assistance of borrowed horses. She is the proud co-owner of an awesome yearling draft filly that she's training up for her future team. DAPNet has been invaluable to her so far and she hopes to be able to give back to this fabulous organization going forward!

Daphné Rose Courtès

  • Daphné Rose Courtès (she/her), Moderator, Events Committee Co-Chair, daphnerosecourtes@gmail.com St-Camille, CA

    Daphné was born and raised in Paris and she started riding horses at a very young age. After moving to Quebec, she did a three year program in growing organic fruits and this is how she met Paul Chaperon and his family during an internship. He became her mentor and gave her the opportunity to use horses everywhere on a farm. From doing loose hay, logging, seeding, plowing and much more, it revealed her passion for working horses. She started her own small-scale logging business after buying one of her mentor’s horses, Fred. Using a single horse, the goal of her new project is to harvest wood in an ecological and thoughtful way.

Cindy Nickerson

Tianna Kennedy

  • Tianna Kennedy (she/they), Treasurer and Finance and Fundraising Committee Co-Chair, tianna.kennedy@gmail.com, Worcester, NY

    Tianna sits on the board of Draft Animal-Power Network as treasurer. She spends most of her time as Executive Director of the newly minted Catskills Agrarian Alliance and co-owner/operator of Star Route Farm, a diversified veggie and small grain farm in the Catskills. She also manages THE 607 CSA, an 750+ person multi-farm CSA project supporting 40 farm and food businesses in central NY, delivering to the Catskills, Hudson Valley, and the five boroughs. In 2015, along with her farm and CSA, she co-founded the Greater Catskills Chapter of the National Young Farmers’ Coalition, Bushel Collective, and the Schooner Apollonia, a Hudson Valley Sail Freight venture.  She is still involved with all of those projects in advisory roles. In 2022, Tianna was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for her service to her community by then Rep. Antonio Delgado. Her newest endeavor is Delaware Phoenix Distillery, a Draft-Power NY farm  distillery growing botanicals and producing absinthe in partnership with Ryan Jahn.

Raymond Ramsey

  • Raymond Ramsey (he/him), Events Committee Co-Chair, ray@sanbornmills.org, Pittsfield, NH

    Ray is honored to be a part of this organization. He grew up on a 180 acre family farm in Indiana where his family grew grains, hay, and livestock. He also worked at several dairy farms in the community. After serving in the Marine Corps he moved to New England and settled in Pittsfield, NH 22 years ago where he lives with his wife and two children on a small homestead. He is the Farm Manager at Sanborn Mills Farm where they grow vegetables, livestock, and grains using oxen and horse power.  

Ben Retberg

  • Ben Retberg (he/him). Newsletter Coordinator, ben.retberg49@gmail.com, Penobscot, ME

    Ben grew up working with livestock on his family's small-scale diversified farm in Maine.  A love of animals combined with a desire to steward land ecologically drew him to draft animal power, which led him to Sterling College. There, he was introduced to draft horses and oxen by Nick Hammond and Ivy Pagliari. He finds the nuance and pace of live power deeply rewarding, so he left school to pursue it further. After apprenticing at North Branch Farm, a mixed power nursery in Maine, he returned to his family's farm with a team of Belgians. Now farming full-time, Ben works with the Belgians to harvest firewood, cultivate a small market garden, manage pasture, and make hay for the dairy. He is excited and humbled by the opportunity to work with the DAPNet crew to help spread the culture and craft, both through engaging more people with it and exploring ways of making draft power financially viable. 

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

CARL RUSSELL

February 1st, 1960 — June 9th 2022

It's with heavy hearts and somber minds that we announce the great loss of our co-founder and member Carl Russell. He started this organization with his wife, Lisa McCrory in Bethel, Vermont when they created the event, the Northeast Animal-Power Field Days. Carl devoted his life to the earth and to living power, his ecological stewardship was unmatched and has inspired many. If you have been to a forestry demonstration at a Draft Animal-Power Field Days, you have probably heard Carl speak. He was a natural teacher and shared his knowledge with purposeful and eloquent words. We know Carl was very proud of the network of teamsters that DAPNet has become and all of our volunteers are committed to continuing his vision forward.