Natural energy that yearns!

[Grelinette]

In fact it is a baler powered by a heat engine, all towed by a 4 horse team: it is therefore a hybrid agricultural tool!

I think they simply designed a small module equipped with a heat engine to activate a tool (here a baler) with a PTO.

The traction remains animal, but the PTO is thermal which is consistent since the PTO requires significant energy that horses cannot provide, in addition to the traction.

The idea is to be able to use with horses, tools normally designed industrially (therefore with a lower cost) to be towed by an agricultural thermal tractor.
There is a logic because horse energy remains used for traction, and only the tool uses thermal.

Knowing the phenomenal fuel consumption of agricultural equipment that does everything (travel + tool + air conditioning + radio + ...), there is an overall reduction in fossil fuel consumption, even if, as the detractors will point out, the overall yield is lower!

[chatelot16]

the amish did not invent anything ... around my house in charente they tell me what was happening a while ago ... the era of mower pulled by horses: a mower consumes little power so is easy to train by horse traction ... when we invented hay presses it was impossible to operate them by horse traction: so there were for some time horse hay presses and operated by 112 bernard W8 engines ... I was told that horses did not like to pull these noisy machines but they had to receive the number of lashes it takes to do it anyway

[Did67]

The traction remains animal, but the PTO is thermal which is consistent since the PTO requires significant energy that horses cannot provide, in addition to the traction.

The idea is to be able to use with horses, tools normally designed industrially (therefore with a lower cost) to be towed by an agricultural thermal tractor.
There is a logic because horse energy remains used for traction, and only the tool uses thermal.

From my point of view, it's incoherent and illogical: if you are already "ballading" a heat engine, you might as well use its energy to move forward. And it becomes a tractor.

And if you refuse this modernism, then it's outrageous to drive a fixed engine. No ?

But if I understood the Amish correctly, they refuse the "modernity" which consists in using machines driven by engines: trcateurs, cars ...

But apparently there are interpretations of their dogmas:

- some, like those we are talking about here, admit that horses can pull a fixed engine, which drives a "modern" press

- on another video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Qash0LqFs I saw a John Deere press whose power take-off was driven not by a fixed on-board engine, but whose energy was captured by wheels which transformed the movement into rotary movement; 4 horses were needed! [at the end, we even see a bobcat - I find this scandalous!]

I find this "compromise" between modernity (presses, consolidators, possibly engines ...) and refusal of the tractor or the car funny. I imagine the palaver between "old" and "modern" !!!

Well, I think it's called dogmas. Shouldn't we be looking for logic perhaps?

[Remundo]

the Amish rub shoulders with motorized techniques, while remaining a bit old-fashioned, and that gives comic tricks ...

indeed, a horse team can rub a bobcat ...

A recovered John Deere press is powered by a small motor, but traction is devolved to horses ...

Very pragmatically, a fully horse-drawn press (imagine a 20 hp hitch) is very delicate: it is a machine with high inertia which must not stop turning, or a horse cannot always pull, even only to make a U-turn ...

Anyway, my Father 50 years ago was spinning a Box F200 with a 20 HP "Petit Gris" [Massey Ferguson TEA20] ... and the little gray was hot in the face!.

On the video, it's not us ... but it looks like it!

It was borderline. Even 4 or 5 horses cannot cash a small press.

[Grelinette]

Not so simple the position of the Amish who want on the one hand to use animal energy, and on the other hand to remain in self-production (efficient) and autonomous.

The horse has its limits and as soon as a tool requires a very big energy to function (ex. To operate a baler which compresses the hay), apart from harnessing 15 horses to obtain this energy, there is for the moment no other solution than having an additional module that provides this necessary energy.

What we can criticize them for, the Amish, is only to want to store their hay in the form of compressed boots by seeking space, time, simplified logistics, ease of handling, etc ...

Ultimately, if they want to completely free themselves from fossil energy, they should collect their old hay in the form of a large haystack, transport it and store it in this form.

It is therefore a question of cursor placed between:

Consume a lot of fossil energy (and pollute a lot) and optimize the entire chain: packaging, transport, storage, handling

et

Reduce fossil fuel consumption as much as possible and optimize the chain as much as possible, knowing that certain links in the chain will remain at arm's length: handling for storing boots will not be done with a tractor equipped with a fork but manually, ditto to take out the hay.

In this logic, their choice is coherent because they reduce their consumption of fossil energy where they can (traction, displacement) while choosing to keep a certain efficiency.

Besides, if the future had the unpleasant surprise of a very high fuel price, most of the current farmers who are very heavily equipped with thermal equipment (and very heavily in debt) could probably no longer bear the costs, whereas the amishs could do it more!

[Ahmed]

Exactly, Grelinette, the Amish are brought to compromises, in a context where the general agricultural mechanics is conceived as a function of the thermal engines and not of horse traction.
Can we blame them for not worshiping Mammon*?

I no longer remember the reference, but there was a French farmer who had chosen to give up the tractor and who was very satisfied with it. He exploited with his horse a reduced surface and made an annual turnover to desperate a bank, but lived well, without being forced to race ahead of his over-equipped and over-indebted colleagues.

* "No man can serve two masters: for he will always hate one and love the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24). "(That's going to please Janic!)

[Did67]

I believe that the Amish are first and foremost a dogmatic rejection of "what is modern", not just fossil fuel or engines ...

The movement was founded in Alsace, at the end of the 17th century, and the "principles" (or dogma) of the rejection of "modernism" then posited by the founder as being the source of "perversions", the "devil". ..

But indeed, we see that it has evolved all the same. Certain forms of modernism having been integrated: pneumatic wheels, presses in what we are discussing here, and all the "modern tools" (tedders, rakes ...) that we see on the second video ...

I imagine that for some "modernists" in the movement, the heat engine is not a taboo, provided that the traction is equine.

For others, it seems to be, hence the motion "converter" [which turns the John Deere baler from the traction of the horses: 4 is enough, but it should be noted that the swath is very thin when of the demo!]

The horse then becomes a kind of "marker" of conformity to dogma ... even if most of the energy comes from the fossil ...

I saw a report where it appeared that the Amish being "organic" by "religion" I would say [not strictly speaking by "green conviction"], they become very "trendy" and feed the sores of American cities. .

[chatelot16]

the hay baler is not necessarily a waste of energy ... if we do not press the hay is larger, and requires more travel to transport it, requires a lot more work at the fork to unload it, ocupe more space in the barn: it is therefore necessary to build a larger one

the difference is that all the energy and work to handle the hay in bulk and distributed among all those who will do the work ... the energy of the hay baler is concentrated for a precise task: and it is the great freedom that the heat engine gives! can do great power when it is needed and don't eat hay when not in use

unlike horses! if you need a large number of horses for a specific spot you have to feed them the rest of the year even if you no longer need them

of course at the amish where there is a large number of horses for all transport it is easier to find the number of horses that it takes for an exceptional task

another remark on the treadmill: calculate a little the price of this kind of mechanics! infinitely more expensive than a gasoline engine of the same power

you are however a little on the way with your electric hybrid cart: you can make the horse walk on a good flat road to charge the battery then come back where there is a machine to run with the electricity of the battery

I think that despite the loss of energy in the battery the overall balance would not be worse than a treadmill with too much friction

and especially the occasional use of the electric cart as a power source does not cost anything more, no need to build a treadmill in addition

another advantage the electric cart can be fully charged at night with the EDF, recharging by a horse will only be exceptional, a simple possibility of autonomy in the event of EDF failure