The Long Riders’ Guild is the world’s first international association of equestrian explorers and long distance travellers.

With members in forty-six countries, every major equestrian explorer alive today belongs to the Guild, including Hadji Shamsuddin of Afghanistan, who recently rode a thousand miles through that war-zone, Jean-Louis Gouraud of France, who rode 3,000 miles from Paris to Moscow, Tim Cope of Australia, who rode 6,000 miles from Mongolia to Hungary, Claudia Gottet of Switzerland, who rode 8,000 miles from Arabia to the Alps, Adnan Azzam of Syria, who rode 10,000 miles from Madrid to Mecca, and Vladimir Fissenko of Russia, who rode 19,000 miles from Patagonia to Alaska.

Additionally The Long Riders’ Guild Press is the world’s premier source of equestrian exploration wisdom. The Guild’s Academic Foundation provides an open-source forum where scientists, poets, authors, and equestrian experts share their wisdom with the public. Every type of horse related knowledge is being investigated and published at this website.

The three-volume Encyclopaedia of Equestrian Exploration is the most comprehensive study of equestrian exploration and travel ever undertaken, and contains the collective wisdom of more than 400 Long Riders. The Horse Travel Handbook contains the absolute essence of the Encyclopaedia, is small enough to fit into a saddlebag, and is designed to help a traveller resolve any problem or deal with any emergency in the field.

Written by CuChullaine O’Reilly.

Previously:

• Pack Goats
• Our Right to be Outside: Three Mules
• Camel Trains
• Sail the World’s Largest Viking Ship from Europe to America
• Why Trains are the Best Aid to Thought
• Canoe & Kayak Sailing

As a result of the industrial revolution and the subsequent development of “big agriculture,” small-scale farming tools have become almost obsolete. In order to fulfill the demand created by a burgeoning community of small-scale farmers, Stone Barns Center has partnered with Barry Griffin, a design engineer, to develop farming equipment and tools. Called the Slow Tools Project, this partnership brings together leading engineers and farmers to design and build appropriately scaled tools that are lightweight, affordable and open-source.

They have identified 34 tools in need of development, beginning with a small electric tractor that will serve as the “motherboard” frame to which other tools can be attached. Other inventions to follow will be the solar-powered “Horse Tractor,” which could have a significant impact among cultures dependent on draft animals and where drought limits water availability, and a compressed-air grain harvester and processor.

In the summer of 2015, The Slow Tools Project will focus on the development of a Bed-Former/Shaper powered by a BCS walking tractor; a hug-wheel driven, walken behind electric tool carrier; a two-layer clear plastic blanket for field-scale soil solarizing; and a 30-inch wide stripper/header to harvest grain for poultry.

Slow Tools, Fast Change, Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture. Read more at the Farm Hack Blog.

Light-weight farm equipment is already available from the Amish in the USA. For example, I & J Manufacturing,  Pioneer Farm Equipment, and Heavy Horse Equipment manufacture farm equipment that can be drawn by horses, mules or garden tractors. For an overview of modern horse drawn equipment, check out this website.

More low-tech farming.

“An improvement made by Mr. P. K. Dederick, of Albany, N.Y., was a horse-hoisting machine that very materially reduced the labor of the horse in hoisting. Previous to this, the horse walked forward to hoist a full bucket, and was obliged to back to lower the empty bucket into the hold of the vessel. With most horses, this latter was harder work than hoisting the loaded bucket, while the Dederick machine increased the speed of unloading but little, it reduced the labor of the horse about one-half.”

Quoted from: “Coal handling machinery“, C.W.Hunt Company, 1893.

“A report to the Surgeon General on the transport of sick and wounded by pack animals” (1877).

“The horse-powered ferryboat, though patented in 1819, can trace its origin of design back to the time of the Romans. The Roman ox boat was an early war vessel propelled by a team of oxen. During the 1700’s, boats propelled by horses could be found on various rivers and canals of Europe. By the early 1800’s, horse powered boats could be found on Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. By the 1820’s, this mode of transportation had spread to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Great Lakes, and to several other rivers and lakes in the Northeast. This type of vessel was generally utilized for journeys of only a few miles.”

Found at Shipwreckworld. Previously: Trolleyboats.