Winning several red ribbons in a friendly farming competition keeps a Calgary area acreage owner coming back to the Bar U Ranch for more.
He just brings a new team of horses.
Dwight Beard is a regular competitor in the Bar U Ranch National Historic Site’s chore horse competition, where teams guide their horses through a timed obstacle course. This year’s event takes place Sept. 17 at 1 p.m.
“I’ve won it five or six times with five or six different teams,” he said. “I have never come back a second time with a team that I have won with. Usually, I bring them back until they win and then I switch.”
Beard thrives on the challenge of maneuvering his teams through the various obstacles, whether it’s loading a bale of hay on a platform or weaving around an obstacle.
“It’s a great challenge and it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “I have just as much fun losing as I have winning.”
Beard arrives with a different team of horses after each win. Sometimes it’s draught horses, other times it’s small mules.
“It’s whatever team you might happen to have on the farm to do your farming with,” he said. “I won it two years ago with a horse and a mule hooked together.”
Mike McLean, Bar U Ranch Special Projects Officer, said this Harvest and Heavy Horse Weekend is a salute to the horsepower that helped develop the west.
The weekend kicks off with an old-fashioned harvest from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday and ends with the chores horse competition on Sunday.
“The Harvest and Heavy Horse Weekend really gives visitors a chance to reconnect with the past and see where their food comes from,” said McLean.
Volunteers from across the region join in the Saturday harvest just north of the visitors’ centre parking lot, using horse-drawn wagons to haul sheaves of barley to a threshing machine.
“The harvest seems to bring out lots of volunteers into the fields, getting those wagons loaded up and the bundles through the threshing machine,” McLean said. “You will see people actually out in the field using a pitch fork to load the bundles and pitching it off the wagon into the threshing machine. The visitors have the opportunity to walk to the fence and get a really close view of what’s happening with these harvest operations.”
Sunday marks the 13th year of the chore horse competition, which also draws crowds, said McLean.
“People just really seem to love watching this happen,” he said. “Whether you are a horse person or have never seen a horse competition before people really get into watching a teamster or a driver take a team, whether it’s a big draft horse or a lighter team, and put them through this obstacle course.”
McLean said it’s the last big event of the season for the Bar U Ranch before it closes its doors for the season on Sept. 30 at 5 p.m.
“The harvest signifies the last big sigh of summer and getting ready for those colder months ahead,” he said.
Beard will be ready with a new team of horses, although he hasn’t decided which to enter yet.
With a long-standing hobby of driving horses, Beard is going into this weekend’s competition with confidence.
“I teach people how to drive horses,” he said. “I tried to make it my income off and on. It’s my passion.”
