Foxfire
Billingsley plowing with a mule
“A Salute to the Vanishing Mule” June 1968 George Burch & Mickey Justice Adapted by Kami Ahrens
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In his spare time, he plowed land, and helped to get the planting and cultivating done. He was there to help harvest and haul the crops. Everything that was too heavy to be moved from place to place by man was moved by the mule.
That got us thinking. Were mules following oxen into extinction? The result was the following study which we hope you will find as interesting as the subject was to research.
In the horse and buggy days, it was most often mules instead of horses that was hitched to the buggy. It was always convenient to hitch up the mule or put a saddle on him to go to anywhere that was too far to walk.”
e assumed that nothing was amiss in the mule world until we were informed that their position of prominence had been blasted forever by the Industrial Revolution. “After all,” our friend continued, “when was the last time you saw a young mule?”
At one time, the mule was king. Mrs. Ada Kelly shared some of the important work mules did: “[The mule] helped clear timber so that agricultural products could be planted. It helped drag logs off the land for building houses and barns, and hauling the logs to building sites. After they began sawing logs, the mule was busy dragging logs out of woods and hauling them to the mills. After they were sawed, they were loaded on wagons and pulled by mules many miles to some place where they could be readied for building houses. Then the faithful old mule would haul the lumber back to building sites.
84 GML - May 2021
Mules also pulled reapers, combines, and potato diggers; snaked logs for tan bark and telephone poles; plowed; worked sorghum mills; carried mail—the list is endless. Some mules were so well trained that they could haul sugar and malt to mountains stills alone and then walk back out alone laden with the finished moonshine. Farms in Kentucky and Tennessee specialized in breeding them. Their young mules were sold in places like Franklin, North Carolina, where Mr. R.L. Edwards’s uncle paid $400 for an untrained pair—and that in a day when money was worth considerably more than it is now.
