Plowing Ahead
It was a trip down memory lane or rather a memory furrow, for Robert Hillberry, 84, of Butler Township when he got to take the reins of a pair of plow horses.
During the annual plowing demonstration April 23 at the community gardens along McCune Drive between Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center and the Sheetz convenience store, representatives from the Western Pennsylvania Draft Horse, Mule and Pony Association, Vanessa Bonetti of Meridian and Edward Jackman of Penn Township allowed Hillberry have a turn at guiding Vana and Maybell, a pair of Percheron horses from Bonnie Scheerbaum's Rockdale Farm.
Hillberry said he first got behind a pair of plow horses on his father's farm in Grub Hollow, W.Va., when he was 12.
“My dad said to my mother, 'I don't know how I am getting the garden plowed. I am working from daylight to dusk.'”
“I decided what to do to help. The next day after school I got the horses and plow ready and started plowing,” Hillberry said.
“It was 1944 when I started on my dad's farm and 73 years later at Sunnyview,” he said.
“I did it until I was 19 and then I went into the Army, the 101st Airborne, at the end of the Korean War,” Hillberry said.
He said he noticed the sign publicizing the horse-drawn plowing event as he went to visit his wife, Evelyn. She was a patient at Sunnyview before passing away April 7.
He said working a horse team was like riding a bicycle.
“When I first started it came back right away,” Hillberry said. “I just made a couple of passes. The lady with the horses was outstanding.”
Scheerbaum said, “Plowing isn't that hard. You just have to learn to tilt the plow.”
The plowing demonstration drew a crowd, she said.
“We started back in the late '70s. It's a way to promote the draft horses,” said Scheerbaum, a founder of the association.
Brent Hilderbrand, a technician with the Butler County Conservation District, which has administered the garden program for the past 26 years, said, “They come in and plow a garden as a demonstration. We do the rest with a tractor.”
The 2.5-acre field holds 54 gardens, he said, each measuring 30-feet-by-35-feet which are assigned free to residents with a green thumb. He added there are still 15 gardens unassigned.
Hilderbrand said anyone seeking to claim one of the unoccupied garden plots should call the conservation district at 724-284-5270.
He added growing season will last until Oct. 31 when gardeners have to remove all plastic sheeting and stakes so the gardens can be mowed over.
Asked if he was ready to take over one of the unclaimed plots that he helped to plow, Hillberry said, “I'm past that age, I think.”
