Horseengine …

 

In the spring of 2006 we dazzled with an unusual experience, which you do not have many other places in Denmark. We inaugurated a horse round in and at the Red Barn.

And what is a horse Engine then?

A horse round is a kind of power station of the past, in which the horses walk round and round in a circle outdoors next to a barn and turn an axis which, connected with another axis, gear wheel and strap, makes use of the energy of the horses to run the threshing machine, grind etc indoors in the barn in question.

Historically the development has gone from the man with flail, over to horse round, to tractor-run threshing machine and to the present with enormous combine harvesters.

The threshing maschine which runs in the Smallholding is from Hans, on Fårevejle farm, and has run there from 1945 to 1965. It is 30 inches and built at N.R. Pedersen`s in Holbæk as a royal Danish patent.

Now six men of the mahine group had accquired a taste for it, and as Nyvang had a horse engine stored, they started a big process in 2002. It was concreted foundations, dug a seven meters long axis down in the earth and in the barn, where it runs a small 10 inches threshing machine from the factory Godthåbe in Ringsted. Here you can see horse round and threshing machine run in chosen days during the season. As a funny note, you must notice that the horses walk round in the same way as they do when they are harnessed to a carriage. The nearest one walks inmost and the farthest one walks farthest out and they walk anti-clockwise so they feel they are harnessed to a carriage or a plough.