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Imagine the Ozarks frontier without horses; an Ozarks farmyard without chickens; the state of Missouri without mules!
State of the Ozarks is dedicated to remembering a day when farm animals were an integral part of Ozarkers' lives.
Although there are fewer and fewer small farms in the Ozarks — and the nation — there are still those devoted to raising and working livestock the old-fashioned ways.
And State of the Ozarks will find and visit with those folks too.
— Joshua Heston, editor
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The town [Ava, Missouri] is world headquarters of the breed registry for the Missouri Fox Trotting Horse Breed Association, and their world championship horse show is held there annually.....
The foxtrotter is a "hillbilly horse" developed in the Ozarks. The hills demanded a sturdy, sure-footed, even-footed horse, so the early settlers crossed their high-spirited five-gaited horses with the calmer Tennessee Walkers to slow — and calm — them down.
Later they used mustang mares to add endurance and cut down on size.
And since most Ozarkers could not afford both a riding horse and a work team, fox trotters were bred to be all-purpose horses.
— pages 361-62, Rossiter, Phyllis, A Living History of the Ozarks, Pelican Publishing Company Inc., 1992, 2001, 2006.
| The above art is a pen & ink rendition of the blacksmith shop in Silver Dollar City. It was created by Joe Benjamin, an extremely talented craftsman. More can be read about Joe (here) — the editor | |||
The night was coming very fast;
It reached the gate as I ran past.
The pigeons had gone to the tower of the church
And all the hens were on their perch
Up in the barn, and I thought I heard
A piece of a little purring word.
I stopped inside, waiting and staying,
To try to hear what the hens were saying.
They were asking something, that was plain,
Asking it over and over again.
One of them moved and turned around,
Her feathers made a ruffled sound,
A ruffled sound, like a bushful of birds,
And she said her little asking words.
She pushed her head close to her wing,
But nothing answered anything.
— Elizabeth Madox Roberts