Horsing around

Brothers Chuck and Charlie each lifts his left rear heel in deference to the diminutive humans harnessing them up, gearing them up for their workday the same way an electrical line worker may might secure her belts, the way a businessman may adjust his tie.

The two are about to get attached to a large wooden roller, about the same dimensions of the steam rollers that smooth out fresh asphalt on new roads. This type of roller was used to plow the roads — or at least flatten the snow — so other people and horses could get by.

Chuck and Charlie are flattening a road less traveled, a snow-covered forest and field loop in Cambridge’s Pleasant Valley. Their owners, Bryce Bartlett and April Edwards, see the horses as the main attraction in their business, Pleasant Valley Horse-Drawn Wagon & Sleigh, but they also see them as the labor.

The couple met in the mid-1980s, and Bartlett moved to Cambridge from near Peterborough, N.H., to marry Edwards. She’s been here her whole life, the seventh generation of Vermonters who have been farming on Edwards Road the whole time.

Chuck and Charlie — Chuck’s slightly wider, Charlie’s slight taller — stand about 19 hands from hoof to haunch. There are about 4 inches to a hand, so these beasts stand well over 7 feet tall when you add a head.

Bartlett stands about as tall as Charlie’s shoulder, and Bartlett’s mostly white beard drops down to his chest. Edwards doesn’t quite stand that high.

“I’m not 5 feet,” she says, in the same way some people say “not yet 40” when you ask how old they are.

She’s so small that she’s able to lie on top of Abbie — another draft horse that the couple had to put out to pasture because of an injury — as Abbie lies sprawled out comfortably on the ground, covered in a blanket.

Pleasant Valley lives up to its name, and so does the farm, which the couple works for Denis Guillemette. The Guillemette farm is about 130 acres in Cambridge, snug up against a hill, with fields then forest on both sides of Pleasant Valley Road. Its farmhouse is a small and sturdy structure made entirely of stone, and is one of the most historically significant homes of its type in New England, and one of the most oft-photographed.

Guillemette still lives in the home he grew up in, keeping the spread in the family long after his farming days ended. He’s happy to see the fields and barns still being put to good use, and Bartlett and Edwards are happy to play that role.

Amish sensibility

Bartlett and April each have the gift of gab in their own ways — he’s a little slower than she in conversational cadence, with the recitative attention to detail evident in someone who is still relatively new to his passion, while she’s a little quicker with anecdotes that offer fertile ground, thanks to all those generations of agrarianism.

They maintain a calm mien when working with the animals and it’s not out the realm of possibility that it’s the beasts actually working on them. There’s a solemnity to working with such huge animals, a respect for a ton of flesh and muscle atop bone-solid hooves.

The pair isn’t particularly religious, but they do owe a debt to the Amish, those scattered in tight enclaves around Vermont as well as larger populations in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Bartlett said in that culture, you’re either Amish or English, and he’s noticed that when it comes to farm work or other types of labor, if you ask an “English” person, they’ll say to you, “This is the way you do it.”

The Amish, though, aren’t so singular with their approach to work, whether it’s how to harness a team and hone a hoof file, or patch a broken part or deal with a broken bone. For them, automation and technology in their culture take back seats to creative fixes and elbow grease, so working with parts and animals is a perpetual, interconnected process.

“You talk to an Amish person, and they’ll give you six different ways to try something,” Bartlett said. “And that’s really fun.”

The pair has a collection of sleighs in the barn, some of them antique and rustic, some of them luxurious in their wood tones and finishing touches. They don’t tie up their horses to cheap stuff for the same reason you wouldn’t put your 16-year-old behind the wheel of a car with bald tires and faulty brakes.

When you do something the old-fashioned way, you find your options for repair and replacement substantially more limited than if you’d gone with modern trends. If you thought it was tough getting parts for your Saab, try getting shoes, bits, harnesses, stirrups or saddles.

There are still some tack stores — that’s short for tackle, itself an old catchall term for equipment — in the area, and Bartlett and Edwards give them their fair share of business. But the local tack store owners are getting old, and younger generations aren’t rushing to fill the void. For instance, anyone who wants something from Gary Langdell in Wolcott will have to wait until after the winter, when he and wife Bonnie come back from Florida.

So, the couple makes regular trips to Amish country to learn new ways to work with their animals and equipment and to stock up on supplies.

“Going into a blacksmith’s shop in Ohio is like going into a candy store,” April said.