BETHEL – Two draft horses will be part of Gould Academy’s Farm and Forest Program, hauling logs, pulling plows and spreading manure, and using farm implements that were common in the early 1900s.
Tracy Wilkerson, a Spanish teacher, is taking Dinah and Tinker to the school.
“Dinah is a Percheron, a breed of horse that was developed in France for the purpose of bringing knights into battle,” Wilkerson said. “They were bred to hold the knight with all of his armor, but over time they began to be used as more of a draft animal.”
Tinker, Dinah’s daughter, is a yearling born last April. Half Percheron and half Welsh Cobb, “Tinker is learning to be harnessed, how to ground drive, and all of the things that are easier to teach them when they’re small,” Wilkerson said.
Students in the Gould program will learn animal husbandry as they care for the horses as well as the sheep, goats, chickens and turkeys that also live in a three-story, post and beam barn built by earlier students.
Gould Academy offers college preparatory education to about 220 students in grades 9-12. While most of the students come from New England, about 30 percent come from the remaining 49 states and 10 percent from Europe and Asia.
On the ‘Net: www.gouldacademy.org.
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