The farther west the urban traveler drives on Illinois Highway 72, past Dundee and Sleepy Hollow out toward Byron, the more likely the possibility one will encounter unaccustomed backups.
Out past the towns come the farms and nurseries, with their slow-moving tractors, combines, trucks and mules.
Mules?
Yes, is there a problem?
By the way, they prefer to be called Macho and Maggie-at least the two that reside in their own home at Hub Tures & Sons Nursery. It`s a quite comfortable barn, the same place the Tureses used to store the machinery the mules replaced.
The nursery is just west of Genoa and just east of Kingston. Drivers along Ill. Hwy. 72 or nearby Cherry Valley Road may blink and wonder if they`re in the Sierra Nevadas or some similar Western locale if they happen to pass by when Tures` nursery workers are transporting their cultivator mules.
The mode of transportation is muleback, and, says nursery founder Hub Tures, ”The guys get on `em and ride `em from one place to another (Tures has five locations within a two-mile radius).”
Not exceeding the speed limit, we hope.
”Oh, they just creep along,” Tures says. The Tureses, Hub and his sons Mike and Matt, employ the mules to cultivate the soil between the narrowly spaced rows of trees and shrubbery that they raise for wholesale. Hub remembers when his father had horses at the old family nursery in Des Plaines back in the `20s.
They went out of vogue with new technology, and the Tureses followed the trend of using motor-driven tillers in the `60s and `70s. But progress isn`t always what it seems. The motorized tillers caused problems.
”They just packed down the ground too much,” Mike said. The last one they bought, 20 years ago, cost $5,000. A mule costs less than $1,000 now and probably lasts longer.
Mules have caught on among their fellow nurserymen, the Tureses say. By their estimate, there are about a half-dozen nurseries in northeast Illinois alone currently favoring the furry-hooved animals over machines. One is another Tures nursery (Hub`s nephew) in Huntley.
Why the mule revival?
”They`re just basically excellent cultivators,” said Kevin Kline, mule expert in the Animal Sciences Department at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. ”It`s just using horse power or mule power rather than machine power.”
”We never left it, but a lot of people who left are going back (to mules or horses)” said Herbert L. Mueller (pronounced mule-er) of downstate Columbia.
Mueller, who says a good number of nurseries in central and southern Illinois have taken to mules, has been raising draft horses and mules for sale for nearly 30 years. He is also a member of the Illinois Draft Horse and Mule Association.
”They do less damage. They`re handier and easier to handle between rows,” Mueller said. ”I guess some of the older fellows have got the younger ones into it.”
”It`s something we`ve seen in the past few years. People are interested in learning about them,” Kline said. ”If you have a relatively small operation like a nursery or growing vegetables, with a fairly high value per acre with small acreage, you can cut down on your capital expenditures by using mules or horses.”
The machines would sometimes mash down the tops of plants in rows, says Matt Tures, and sometimes break down. The mule requires continual maintenance, but at a relatively low cost, and is sure-footed, according to Hub.
The machine isn`t as good looking, either.
”We`ve had draft horse and mule days here at (University of) Illinois, and we`ve had owners come in and talk about their stock, and we`ve had increasing response in recent years,” Kline said.
Mueller has seen the mule and draft horse market rise substantially in the past 10 years. He is selling 20 to 25 a year. In the 1970s, he had 13 mares, which figured to 13 baby mules a year, since a mule`s gestation period is 11 months.
Time out.
First let`s get our mule terminology straight. The mule is a hybrid, a cross between a male donkey and a female horse. When a female donkey, which is called a jennet, is crossed with a male horse, or stallion, a hinney is the result. Hinneys are rather uncommon since the female usually determines the size of the offspring and there`s little call for draft animals no bigger than donkeys. Because mules are bred for their sturdiness and strength, and the horse is a larger animal than the donkey, the female horse is the usual choice for breeders.
Mules, like horses, are measured in hands (a hand equals four inches), with the largest going up to around 17 hands and weighing upwards of 1,600 pounds.
Mueller once laid claim to the world`s largest draft-mule team, with two beauties tipping the scales at 2,000 pounds apiece.
The ones he sells range in price from $500 to $3,000, ”depending on what he`s broke to do,” meaning whether the mule is trained to do specific work. The size factors into price determination as well.
Mueller has sold mules all over the United States-to loggers in New York, to tobacco farmers in the South, to miners in the West, to Amish in Pennsylvania and to farmers and nurserymen with small operations in Illinois, just like the Tureses.
His most unusual sales were to India and Afghanistan. ”We sold three to Afghanistan when they had that feud with the Russians,” Mueller said.
Their use?
Pulling artillery pieces. ”A good mule can pull three, four times his weight, easily,” Mueller said.
Besides carrying instruments of war, packs and logs, there are cotton mules, used in the cultivaton of those plants, pack mules used in mining and sugar mules used on plantations for hauling. The basic model: the farm mule.
That`s the kind the Tureses have.
Macho is somewhere over 15 years old and still going strong. ”They`re stronger and more agile than horses. They`re a smart animal,” Hub says. And they soften up the ground without stepping on the plants.
The Tureses added the mules 10 years ago and haven`t looked back. Sometimes passersby have, though.
”Every once in a while you hear the brakes,” Hub says, chuckling.
”They can`t believe it. They think you`ve gone back to the pioneer days.”
Once a railroad engineer on the nearby Milwaukee Line stopped his train and got off when he saw the mules in the field.
”He was an older fellow and he said he hadn`t seen that in years,” says Hub, who`s 74. ”Sometimes people nearly drive off the road.”
Earlier, Hub had told a visitor to come out on a dry day because the mules can`t perform in muddy terrain, and, ”You have to see them. They`re magnificent from the road.”
Indeed, they are pack animals on a grand scale-the red-coated Macho and the glossy brown Maggie, with distinctive peaked ears that belie their heritage.
”Just look at those ears flopping,” says Hub as he watches them in their resplendent glory, pulling the old-fashioned single-row cultivators that are manned by patient nursery workers.
And they do have personality.
Heard the expression, stubborn as a mule?
A misconception, says Mike. ”People told us, `They`ll stop in the field and be stubborn and won`t move,` but we haven`t found that at all.”
”It`s not that they`re stubborn,” Mueller said. ”They`re extremely intelligent. They know when to stop, when there`s danger, whereas an animal like a horse doesn`t know and will push himself beyond his limits.”
They can be pushy, however. ”In the morning when they see me coming, they start making noise and pounding their feet on the ground and they kind of demand some service,” Mike says.
Breakfast is hay or oats. So is lunch and dinner. No complaints so far.
”They`re very docile,” Hub says. They don`t like to be alone, however. Although mules are sterile animals, they prefer the company of another mule.
When they`re working, they like to be in sight of one another or they act up, Mike says.
Act up how?
”Oh, they start making that mule noise, like that (Mike makes a wheezing nasal sound).”
Or worse, they cry.
Or worse yet, they do what Maggie did last year when she was left alone in the corral on the main Tures property.
”She got lonely,” Mike says. According to Hub, she jumped the five-foot fence from a standing stop and ran off down the road.
”We found her two miles away in a playground,” Hub says. ”Kids were calling from the school in Kingston saying that the mule was charging through the school yard. They loved it.”
Which just goes to show, a mule can move fast when it wants to. Remember that the next time you`re driving out Ill. Hwy. 72.
