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Sunday on the Farm

Bruce B. Daniels

1995

Memoir Harness Racing Farriery

In Sunday on the Farm, America’s best-known farrier of the 20th Century remembers his years as an itinerant shoer at leading (and lesser) US harness tracks in the 1960s. You’ll enjoy equally his funny stories, bittersweet recollections, and philosophical insights into why farriers did--and do--develop characters that are every bit as strong as their backs.

Shoeing the lame ones and the champions, independent-minded horseshoers traveled “The Circuit”, lived in tents, never quite got rich, but could always get those coal fires lit. This is an important book, for beneath humorous tongue-in-cheek depictions of life on the backside, you will witness the roots of the 1970s and 1980s renaissance of farrier skills in America; nowhere was shoeing more important than at harness tracks, where swedging stock and making bar shoes were all in an hour’s work.

Sunday on the Farm also includes stories from the Thoroughbred world, including the famous practical joke played on the horseshoer at Laurel Racecourse in Maryland. He truly believed that a Secret Service helicopter was coming to pick him up to take him to shoe Jackie Kennedy's horse. The poor guy stood out in the infield with his tool box, scanning the sky, until he realized he'd been the victim of an elaborate (but brilliant) hoax designed to cut him down to size.