Few people on the planet have the skill to drive a team of eight draft horses.
You can see that singular skill in spectacular action only once during this year’s Northwest Washington Fair on Friday, Aug. 21.
See draft horses in beautiful action at a daily grandstand horse show at 12:30 p.m. from Aug. 17 to 22 at the Northwest Washington Fair. Free with fair admission.
Each horse weighs about 2,000 pounds. Their horseshoes are the size of dinner plates. Harnessed together in lead, point, swing and wheel teams, that makes for eight tons of might and muscle that each driver controls only with leather lines, voice and an all-but-token hand brake.
Up here in the northwesternmost part of the United States, a rare cluster of families come together each August to drive six- and eight-horse hitches at the fair grandstand – and teach future generations. They’re tops at what they do, with often-homebred horses, a different lineage and more varied skill set than the Amish, Scottish and other regions known for showing draft horses.
Nowhere else in the world
“There’s not another place in the United States is as crazy as we are here in Lynden,” driver Fred Polinder Jr. once said. A dairy farmer who showed draft horses at the fair starting after World War II, Polinder, who died in 2015, judged horse shows from Scotland to Saskatchewan.
At the fair, they do what’s called the free drive. Drivers and horses let loose and careen around the grandstand arena in a stirring display that’s done nowhere else in the world, according to Polinder.
In this video, you’ll see Scott Hamstra drive the Mt. Baker Clydesdales, Alan Manning steer the Shezam Clydesdales and Craig Wilder take the lines of the Reinbow Ranch spotted paint horses.
These men may be champions, but they’d be the first to say they’re still learning. They say they’re just passing down what they were given.
Early mornings at the fair, Willard Wilder taught Alan Manning to drive by hitching a team and driving around the fairgrounds.
Scott Hamstra was taught by his father, Bob Hamstra, currently the open-class heavy-horse superintendent at the fair. In turn, Bob Hamstra says he owes his abilities to what he learned in the fair’s draft-horse barn from Fred Polinder Jr. and Bill Shagren. Scott’s son, Ryan Hamstra, rides alongside him in the ring, continuing the hands-on heritage.
Alan Manning will tell you how long ago he asked draft horse driver Willard Wilder to teach him. In the early mornings at the fair, he recalls, they’d hitch a team and practice by driving around the fairgrounds.
Paul Nelson, a Vietnam War veteran and owner of the Reinbow Ranch team, said he was honored to have “a master like Craig Wilder” drive his beloved horses.
Some of the formidable horsemen seen in this 2018 video — Pete Groen, Paul Nelson and Craig Shagren — are now gone. But you can still see their devotion to their community and horsemanship on a morning in August 2018, when three teams drove eight-horse hitches at the Northwest Washington Fair.
Note: Usually we use local music in our videos, but this 2018 video featured music by Ketsa, Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC BY): Music by ketsa.uk