Along with the currach that (almost) never went to sea, the most regretted symbol of our "self-sufficient" years was the cart that never took to the road. For a year it decorated the lawn, shafts tilted skywards, while the goats took bites of its bright blue paint and the rotting wood beneath.
When the car we had sat down in a shower of rust, the idea of harnessing Báinin, our daughter's sturdy Connemara pony, took on its own momentum. Along with the cart, we assembled leather collar and hames, swingletree and chains, ridge-pad and britcher - all this from neighbours still in a transition from draught horse to tractor.
In trying to coax the pony to accept his rattling burden and a new role between the shafts, we undoubtedly gave up too easily, fearful of the sheer physicality of the enterprise and of hurting Báinin himself. Even if we had succeeded, I could not guarantee the outcome of encounters, on narrow, stone-walled roads, with speeding bakery vans and middle-of-the-road motor cars.
All this is sparked by a quirky sort of chapter in what could be the most important book published in Ireland, indeed, in Europe, this year. Before the Wells Run Dry (Feasta/Lilliput €12.95), is edited by Richard Douthwaite, the radical green economist who wrote The Growth Illusion. It brings together contributions by 30 energy experts, Irish and international, most of whom accept that global oil production will decline from 2015, that renewable energy sources have to be the way forward, and that work on the massive transition needs to start now.
Compared to discussion of a hi-tech hydrogen economy primed by wind-power, or of Ireland's potential for biofuels, "the case for returning to real live horse power" could seem of marginal significance. But however far it convinces in the end, its level-headed skill in fielding all the "yes, but . . ." objections make it well worth reading.
The expert is Charlie Pinney, long-practised in farming with heavy horses (currently on 600 acres in Scotland) and in training others to do so. His technical developments in carthorse machinery have won him a Prince Philip Cup. He has no illusions about the cynical impatience likely to greet the very idea of swapping the tractor and farm machines for a horse (or a team of a dozen, like the Amish of America). As he writes: "To invite our highly mechanised western world to seriously contemplate using a wilful, feeble, mortal device in need of constant care and attention, one who is subject to as many fits, sulks and diseases as its handler, and moreover one which can kick, bite or merely tread heavily on you, when press-button tractor technology is freely available, might appear to be a mere flight of fancy." In a world short of cheap fossil fuels, however, and with a need to curb air pollution, the virtues of the draught horse could make it far more than a nostalgic photo-opportunity at the national ploughing championships.
During its long working life, sustained by locally-produced grasses and cereals, it returns one-third of the energy it consumes as reusable manure (whereas two-thirds of the tractor's fuel energy is lost in heat and fumes). It manufactures its own replacements. It does not impact the soil. In forests, it can drag out thinnings on steep, wet and rocky terrains. In cities, a pair of horses with a wagon can start and stop in gridlock with a lot less wear than a lorry.
Yes, but - they get tired, don't they, while tractors don't? And they have just the one speed - walking. Well, says Pinney, we'll have to change our farming methods and invent new implements to make the most of horsepower. He speculates on an Ireland, free of artificial fertilisers, in which an average mixed organic farm of 40 hectares would need five horses at work. That could mean "487,500 cart horses . . . trundling around, ploughing, harvesting, carting things and so on", and each of them needing 1.5 hectares for fodder and grazing.
But how many of them, I wonder, would have happy lives? Half a century ago, in The Worm Forgives the Plough, John Stewart Collis welcomed the tractor: "There is no emphasis on the care of horses and the young men have no feeling for them . . . Horses could now be released from their slavery." The best genes of the Irish draught horse - for "even temperament, athleticism and durability", to quote the breed's Society - are now fed into the showjumper. With full restoration of horsepower we might also need a different breed of farmer, one with better skills and sensibilities. But then, adjusting to a world without cheap energy for machines could make a different breed of us all.
(Báinin, now aged 26 and two owners further on in a much safer life, is still winning prizes at the Connemara Pony Show).