Hello. My Name is Clarence Koch. I was born in August of 1933. I started handling and driving horses and mules when I was a very small boy on my father's farm in Nebraska. Even before I was old enough to harness by myself, Dad was teaching me how to put the lines together and proper hitching procedures. There were times in the field that I would be driving four abreast and later even six abreast. By the time tractors came out, my older brothers claimed all those, so I was still using horses and mules. Dad always thought that there were some jobs that tractors couldn't do anyway.

When I started farming on my own at the age of 20, I had a tractor, but also took one of Dad's old teams with me. It was nice to not have to listen to that noisy old tractor, and drive something I could really enjoy.

Years down the road, I decided my farm wasn't right without a team of mules. I bought a young team that I had to train from scratch. I had a man ask me to set a price for them, but I told him they weren't for sale. He insisted I set a price, so I set one that was way too high, but he came back a couple weeks later and said he would take them. I realized then that I had an opportunity to use knowledge that few men my age had, so I started training mules and horses for myself and others.