As some of you know, my father — who’s the best, smartest and hardest working man I know — has a pair of big, beautiful Belgian draft horses named Ginger and Molly:

Molly’s the one with the mohawk. (Between the first day Dad looked at Molly and the day he actually bought her several weeks ago, the old Amish man who’d previously owned her decided to give her a mohawk. Being a work-oriented culture, the Amish man looked at her once-powerful mane as a matter of, “Why does she need all that hair up there if all she’s ever going to do is work?”)

Dad’s already got a sled and a buggy, and last week be bought an old, beaten-up wagon for the girls to pull him and Mom around in:

It’s currently in two large sections, with the bed separated from the chassis. He’s going to fix up the pieces and put it all back together and paint it this week. (In fact, he’s already made all kinds of new parts for it. The man’s amazing.)

But today he wanted to hook Ginger and Molly up to the wagon so that a) they could get a feel for it and b) he could make some measurements on the wagon’s tongue to make it as comfortable as possible for the girls to pull.

First, he fixed the girls up in their beautiful, brilliantly crafted harnesses …

… and then hooked them up to the wagon:

And since the wagon doesn’t even have its bed on it yet, Dad — ever the adventurer at 59 — slapped a couple of boards on the frame and used them as a makeshift seat:

The girls pulled the wagon like champs — they work very well together — and were rewarded by being allowed to nibble on the grass for a while. (Even though the grass outside the fence is the same grass that’s inside the fence, Ginger and Molly have decided that the grass outside the fence tastes better. Who are we to argue?)

Mom then made us humans a homemade dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes, rolled-out-from-scratch noodles, corn on the cob and green beans. (We also fed Ginger and Molly some corn husks for their dessert.)

As always, it was an excellent visit to my parents’ house and a wonderful way to end a fantastic weekend.