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Of Horses, Cattle, Blacksmithing, & Sleighs: Sharing Memories With Bill Oosterman

photo provided Tools of the trade and a man with patience and skill. Shoeing horses with Bill Oosterman

photo provided In the show ring at Addison County Field Days, Bill and his team and his music wagon.

photo provided Bill Oosterman and his team Duke and Kate stand in the summer sun.

Tuesday March 2, 2010

By Cookie Steponaitis

    Growing up in Whitensville, Massachusetts, Bill Oosterman crossed paths with a man simply called “Uncle Charlie” by everyone in the village of East Douglas. A blacksmith and a horseshoer by trade, Uncle Charlie’s place was always alive with activity. To thirteen year old Bill Oosterman, it was the beginning of a fascination for the merging of heated metal, pounding irons and showing horses. As a striker in Charlie’s shop, metal hot out of the fire became shapes that turned into a life long passion for metal work and grew into a career involving horses, cattle, welding, shipyards and magical creations including wagons, sleighs and music wagons. Now looking back on a career that has spanned more than seventy years, sharing memories with Bill Oosterman is a look into a life of hard work, dedication to family, his profession and his faith.

    While Bill was always taken with blacksmithing, he did not come use to use this career until later on in his life. After leaving the Worcester area, Bill worked attended trade school and worked in welding in the shipyards in addition to a time of service in the Marine Corp during World War II. Married at nineteen to his wife Gladys, the couple did not make their home in Addison County until 1960. ( Gladys passed away of cancer in 1983). Working construction on the Interstate Highways brought the pair to Vermont, but it was the beauty of the area that drew them to stay. Bill began shoeing horses on the side and as the family grew to include children Terry, Howard, Bill, Doug and Wes, he branched out to include hoof trimming of cattle as well. While largely self-taught, Bill was quick to employ his own skills to the profession and created a tilt table which allowed him to tip the cow over and perform trimmings quickly and safely. Unknown to him, this invention was in use in California twenty years before and in Italy for over one hundred years. As his own family grew, he began to raise and train draft horse teams, which are to this date a passion and fixture at the family homestead in Ferrisburgh, Vermont.

    As much an engineer as craftsmen, Bill’s shop is laid out with his projects in mind. He designed and built his home with an eye for both a family homestead and a working shop from which to continue his trade. Currently building custom sleighs and wagons for friends and family, he still drives his Belgian team and is a yearly fixture at Shelburne Farms, along with his son, young Bill who does most of the driving and fellow draft team owner Pat Palmer. Taking locals and tourists alike on weekend sleigh rides, the blending of two of Bill’s passions come together. Freshly shod for winter with custom made shoes, his team pulls hand crafted sleighs down snow covered paths, bringing joy and excitement to those many who do not delve into the world of horses.

    For years, the best place to find the Oosterman family during the summer was the show rings of Addison County Field Days and in the line up of the Memorial Day parade. “I wanted to build a music wagon, “remarked Bill Oosterman. “ I asked Danny Provost to give me a hand and we hooked up speakers to the wagon I had built. I tell you when older people on the parade route stand up clapping and singing to the songs they hear, it is worth all the work and effort. We sure had fun with that wagon.”

    Officially retiring when he was 82, Bill now considers himself blessed because he “works on projects because he wants to and if he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t.” In addition to his family that are both close by and across the continent, Bill and his wife Marjorie, who were married in 1986, Bill has 26 grand children and 16 great-grandchildren. Pausing in the interview to politely inquire if he needed to throw another log into the wood stove in his workshop, Bill leaned forward and commented on the “endless possibilities ahead of him with his fascination for metal,” and his business with cows and horses. “I don’t really trim cows’ hooves anymore, but I still make and shoe my own draft team, but that is more for fun,” he remarked. “And while my sons Terry, Howard and Doug are in the business of shoeing horses and trimming cows, when they step down, that will be the end of it for my family.” Two of his sons just returned from the national Hoof Trimmers Convention in Louisiana where nationally the people in the profession gather to meet, learn and see the latest in tools and technology.

    While Bill might be curious to see the newest and latest, it is quite apparent that any tool he needs or invention required, comes from his mind and the skill of his own hands. Over the years his talents have been extended to saddle horses, oxen and his ever present draft team, which lift their heads at his whistle and come racing toward the barn and the man that they know as both friend and driver. “I am a short-timer,” remarked Bill, reflecting on the days ahead as opposed to behind him, “But, he included, “I am so blessed.”

    Glancing around a shop where the draft harnesses hang with polished precision and the oxen yokes adorn the far wall; close to the newest sleigh under construction and the newest wagon being designed, it is plain to see how Bill Oosterman spends his days and his free time. Still fascinated by the skills he learned and the site of metal and a forge creating a molten metal that is shaped by the force of a hammer, Oosterman keeps alive a tradition, a craft and a passion that has taken him through out his life to be one of continuous endless possibilities. The Valley Voice salutes a man who continues to invent; merging his industrious work ethic, his love of animals, and his passion for blacksmithing into a unique heritage and legacy for his family and the county he proudly calls home. Of the people he has worked with over the past seventy plus years and continues to see today, Bill remarks, “There are no better people on the earth than farming people, They are the salt of the earth and always ready to help a neighbor.” So is Bill Oosterman and this reporter will be back to see the wagons and the sleighs when completed, even perhaps getting the privilege of a sleigh ride with his hands at the reigns, taking the team and the passengers into the world of a man who continues to bring to life each day his passions, his work ethic and his desire to create.    

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