noise."Story Notes: The Pony Pull · 5:48pm Oct 30th, 2016
A big thinks to MSPiper and AshadowOfCygnus for prereading, as usual at the very last minute.
Dramaturge:
We've got a lotta ponies in this one. All these images are from the wiki.
Gala Appleby
Booth Barker
Apple Bread
Bushel
Golden Delicious
Moon Dust
Quake
Sunstreak
Blueberry Frosting
Bell Perin
The Lavender Trio: Lavenderhoof, Lavender Blush, and Lavender August. 
Tropical Spring
Sunny Smiles
Dyno, Side Check, and Sweet Gale are all OCs.
'Big Jon' Jonagold
Source
As far as I know, there is no confirmed canon name or description for Ma and Pa Apple. So I asked on The Writer's Group if there was a popular name/image for him, and Jonagold came away the winner.
Later on, when I was looking up the names of other ponies, I discovered that in the comics the Jonagold brothers once vied for Granny Smith's affection. How that turned out, I don't know, because I haven't actually read the comics yet. But even if one (or both) of them was successful, there's no reason why Granny might not have named her son after one (or both) of them.
EDIT: I rarely change my fics to conform to canon; however, in light of The Perfect Pair, I felt that this was the exception to the rule, and re-named 'Big Jon' Jonagold to Bright Mac.
The rules for a pull are pretty simple. I've only seen heavy horse pulls, but the general rules for all equines are essentially the same. You have to pull a weight over a certain distance in order for it to count. In the show I watched, you get three attempts—you can make a second immediately after your first attempt, or you can move to the end of the line, and make your second attempt then. And you can make a third attempt after everyone else has gone. (Since I'm probably not describing that well, it goes like this: 1, 2, wait, 3; or 1, wait, 2, 3.) You have to pull the weight a certain distance [and it's an odd distance; I think it's 27 feet, 6 inches]. If you succeed, you get more weight next time around; if you fail, you lose.
Now, there are two ways that it's scored. The first is where you have a weight class to begin with (say, the team can't weigh more than 3400 pounds), and whoever's in that weight class and pulls the most weight wins. The other option, when you have equines of different sizes, is a percentage score, where the horse who pulls the largest percentage of its own body weight wins.
There are two types of weight used in horse pulls. One is a weight or some sort. From pictures I've seen, cement/stone blocks are popular. The other option—the one they use at MSU—is a dynometer truck. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I do know that as the team pulls the truck, they pull a predetermined amount of weight up as well.
I think that it's unlikely that the ponies would use a dyno cart, although it's certainly within the limits of their technology to build one. Instead, a show like this would use a weight every farming town would have in abundance—used millstones.
I've blogged about this before, but for anyone who's new, here's a crash course in horse harnesses. There are a lot of different types, and each one has its advantages and disadvantages. A breastcollar harness puts a lot of the pulling force on the horse's breastbone, which is fine for light loads but can make it difficult for the horse to breathe if she's hauling a heavy load.
Whereas a D-ring harness is somewhat more complicated, but puts the weight on the pony's shoulders, and lets her tow anything she's capable of actually towing.
(I should point out here that the D-ring harness shown does not have a backstrap or belly strap, due to they type of load these horses are carrying. I also found some other pictures of the harness where the horse was not wearing much of a hip strap assembly, since they were pulling something without wheels.)
The yoke is put on over a pony's head (I think we've seen Big Mac putting his on in canon, but maybe not). Obviously, if you're a unicorn, a closed yoke isn't going to work very well for you. But having the yoke openable potentially introduces two weak spots—the hinge on the bottom and the clasp on the top.
Side Check is named after a part of a horse harness. It's goes up on the back of the head and helps guide the reins into place, so it's actually a part of the harness that ponies almost surely would not use. But I liked the name anyway; it seemed the most like a pony name of all the harness pieces.
Sweet gale is one of many types of gruit.
Back in the day, they didn't have hops in England, so when you made your beer (also called brandywine), you added some spices and herbs to it to make it taste better. Collectively, those were called gruit, and included things like heather, mugword, horehound, and so on. When hops were introduced, they quickly replaced gruit; however, there are now some beers available using traditional, hopless recipes.
Oatburgers are, obviously, patties made out of oats. And ponies love them.
From the Wiki
A stone-boat is a type of sledge, designed for muddy soil or snow. It's basically a platform on a pair of runners.
Historically, besides being used in horse pulls, they were also used for ice service, clearing rocks out of farm fields, logging, and basically anywhere that you had to move something heavy and didn't have a road.
Last picture, the horse on the right is like, "Sweet, let's go." The one on the left is like, "Nah. I'm getting my picture taken right now."
You already explained a stone-boat before in a blog with that one story where the fire-boiler thingy got stuck in a field.
4277544
I did, but I can't assume that my readers read all my blog posts.
The Lavender Trio was also mentioned in Apple Honey's Perfectly Ordinary Day and the harness types were mentioned in A Day at the Farrier.
4277558 True, but you could give a link to it, I think it explained the stone-boat more.
Unless I am not remembering it right, which happens a lot. 
Call those used millstones, theres still grooves on them, and what happened to the grooves on the other side, and the regroover?
Then again, where I live most f the older roads from teh 1800s are just tarmac over millstone grit cobbles, because there wasnt any advantage over using granite.
According to me Dad, his grandfather used horse and cart to haul sandstone blocks from the big quarries down to the dams being built for the reservoirs that destroyed most of the homes and old roads in the area. Dads family home only survived with a few others because they were on the uphill side of the Blind Jack built freeway sized primary road, where a new road was built to allow access to three new quarries.
The Stone Boat reminds me of why when I designed a heavy hauler with track wheels, I also made the underside flat for sledging. After al, when its that large, small tracks cant take it and a lot of deliveries are accross very open country. A rough guide, each track wheel is approximately the size of Trixies caravan.
Someone, somewhere, being run by a Manehatten company, must be quarrying using Titan Teamsters. Think of a firm, where Troubleshoes is the Runt.
Sounds like there's a sad story about Moon Dust between this time and the show's present, if he ended up in Our Town.
I wonder if Applejack or Rarity recognized him after all those years?
Blueberry Frosting too I think.
derpicdn.net/img/2015/4/17/876241/thumb.png
https://derpibooru.org/tags/blueberry+frosting
4278144
Yes--I forgot to put her in the blog, didn't I?
4277561
It probably did. I prefer not to link to other blogs if I can help it--I don't want to require my readers to click through. (if they want to, to learn more, that's okay though.)
Thinking some more on it, I would like to finally get around to writing a blog about harnesses, and what you have to wear and why. The horses towing the stone-boat don't have a breeching strap, and the pair with the wagon don't have the girth strap on.
4277564
I've got to figure that when the grooves get small enough you can't mill with them anymore. Not sure how long you can keep regrooving them before they get too thin, but maybe there's a limit to it.
There was a railroad--can't remember which--that had a tunnel through a dam while construction was ongoing. Obviously, they closed the tunnel and removed the tracks when it was time to start using the dam.
pre08.deviantart.net/c7bf/th/pre/f/2013/162/8/1/not_so_big_macintosh_by_that1andonly-d68duv6.png
4277697
And Blueberry Frosting, as 4278144 pointed out (I forgot to put her in the Blog because I accidentally deleted my notes before I wrote it)
It would depend on how long they stayed in town. Both AJ and Rarity are fillies when this story takes place, so they'd be fairly unlikely to recognize either of them. Although, I would say that Moon Dust or Blueberry Frosting might have recognized either Applejack or Rarity.
4278144
Huh, she shows up as both a unicorn and an Earth Pony.
vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/a/a6/Blueberry_Frosting_Earth_pony_ID_S5E1.png
4281316
I think the railway with the dam was Blanaeu Ffestiniog tourist line in Wales, UK, where they drilled a spiral tunnel into the valley wall to lift the track above the new dam and reservoir.
Looks like poor Big Mac has a bit of competition there. Samson, Goliath, Atlas, Hercules, and last but definitely not least, Tiny.
>4281316
I don't know if you're thinking of The Dalles Dam, which had a tunnel through the south non-overflow dam during construction. (The infill to close it can be seen on Google Maps here.) It wasn't a mainline or anything, just part of the spur from the SP&S Railway used for construction. Until the completion of the closure dam, there wasn't any communication with the UP mainline on the south side of the river.
4281588
Yeah, he might be a big deal in Ponyville, but he's got nothing on a real draft horse.
4281588 4286517
I guess there must have been multiple ones, then, because I'm pretty sure that the one I'm thinking of was in California somewhere. I read an article on it in Model Railroad magazine years ago, 'cause the guy was modeling that railroad in that era. I want to say that it was somewhere in/near the Sierra Nevada mountains, but I don't remember. Yosemite Valley, maybe?
This bothers me. Oats and what? Oats, spices, and butter to hold it together and make it fry? Gaah! This is nearly as frustrating as Hay Bacon!
4901758
I’d think that if you made them the consistancy of thick porridge and then cooked them like pancakes, they’d probably stay together with few added ingredients. Fine oat flour could of course be used in any kind of a bread-like form. There are recipes that use beans or chickpeas as a binder, and egg might work. For something sweeter, molasses could be used (especially the really thick stuff). They could be baked before being cooked for burgers.
They could also be made like hay cubes for pets are, then later on prepared by the restaurant for their uses. I found one source online that sells oat alfalfa cubes for horses that are prepared by “forcing it through a large die with heat and steam.” (Not terribly unlike how lemon drops are made, actually.)
Here, these are pretty simple and hold together with egg.
4902306
Wow. I wasn't expecting you to go dig me up the recipe, really. Thank you?
4902569
The funny thing is that in notes for Onto the Pony Planet, there are semi-frequently recipes. But I didn’t think to put one in here, since oatburgers are reasonably established in canon.
Hay bacon, I can’t help you with. There are of course many kinds of vegetarian/vegan/non-meat bacon versions of varying degrees of baconness, but since humans can’t eat hay, there probably hasn’t been much of a push to develop hay bacon. But if you want vegan bacon without hay, here’s a recipe.
You’re quite welcome.