Okay... It may seem strange that, after so many years of promoting farriery as a proper profession with a high standard of practical competence, I would publish a primer for horseowners wishing to shoe their own animals.
This project actually didn't start out that way. You see, one of my primary interests for decades has been "doomsteading". Basically, setting up and living on a rural farmstead designed to withstand the various social, economic, and natural disasters that happen from time-to-time. I was part of some of the Internet's discussion forums on the subject of coping with broad collapse, and was bemused by how much nonsense some "Doomers" were throwing around. Especially when it came to hippie-dippy wishful thinking about self-sufficiency from a tiny garden and reliance on a "community" of similarly clueless people. Especially (and irrationally) optimistic was the notion that they could wait until AFTER some apocalyptic, civilization-ending event to start their doomsteads.
Having been on our own doomstead since Y2k was the upcoming End Of The World threat (no, we weren't really worried about that one), we'd figured out a good bit of what did and did not really work. So I decided that my next book would be on low-nonsense doomsteading.
I soon realized that the book was becoming a full set of encyclopedias. Real world derailments and health crises made me realize that it was likely that either myself, Western Civilization, or both, were going to go belly-up before I could get the thing finished and published! So I scaled the project down to my general field of expertise, horse keeping... Then again to my professional bailiwick, horseshoeing.
It doesn't take a nuclear war type KABOOM to create a situation where lots of horseowners will be unable to hire competent, professional farriers. You don't have to be too geriatric to remember times when folks simply didn't have the money to pay fair prices for horseshoeing, and journeymen farriers couldn't afford to drive all over the countryside doing small-time stops. It is probably no coincidence that magical "barefoot horse trimming" snake oil blossoms in popularity when there is even a moderate economic downturn.
Considering how much some people vying to rule the country loathe fossil fuels, it might not be a bad idea for folks to learn to shoe their own damned horses. Just in case they become involuntarily Amish!
.
---
- 30 -
.
No comments:
Post a Comment