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!
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