Every hobby farmer needs some rubber boots.  Mud goes with farms like mallards go with water.  And on our farm, even more so, since due to the layers of basalt rock just below our shallow soil we get large seasonal ponds and expansive puddles.  Rubber boots are a must.  Cheap rubber boots are fun, and you can find them in bright colors, but they only last a year or so before breaking up at the bend points of the heel or over the top of toes.  Sometimes one just wants to splash through puddles like a kid, without getting wet socks.  Other times, Oly the Elder will hide in the middle of the pasture pond when I’m trying to herd him back to the paddock, and I have to go in for him.  However I think he knows exactly how tall my boots are, and he stays just deep enough so I can’t reach him. Boots matter around here.

In about 2016 I bought a pair of red neoprene lined boots.  I bought them on clearance, through REI.  The brand was Bogs, and the model was “Tacoma”.  That sounded appropriate, since Tacoma is a city in the rain belt of Washington, so I figured they had to be waterproof.  The boots had a low heel, although the heel wasn’t really tall enough to qualify as a safety riding heel.  But they were better than most rubber boots.  Also, they were warm with the neoprene lining, so were good in snow.  They were tall, to get me through a snow bank or a deep puddle.  They even had a decent arch to support my feet on long walks on our muddy road.   Best of all, they were a stylish bright red color.  I loved those boots, and I wore them almost daily from fall through spring.     

Last week I wore them in a deep puddle while repairing a fence, and found they leaked at the left heel.  I was devastated.  My favorite red boots were failing me!  They only lasted eight years!  I haven’t truly investigated the leak yet, maybe they can be patched, but patches don’t usually last.  I will eke out the spring season, avoiding deep puddles as much as possible, and search for a new pair next fall.  But I am sad.  I am sure I will never find such a lovely pair of boots again, with such a bright color and long-lasting water-proofness.  And, of course, at an affordable clearance price. 

For now, I am offering my thanks to the best farm boots ever! Soon our ponds will be gone, and I will be digging out my best pair of light-weight leather summer riding boots. But the snow season and mud season will come again.  I’m crossing my fingers and my wet toes that I can find new mud boots that will last as long as the red Tacomas.  But I am not hopeful. 

As I sort through my old writings, I notice a lot of pieces about being tired, or being sick. The woes of a working mom with small kids. During the recent covid-hermit times, with the wearing of masks and constant hand-sanitizing, I didn’t catch colds. This week I relearned how miserable a plain old-fashioned head cold can be. I know I can’t complain, it’s just a cold, but, bleh, I’m sick and tired of it all. I think I am finally getting better, and my brain is less congested than before. I can think again. Below is a piece I wrote in 2007, at a time when I was reviewing a lot of federal water projects. It still rings true today.

The Common Cold

As if it wasn’t enough to be slowed down to a barely functioning level, with no help from kids and co-workers, but your voice gives you away by dripping with nasal tones, so that people on the other end of the phone start sniffling in sympathy.  Your nose flows a waterfall, moving along braided streams of reddened skin to the mouth.  The only way to control the flood is to go home and sleep with your head turned on the pillow, and a carefully engineered arrangement of Kleenexes on the downstream side of your nostril to act as levees and coffer dams to contain the flow.  The Army Corps of Engineers should be that good.