"They get new shoes every six to eight weeks if they're used for riding a fair bit. The shoes are for traction, support and protection," said Cresco farrier Jarred Lund, speaking to visitors at Historic Forestville's new "New Shoes for Horses" interpretive program last Saturday as he inspected, filed and shod a horse as part of a demonstration meant to illustrate what is necessary to fit horseshoes to horses, animals which were the main source of transportation in 1899.
Lund showed program attendees how a horse's hoof is first cleaned, then filed on the sides and bottom. "You clean the foot and get it ready, go ahead and trim it. Proper maintenance keeps hooves healthy. They shed their hoof wall about two to three times a year, on average, and it's best to keep them trimmed to keep bacteria out, so top-dressing them is as important as anything - if a hoof starts getting long, it puts pressure on the tendons and ligaments. The hoof grows out as far as it is wide and down the same length, so if you don't keep that filed, you don't have a healthy 'frog'...a tight foot is a healthy foot, so keeping shoes on a horse helps keep the horse supported."
Lund has been in the business for the past 11 years and trained in Kentucky because "it's hard to find a horse shoer, and even then, a good horse shoer...plus, I don't want to work in an office or on someone else's hours, so I might as well do something I enjoy."
Mass-produced horseshoes were first made during the mid - to late-1800s, and that changed slightly how they were put on horses. Instead of having to forge a whole new shoe for each hoof, farriers like Lund were able to shoe each horse in less than two hours by simply cleaning and filing hooves, then by heating the manufactured shoes on a forge, "hot-shaping" or fitting them to the hoof while still hot off the forge, then "cold-shaping" them, or putting the shoes back in the forge after hot-shaping them and then hammering them into shape on an anvil.
Once the shoes are shaped, they are nailed to the hooves, then the nails are trimmed using a tool called a "clincher." "Once you've got the shoe shaped the way you'd like it, you can put it on the horse. The clincher bends the nail over into a groove that I made...it helps get a good flush hoof wall so that the nail won't catch on anything."Lund pointed out that there are different sizes of nails to be used with the Cleaning sydney, and that they're "beveled so that they go in faster." Additionally, he stated that there is a difference between standard shoes and shoes for draft horses, noting that "there's a lot more steel in draft horseshoes."
The farrier's services on display as a demonstration were part of Historic Forestville's efforts to show village visitors what different parts of daily life might have been like for those who lived there. This is, in addition to its existing programming which includes tours of the Thomas Meighen house and store, the wagon barn and the farmyard as they might have been in 1899, the year that staff at the site interpret through events such as its bread and butter-making day, its garden planting and harvesting, its preservation and canning event and its "By the Light of the Lantern" late-evening Saturday leisure event. The site is also marking the commemoration of the Civil War's sesquicentennial, this year with "Days of '63," a Civil War encampment that is set for Saturday, July 27, and Sunday, July 28.
He realizes that the business is in its infancy, and that it takes time to build a base. “I’m a supporter of all things local,” he said. “I like that it’s based in the Twin Cities and that it’s free.”Malinis also likes the idea of being the megaphone for small businesses. “I really wanted to promote the dog walker I use and get the word out about how happy I am,” he said.He’s written half a dozen reviews of businesses so far, including a painter and a house cleaning service.
Linstroth said the site made a deliberate decision to include only positive reviews. There are a lot of high-quality skilled service workers who are humble and aren’t good at marketing, he said.“We wanted to pass the word around for those great businesses, like the bike repair guy who works out of his basement.”
While Heroic doesn’t deliberately focus on one- or two-person businesses, that’s been the majority of businesses that have been reviewed so far.Users writing only about the good eggs, not the bad apples, makes for a smaller number of reviews, eliminating the average and below-average companies. Most of the companies listed at Heroic have only a handful of reviews.
That’s troubling to Robert Krughoff, founder and president of the nonprofit Center for the Study of Service, which publishes the ratings magazine Consumers’ Checkbook in seven metro regions, including the Twin Cities.A larger sample of reviews improves the consumer’s odds, he said. Twenty people giving a company good reviews is preferable to one person’s kudos, who may have just had good luck, he said.Krughoff said the most-helpful consumer reviews are for hotels or products, but service providers can be trickier. That, he says, is why 10 or 20 or more reviews are better than a handful.
“Some consumers wouldn’t know a good plumber from a bad one,” he said. “The important thing if you’re using Facebook friends as evaluators of service is to narrow the group down to friends who are consumer-savvy and don’t want to waste money.”
Peek at any social media platform during DST and you'll see thousands of parents bitching mightily about the horrible injustice of having to set the clocks forward or back. It screws up their kid's sleep schedule for weeks. It's totally pointless. It's the worst. I was like that too, until the beautiful year came when I could just send my kids to bed and whether or not they fell asleep right away didn't affect me at all. Now I can't wait to set the clocks forward because it signifies the end of the Pacific Northwest season of Just Kill Me when it's dark out at 4 p.m., and I'm sorry, I cannot muster the energy to care that it's not universally loved by my fellow parents.
The fascinating thing about having children is how your world expands overnight -- yet somehow everything simultaneously narrows. In those early months, I think everyone has a sort of tunnel vision where it's all about just making it through the day. We react with fury to things that disrupt the flow, even though they're usually perfectly innocent.
Click on their website www.mvpcleaning.com.au.
No comments:
Post a Comment