New!

Although I feel like I could work in the garden every day, all year long, it's probably good that there are a few months during the winter when there's not much I can do. It's a great time to inspect all of the tools that I'm too busy using during the growing season too even think about, let alone inspect or replace.

One of the "tools" that I've really not paid attention to this past year is my work shoes.

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Oh I knew they were getting a little beat up, but when I finally took a close look at them this fall I realized that I had to get a replacement pair. Today I got the new ones!

I don't think I've ever spent so much time and effort choosing footwear as I did with these.

I actually started looking before Christmas, but I don't have the best stamina when shopping for shoes or clothing so had to leave the shoe departments or stores after at most an hour or so -- usually much sooner than that. So the search took me several weeks.

I wanted something with a steel toe and was originally looking at work boots, but decided that a steel-toed hiking boot would be best for me. Here's what I ended up choosing:

Want to see what they're replacing?

Ok, but first you should understand that I've had these for a while... probably 4 years. They're pretty beat up. They're hikers too, but lack steel toes:

Yikes.

Once I started looking, work boots didn't seem to have an appropriate tread for climbing the slopes of my yard, but these have got some good "bite" to them:

They're oil-resistant too, which makes absolutely no difference to me:

What did make a difference to me though was that these were on sale: 1/2 price! Good thing I couldn't decide what I wanted sooner, as I would have bought them before the sale -- I'd probably never even know that they were on sale.


The old shoes don't have much traction anymore, and in fact are probably pretty close to wearing through. I really noticed it when stepping on rocks this past year:

The new ones have the most tongue loops that I've ever seen on a shoe before:

Good metal lace "eyelets" too -- avoid the nylon ones, as they just don't last from what I've read!

I had no complaints with the old shoes in the eyelet area:

In fact, I really didn't have many complaints with the old shoes at all except they didn't have steel toes and were just worn out.

The new ones are supposedly waterproof. The old ones, not so much:

In fact, not only are they not waterproof, they're also not compost-proof, mulch-proof, or pebble-proof. I spent a lot of time taking my shoes off to empty out various foreign object this past fall.

They were comfortable though -- quite well broken-in, as you can imagine.

The new ones will be stiff for a while, but they've got a good amount of padding (more than the old ones) so shouldn't be too bad even at the start:

I think I'm going to wear them around the house for the next few weeks to loosen them up a bit.

As for the old ones -- I think they're going straight into the garbage. They're way past being useful to anybody, even to a project like the Shoeman Water Projects (I think -- I'll verify though).

I can't wait to get out there this spring and give these new shoes a workout!