Each pair of boots takes him roughly forty hours, spread across three weeks. He could speed that up — machinery exists that would cut the time in half — but he hasn’t bought any of it, and doesn’t plan to.

Learning the trade

He served his apprenticeship in the same workshop he still works in today, under a boot-maker who’d learned the trade from his own father. “There’s maybe five of us left doing it properly in the country,” he says, without much drama — it’s simply a fact he’s used to stating.

Why it’s not just nostalgia

A hand-made pair, properly cared for, will outlast three or four mass-produced pairs — and can be resoled almost indefinitely. His customers aren’t buying tradition for its own sake; a good number are farmers who’ve simply worked out that it’s cheaper in the long run.

Passing it on

He’s taken on his first apprentice in over a decade this year — a local woman in her twenties who found him through, of all things, a video someone else posted online. “She’s better with her hands at six months in than I was at two years,” he says. “So maybe it doesn’t die with me after all.”