Lucky Horse shoe #112

When we bought our current farm and acreage we had to have some foresight. Old buildings in terrible condition, an old farm house, and lots and lots of junk covered this property. As we started clean up, I started finding horse shoes...since this place had folks on it since the early 1900's, I found we not only had horse shoes all around, but LOTS of horse shoes...so, I started collecting and counting. The first few years here with the most productive. In the areas around the barns, produced the most horse shoes. And the funny thing was, they were all shoes that had been sucked off in the mud, lost by the wearer probably unknowingly. I found various types of shoes, a good amount of draft horse shoes, many, many mule shoes, and the rest just general horse shoes. Draft horses were used here years ago, to farm the ground, from a wheat crop to a hay crop which they brought to the barn on wooden sleds. Mules were later used by the owner here , as he was an outfitter. He took folks into the back country for hunting trips...and then of course, throw in alot of misc horses all needing shoes.

It has been several years since I had found any shoes. I was stuck on the total of 111. I saved most of them, and put them in our barn in various spots, used a few to make tack hangers with and saved the rest....but, yesterday as I headed down to feed in the evening...I heard that recognizable klink...a sound that one hears when they hit a part of a horse shoe...so, I looked down and saw an edge right at ground level. I took my hands and dug around it a bit, and my work revealed horse shoe #112! I wonder how many more years until I find the next one ;-)