If you look at my hands, you can tell that the money I bring home is not earned with my hands. Comapre them to my father's, uncles or grandfathers and there is no doubt who went to college and is privilidged to work in climate controled comfort. Though I keep nearly every spare minute filled with a variety of maintance and expansion projects around the homestead, my hands do not show it; mostly thanks to good gloves.

This weekend I had a lot of work to do and I took off the gloves.

While I love good gloves and will still use them for more dangerous work, I have decided to start building some callouses and scar tissue now. Developing thick skin now reduce by one the number of things that might slow me down when I need to work with these hands in a more consistently rough environment.

I do not have nor cultivate ladylike feet for similar reasons. If I were younger I might since sex appeal can be an important asset, but under the circumstances I think tough feet are more important.

Smart move WC. We are getting so soft these days. I rarely use gloves for outdoor work unless it's raking leaves which can go on for hours in fall, and will create blisters. Even trimming back blackberry vines is done without them. I never really thought of it, but I simply do not use them. I just sanded the back deck prior to re-staining and did it without them. My wife uses them almost all the time! My kids used them to help stain the deck. My neighbors wear them all the time. Callouses are very important and serve us well.

Feet too. My feet are soft like most peoples hands. I should go barefoot more. In high school I was part of a group that went to school barefoot. We decided we were never wearing shoes again because they were un-hippylike and bourgeoise. It lasted a few weeks before the PE teachers made us quit. But I walked two miles to school and back and in no time at all my feet got really tough! I suppose anyone's feet could toughen up really fast like that too.

I always forget to wear work gloves... and I go around barefoot when at all possible. Not trying to toughen my hands/feet, I just like it better that way LOL

When I was still living in London I work mostly as a bricky. I built up fairly thick skin on my hands and often catch splinters that I dont feel initialy but find later on inspection. Wearing work boots all day long also built up thick skin on my feet and here lies the problem. I have had a running case of athletes foot for about 8 years now. I have used all the creams on the market to combat it but it hides under the thick calous and always spreads back from these. One Doctor took a look at it and told me I had it for life. I can keep it under control but never cure it. I'm going to try some herbal remedies this year. I have read that the green husks of walnuts are good for fighting athletes foot so I'm waiting for autumn and then I'm going to spend some long hours soaking my feet with water infused with walnut husk.