As I’m on a farm, muck boots are an indispensable daily-use object for me. They’re simple, cheap and effective. But they have their pain points.
The first is that the material is always super stiff. The ankles don’t bend well, making squatting and kneeling difficult. The stiffness also means you cannot easily and safely drive with them; the top lip of the boot can get wedged on the front of your seat, effectively locking your foot onto the pedal.
Secondly, getting them off can be a chore; you don’t want to grab the bottom since that’s the part covered in muck, so you kind of grab the top lip with both hands and shimmy your foot to release it.
Thirdly, they need to be worn with pants that go over them, not into them. I wear rubber coveralls. If you wear pants that go into the boot, eventually a load of liquid (or worse) makes its way inside the boot, where it pools at the bottom, having no place to go. Now you’re working with soaked feet, and this defeats the purpose of wearing the boot in the first place.
Japanese footwear manufacturer Moonstar has addressed these, with the help of some female farmers. Fukuoka Prefecture organized an Agricultural Women’s Project where these farmers were able to work directly with manufacturers to improve their products. The result is this Realiser muck boot, which features softer material in the body, and can of course be worn by both sexes.
I’ll provide a rough translation of the captions:
“Comfortable even for squatting work.”
“Easy to remove: Step on this part with the opposite foot.”
“Gaiter keeps out dirt and other materials.”
“Folds compactly and is convenient to carry.”
The Realisers run ¥6,380, or USD $41, which is ten bucks more than the boots I get from Walmart. If these were distributed here, I’d gladly pay it.
