Kentucky Horseshoeing School - Episode 409

Tucked away in the rolling hills of Mt. Eden, KY sits a school most people have never heard of and probably never knew existed. The Kentucky Horseshoeing School is a place where wanna-be farriers come (from all over the country and the world I might add) to learn the basics of horseshoeing. The training is intense (sometimes 8-22 weeks) with classroom instruction and several hands-on activities. Basic forging principles is a must to be a good farrier along with hoof trimming, shoe shaping and a good understanding of equine anatomy.

Most of the students are young guys who either grew up around horses or hoped to one day carve out a career shoeing horses. But there was one young lady in the school who seemed to be holding her own against the guys. She hailed from California and was quite an interesting sight to see amongst a sea of grungy guys. Truth be told, several women enter the program. Unfortunately, most drop out citing the grueling work and long days. I hope our gal passed with flying colors.

I couldn’t believe how physically demanding the work was and how much effort went into shoeing a horse. I also didn’t realize a horse must get new shoes every 5-6 weeks—it’s kinda like how we need a new pedicure every few weeks to keep the toes shining. Plus Old Trixie walks a lot better with new shoes and she’s a happier horse with them on.

By far, the most shocking aspect of training…involved the use of cadaver legs. Yes, you heard right. The school uses several cadaver legs to practice on….so they don’t maim a horse with a nail or some other implement. It’s a good practice standard to have, but you don’t want to be around when it’s time to go to the freezer to grab the newest cadaver leg.

The Kentucky Horseshoeing School is the brainchild of owner Mitch Taylor. He hopes to open a bigger, better school in Lexington, KY. Nothing pleases him more than to train the next generation of farriers - with a lifelong dream to further the development of this sometimes forgotten craft.

Yolanda Vazquez

A cheesy story

We're up to episode 410 now on America's Heartland.  

Depending on where you live, you might have just tuned in to see me sampling cheeses in Wisconsin. The state has a reputation for it's cheeses. We wanted to know exactly what makes Wisconsin cheese taste so good. I'm not sure we ever really found out. But I had a good time investigating.   We visited several places that have a passion for all things cheese.   The Beechwood Cheese Company has been at it for decades.  The Real Cheese Place in Janesville is the place to go for a history lesson.  (Side note: the owners of The Real Cheese Place get huge online props for snatching up the website www.wisconsincheese.com ) And if you are traveling to Milwaukee from Chicago, I suggest stopping by the Mars Cheese Castle.  

What's your favorite type of cheese? Cheddar? Swiss? Havarti?  Use the comments section and let me know why you love your Colby Jack.  Let's have a debate about cheese.  Right here on this blog.

Jason
(I prefer a good, aged cheddar)

There's no place like home

We see lots of interesting things along the byways the heartland. We're usually inclined to stop at the odd roadside attractions if we have time. Of course most of them don't end up in the show. But there's something about the oddities of Kansas that called out to us. They demanded an audience. And in season four, those roadside wonders get their due on America's Heartland.

In Goodland, Kansas it's the huge sunflower painting. We discovered it while looking for a place to eat dinner. We didn't find any place to eat besides the hotel restaurant, but did stumble onto the sunflower painting.

But "isn't that a Pizza Hut in the background? Why didn't you eat there?"

Why yes, it is a Pizza Hut. What good eyes you have. The Pizza Hut was closed "due to lack of management" according to a note on the door.

So with no luck finding a place to eat we headed back to the hotel. No...not the "K Inn" across the street from the painting. Despite it's value (less than 20 bucks a night), it appears the K Inn hasn't seen any guests besides stray cats for a while.

There are plenty of interesting things to discover in Kansas. But it takes time. The states tourism motto "As big as you think" is quite appropriate. It's the only state I know that uses its actual geographic size to entice visitors.

Probably wouldn't work for most other states...
Delaware: Yes, we're small. Get over it.
Hawaii: Can't get here by car.

But I digress. You'll also find the geographic center of the U.S. near Lebanon, Kansas. It's at the end of a country road and surrounded by corn fields. While we were there a couple stopped by and snapped a couple of photos. Geography again...

Photographer Steve Riggs asked me to capture the moment. Over his shoulder is the actual marker for the actual geographic center of the U.S. Well, the lower 48. If you throw in Alaska and Hawaii you'll the center is in Butte County, South Dakota. Yes, they have a marker too. No, we haven't been there. Yet.

Our final stop on our Kansas Oddities Tour was the "Garden of Eden." This place is hard to do justice with words. Think lots of cement + kooky old guy trying to make a political statement. He died before it was completed.

His sculptures leave visitors asking lots of questions. And if you want, you can ask them directly to him, despite his decaying state. His body is on display for visitors to see. His plan to support his family after he died: have people pay admission to see his body. And they do...although it doesn't appear that anybody is getting rich off of the Garden of Eden today.

So that's a small slice of the interesting stuff we found in Kansas. You'll see a complete wrapup in episode 409. Oh...I forgot about the World's Largest Ball of Twine. We had so much great stuff from Kansas we had to do a separate story on the giant twine ball. That's coming up in episode 422. Patience. It'll be here before you know it. It'll give you time to plan your trip to Kansas.

Jason