I prefer bare feet, i don't use pesticides on my yard and sandspur patches are removed when seen so its fairly safe to be barefoot. I do wear shoes when mowing and weedeating and i just use whatever shoes that have seen better days and have been converted to yard shoes.

I was reading that bare feet are healthy and there have been somes studies that suggests going bare foot is good for mental cognition as your brain must make decisions based on info recieved from the soles of your feet so you can walk and it receives more info and must make more decisions when one is bare foot than shoed.

I did have an elderly neighbor wished she could go bare foot but her mother told her when she was a girl that only the wrong kind of woman went barefoot.

I use old sneakers. They stay outside because they pick up tons of sand. After a few weeks I hose them off and throw them in the washing machine.

They are beat up, but work for me.

I tried muck shoes, bought a pair of plastic, rubbery ones but I didn't find them comfortable. They made my feet hot and sweaty and I wound up throwing them out.

I save my old sneakers which I wouldn't wear anywhere except the garden.

Pea, I read about that too. When I lived in NY I did go bare foot outdoors when I worked in the garden. I hardly wore shoes all summer. Not sure it did anything for my brain, but was comfortable because we had a nice lawn.

When I first moved to Florida, walking around barefoot left my feet full of sand and then I accidentally stepped on a nest of fire ants. Wound up in the ER do to the amount of bits on my feet and ankles.

No bare feet for me in Florida!

Jane

Jane-

i was born down here. Fire ants are just par for the course. Oddly there are way less fire ants in the neighborhood now than when i was a kid. Mom always complained the fire ants would nest right under the clothes line and dad would go out and pour gas on the nest and set it on fire...as a kid i always thought that was why they were called fire ants. Another beasty that is an enemy to bare feet is the ground nesting bees or wasps...you step on the nest and your feet are stung but thats part of the mental cognition thing, the mind stays spry enough so you are actively looking for danger to avoid it.

I spend a lot of time yardening, so I should wear something that supports my arches. Instead, I've worn old loafers, ruined from water, and saved my comfy Teva type sandals to wear in public. Probably a mistake. One foot has rebelled from having my weight too forward: a tendon (?) under the center toe has been unhappy for 6 months. I should change shoes... thanks for the nudge, RoseGuy... I will conscript my oldest Teva pair and rig a way to fasten them on as quickly as I could slip into the loafers..

Crocs. Or if in really rainy, mucky weather, any wellies of choice :-)

Did it! Yay! Now, if someone would tell me that my overstuffed closets can be mined for compost....

Like Jane_ny, I too wear old sneakers while gardening. I love walking barefoot in the grass but not here in Florida. I have developed all sorts of allergies since I moved down here and insect bites which caused normal reactions before, now make my immune system go into overdrive!

I wear an old pair of croc knock-offs. I keep them outside on the porch.

Thank you for all of the replies. I appreciate the alternatives that you gave me to think about.

On my back stoop, I keep a pair of slip-on soft plastic scuffs. Last year a raccoon, I assume, kept trying to carry them across the yard in the dark, getting them as far as the base of the tree he climbs. Also dragged the rubber doormat halfway there.

Sloggers gardening clogs. Very comfortable. I often have to interrupt to let a dog in, make a call and whateve, so I don’t want to tie shoes every time.

I have rubber garden clogs, but they are backless, and I hardly ever wear them. I mostly retire my old sneakers to be my new garden shoes every year, then toss the old ones. I don't bother to ever wash them. Fire ants love me, so I always wear some kind of shoes when I'm out there. I swear, I can be 20 feet from the nearest above-ground nest, and they'll find me. Of course, fire ant nests can go out for 20 feet in every direction, so I'm wary of them.

@Pea, be careful going barefoot down here. I got a parasite going barefoot while gardening in SC called strongyloides that is incurable. It's endemic to the sub-tropics and tropics. Came in right through the bottom of my foot. I still have to take medicine for it every six months. Also, hookworms are endemic here, especially if you have animals, and those things can kill you. My brother got hookworms when we were young, and he was very sick.

Mudruckers- last a long time , are waterproof, and very comfortable. Usually available where equestrian supplies are sold online. Smartpak is where I usually

buy mine.

Ditto on DG's advice. My grandson has been battling parasites in his feet also. I wear Crocs I keep outside. I have lots of animals running around and also wear them in my chicken pen. The only bad part are the holes which always collect acorns. I guess it's a little more exercise shaking them out.

I've ran around barefoot all my life...can't see that stopping now. I've got nice hard florida feet. In college i always ran out of the house forgetting my shoes so just went to class shoeless no one seemed to care.

@pea - I went barefoot all my life too. I didn't get a parasite until I was 42 and living on property that once had farm animals on it. I think the people who lived there used their manure in the garden, because that's where I got the parasites. I didn't go barefoot anywhere else out there because of fire ants. You can do what you want, but I just wanted to warn you. These strongyloides got into my eyes and I could feel them boring into my eyeballs. That's how I found out I had them. There was no other sign. A parasite's job is to stay hidden so they can feed off of you. By the time they found mine, they had disseminated all over my body and I was hyperinfected because of my lupus (autoimmune disease). I had to go into the hospital and be on an anti-helmintic drip and have my eyes flushed out three times a day with this stuff that felt like they were pouring fire into my eyes and have some sort of smelly stuff rubbed onto my skin every day too. It's not pretty. They told me I was lucky, that 70% of people who get hyperinfected die, and the bad part is most people don't know they have them until they are hyperinfected. It took me two years to get them under control, and I'll have to take these meds the rest of my life.

I remember my grandmother telling us never to go into the stockyard at her house without shoes, because we'd get worms. Guess she was right.

Another reason not to go barefoot. The tetanus bacteria can live for years and years in soil contaminated by animal feces. We raised horses when my boys were

little and they always wanted to run around barefoot. Once I learned about tetanus,

no more barefeet. And yes parasites infecting through the feet are real in Florida.

Even chickens can get bumblefoot from them by walking around barefooted. no joke.

I bought sloggers this winter and really like them. I keep them inside whenever I remember because I worry about a snake or lizard curling up inside. Very comfortable, but can get hot in direct sun.

I love going barefoot, but after reading this thread and looking up those worms... no way.

Gosh, Deb, how awful for you. But you do have the distinction of being the only human I know who's had nematodes.

Yeah, when we were kids growing up in FL they always wanted us to wear shoes because of the possibility of hookworm.

Roseguy, I use eIther my rattiest sneakers or boots you describe w/very cushy inner soles. I buy boots a 1/2 size larger so insoles don’t crowd my feet

writersblock, most people never get hyperinfected, and the only symptoms they have are digestive issues, which they doctors diagnose as leaky gut or IBS. I had both, and when I finally got the parasites treated, they both went away. Like I said, a parasite's job is to stay hidden. There were a lot of men who came back from Viet Nam with strongyloides, in fact, there has been an ongoing study of them since the 1970's. Believe it or not, 4% of the people in West Virginia have them. It's usually associated with poverty and places with open sewage. It's a real problem in third-world countries, as are other horrid parasites. I know more about parasites now than I ever wanted to know. Most doctors write you off as "delusional" if you tell them you think you have a parasite, because here in the U.S., they are taught we don't have a parasite problem. The testing methods we have are abysmally useless. Even now, I have to take my medical records with me when I get a new doctor, because otherwise, they will write me off with "delusional parasitosis" if I tell them I have a parasite.