At his core, Ralph Hampton is a farrier.

Not like Jack is in construction or Jill is an administrator. The Rosevine, Texas, shoer is a throwback to the days when a farrier fulfilled an important role in a small rural town.

“This is not something you do for a living,” he says. “This is something you do for life.”

And it’s something that his family has done for generations.

“We’ve had a working farrier on either side of my parents’ family for 215 years,” Hampton says.

Just to put it into historical perspective, a fella by the name of Thomas Jefferson was beginning the second year of his presidency and only a year away from completing the Louisiana Purchase. More recently, Hampton’s interest in the trade was influenced at an early age by his maternal grandfather and two uncles.

“It was all that we talked about at the supper table,” he says. “It meant a lot of people’s livelihoods.”

The stories were plentiful…