"Exactly! Waste not want not, after all." She smiles.

"And between my husband, and then my son, and his son after him, not to mention all the various apprentices and so on... well. Someone was always needing the forge. Better than they simply never went out, in the end."

She laughs. "Well, there was always the nearby river, on the hot days. We had a pond but that was for fish, not swimming, not that it stopped any of my boys from tipping each other in at times."