It pretty much rained through the olive harvest, or enough so everything was wet. I would pack in the morning a shopping bag of food to keep me sustained through what is a long, hard day.
And I would also pack an extra pair of boots and change of clothes, so I could get out of the wet clothes at lunchtime and start again with dry clothes and feet. At the end of the day I would put my boots by the fire and start again with dry boots the next day.

Didn't work this year. My boots got immediately soaking wet as soon as I walked through the wet grass, it was very cold, and I ended up with chillblains. My version of chillblains is red or purple toes that are very painful later on when your feet dry out and warm up. Its sort of like the cheap version of frostbite, with a side order of gout thrown in. The affected toes stay supersensitive to more doses of cold or wet. Our house has a tiled floor, and normally socks are ok. This year, after the chillblains, I had to wear slippers to keep them from getting cold.

I've discussed my preferences for boots before, but I finally had to agree my Blundstones weren't up to the job.

So, I am now the owner of lined "half" gumboots. Half in that they only come up past my ankles. My main issue with gumboots is the weight of full knee-high gumboots. Even by themselves they are heavy, but add a gooey lump of mud to the base and its hard going. The newer boots are much lighter as a result of the lesser size. The lining is a luxury.

They have a pretty wide throat. I have to remember to fold the cuffs of my pants over the top of the boots so the opening is covered, rather than tuck them in. I found out the hard way that wide gap is just begging to be filled with mud, woodchip, cow manure, water, stones...

Now that I have them I have noticed so many people wearing them. How come I didn't see that before!

Note: Nice. A month and a bit after the first chillblain started sticking pins into my toes, its mostly gone. Except...the parts of my foot that were affected are peeling, as if they have been burnt and/or sunburnt. Can I say, from a man used to seeing his feet look pretty ugly, peeling toes doesn't make it look better.