Pair of straw boots (berloce)

Shoes made of straw plaits were used as protective footwear when working on the farm during the winter. They were particularly useful when threshing grain with a flail. Furthermore, they provided comfortable warmth for a person's legs during sleigh rides. Threshing with the flail was carried out on the barn's threshing floor in winter. It was handled by men, usually working in twos, taking turns beating according to a set rhythm. It was possible to thresh about a crown of rye, or 36.5 kilograms, in a single day. This rhythmic work was sure to keep you warm even in freezing weather. However, it required prolonged standing in one place, causing the legs, especially the feet, to freeze. A straw shoe, into which the foot was fitted and secured with a thick woollen sock or a footwrap, provided excellent insulation from the cold ground and retained heat better than any leather shoe. Berloce, as they are called in some regions of Poland, were made from rye straw, the only kind suitable for products of this kind. They were woven using a simple braiding technique involving spirally building up individual rows and sewing them together with string. Typically, these were produced in the comfort of one's own household. Iwona Karwowska