Certified farrier Jessie Ward overcomes stereotypes in male

Jessie Ward has been defying the expectations of society since she was young and continues to do so today.

Ward is a third-generation farrier. A farrier makes horseshoes and performs hoof care. She learned the trade under her father, the late Luther “Smokey” Ward, who learned from his father. She said her father initially had doubts that a woman could be a farrier but supported her in the end.

Jessie Ward travels around with her farrier tools to go to her clients.

“Years ago, girls were only going to be a teacher or a nurse,” Ward, 64, said. She never wanted to do either of those jobs — “I was gonna shoes horses.”

And she’s just reached the half-century mark of doing exactly that.

A large amount of the tools she uses, such as shaping tools and anvils, were passed down to her from her father. She works out of a room attached to the house she grew up in that holds a large and small furnace and all of her tools that aren’t stored in the farrier truck.

Attached to Jessie Ward’s Mount Olivet home is a workshop with furnaces and tools.

Ward, who does not have horses horses herself, has a truck with a compartment on the back the opens up like a small shop as she travels around to the different customers to shoe their horses.

“I try to keep up with the things, the new things, that come in all the time” about horseshoeing, Ward said. This involves reading books and new information and attending gatherings on horse shoeing, she said.

“When I was a little girl, I would go with my dad” to those farrier gatherings, Ward said.

Jessie Ward makes art pieces, like this firewood rack, on commission.

She said one time she pulled up to a client’s house and he asked her what she was doing. He said he had someone coming to shoe the horses and she responded, “Well, why’d you call me?”

Since she knows all the farriers in the area she asked who was coming. He replied that Jessie Ward was coming out. When she told him she was Jessie Ward, he still didn’t completely believe her or that she was capable of shoeing his horse.

“He says, ‘A woman can’t do that,’” Ward said.

Jessie Ward makes a variety of art such as this globe made of horse shoes. A similar piece is on exhibit at Piedmont Arts’ Gravely-Lester Art Garden.

She was willing to leave, but required him to still pay her for her time as she could’ve been with another client if he wasn’t going to let her do the work. So, he let her do the work and afterwards he was shocked that the horse behaved so well with her.

“He said ‘She loved you,’” Ward said. The horse had not responded so well with other farriers that had come to work on the same horse.

“I’m not working for the people that own the horses. It’s the horses that I’m working for,” she said.

When she isn’t shoeing horses, she enjoys partaking in some artistic activities. She is a member of the Lynwood Artists, painted the elephant mural on East Main Street in Martinsville, is teaching a basket weaving class at Piedmont Arts and makes art on commission when people ask.

Some of her commissioned creations are made with the same tools she uses in her trade as a farrier. She works with different metals, gets them hot in a furnace and then shapes them into art with different tools.

Sunny is what Jessie Ward names this sunflower-man sculpture that she made.

She’s made a matching set of firewood holders with intricate details. In her yard she has a large globe shaped statue made up entirely of horse shoes except for the base; a similar piece is on display in Piedmont Arts’ Gravely-Lester Art Garden. She has a variety of sculptures around her property that she made herself, including a dragon over her furnace and a sunflower-man sculpture she calls Sunny.

She has a home garden with multiple rows of large garden beds that she loves to grow her own vegetables in, has a dog named Buddy, keeps pet chickens, has a Harley Davidson motorcycle and loves to take drives in her Polaris Slingshot, which is a three-wheeled motorcycle car hybrid.

Monique Holland is a reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. She can be reached at [email protected]

or at 276-734-9603.

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