Kilts are great for farm work. They aren’t immune to wear and tear, however. Expect as much grease and grime to get on your kilt as the jeans you might have worn otherwise. Kilts are a good deal cooler than jeans if they are cotton. They keep you a good deal warmer if they are wool. Farm work occurs year-round, so we prefer kilts for their heating and cooling qualities over jeans.
The Demands of Farm Work
There are a lot of types of farming. Many people on farms interact daily with machinery or animals. They might need a tractor for tilling, fertilising, or picking crops. They might use other machinery to process meat or veggies.
If they are in luck, the animals are on the friendly side, but there’s always the errant angry bull that charges people. We recommend avoiding bulls in a kilt, because kilts aren’t prone to getting stuck on horns.
In any case, machinery tends to run hot or cold. It’s a good idea to dress in a kilt because it defends your body from the extra heat or cold that machinery brings. Kilts also have pockets that are easier to access, which can come in handy because people on farms use a lot of tools and gadgets.
Farm work has tons of sharp instruments. Heavy-duty kilts will hold up to the accidental brush with a sharp tool better than a lot of jeans do. Denim fabrics seem to be made thinner and stretchier these days than the jeans of vintage years. The good old days of tough jeans are going to be replaced with the modern days of tough utility kilts, if you ask us.
A Better Fit
A well-fitting kilt with adjustable straps provides significantly better performance than a pair of jeans. Jeans tend to come in stretch these days to accommodate a wider range of sizes. Rather than utilising stretch fabrics, which tear and wear out easier than heavy-duty fabric, Ozkilts come in a sturdy utility fabric with only a tiny bit of stretch.
Most pants that are fit for working in need a belt, because they aren’t very tight. A belt doesn’t hurt anything, but a well-fitted kilt stays up by itself. Avoid baggy jeans. Wear a kilt.
Ease of Movement
If you stick with farm work for any length of time, you’ll develop some studly muscles. It seems everything is heavy on a farm. The livestock are especially heavy. The bulls are even heavier.
A kilt is much easier to move in than pants due to the side pleats and wide hem. Whether you’re deadlifting grain bags or steeling yourself against an ornery horse, you’ll find that a kilt provides optimum flexibility on a farm.
You should wear what makes you comfortable on a farm. If that’s a kilt, that’s fine by us! We think you’ll find that kilts are better suited to the heavy labour. They hold up better than most jeans to dirt and grime. If you get a utility kilt made in heavy-duty cotton, you can throw that sucker in the hot wash and forget about it.
Ozkilts has a solid range of kilts that are suited for every occasion. For farm work, we recommend checking out our Workman Utility Kilt.