>>2818620unless you have excellent foot circulation barefoot boots and winter just don't go together. the only thing i could possibly imagine that is near barefoot and prob has a few mm lift and would work for winter (preferably dry winters away from oil due to natural rubber) is stekleger mukluks out of minnessota. it's made to be used with a wool insole and wool boot liner. that's what you want. pairing 2 socks is typically a big fail because you're talking about:
1) forcing a boot to fit to a volume it typically won't allow.
2) all the spandex in the socks is going to cut off circulation.
The only exception I can see to this is wearing a thin liner sock probably of a polyester for wicking sweat and an outer of wool.
Furthermore vivobarefoots while wider then your average boot aren't wide enough to allow the volume/width of multiple layers especially for your toes.
If i'm going cheap i'd just get eva boots with a liner. I like the russian ones by torvi and nordman. there's a couple polish brands that do so as well. eva is a light material (croc material, just keep away from fire/leaving out in sun during summer) that isnt affected by radiation. this means it doesn't breathe as well but the liner helps fix that and gives many good hours of use, plus you can change liners out during the day.
I'm not as much of a fan of the other alternative of muck type boots because the polyurethane tends to crack between seasons and the neoprene tends to shred easily but ymmv.
I can't even think of a leather boot i'd recommend for winter outside of the stegleger. Maybe the like very expensive boots with thinsulate but they tend to be built for one purpose and wouldn't work well for summer threatening the polyurethane outsole with hydrolysis.
