If the village can only support one smith, and you’re the smith, then if you’re not bloody incompetent you can probably do just fine for yourself as long as you make sure to take on an apprentice eventually (it needn’t be until later in life). Nobody else’s business is smithing, so you don’t have any competition, and as long as your goods perform reasonably well you’re pretty much set.
If the village can only support one smith, and you’re the smith, then if you’re not bloody incompetent you can probably do just fine for yourself as long as you make sure to take on an apprentice eventually (it needn’t be until later in life). Nobody else’s business is smithing, so you don’t have any competition, and as long as your goods perform reasonably well you’re pretty much set.
At best you take a son as apprentice so that he can feed you when you are too old to work as smith.