Scholars often divide history into segments based on the technology. There was the Stone Age, Iron Age, Age of Aquarius and Misinformation Age, for examples.
People do the same with our lives, and farmers are people. Based on technology of last resort, we can look back from the Zip-tie Age, Duct Tape Age and Tarp Strap Age to one of the longest, the Baling Wire Age.
Recall the 60-lb. square bales barely restrained by soft iron wire. The wire-tie baler changed more than just how we fed forage; it created a whole family of applications for the wire byproducts.
Removed by finding the easy corner to pull off, the hoops were doubled to form figure-8 coils we tidily stored. Or tossed as loops into a spare feed room.
ENDLESS USES
For much of this stash of steel bindings, its useful life was just beginning. Being soft, exposed metal, it would be a relatively short existence of rapid oxidation.
From this trove, ingenious minds fashioned inventive splices, fasteners, hold-downs, ties, connectors and substitutes for machinery parts to get by or keep going.
From muffler hangers to broken belt buckles, there were few problems baling wire couldn’t tackle, sometimes successfully. Indeed, the term haywire originates from such repairs pushed past their limits.
The largest and most successful re-use of baling wire was the most fitting: to help contain the animals it helped feed. In an era of ubiquitous farm livestock, fences of all types divided farmsteads. The cheapest was woven wire connected with staples designed to slowly work out, calling for baling wire to refasten the fence to posts.
All those enclosures required gates, some of which swung on hinges for several months after installation. The final configuration, however, was baling wire connections at both ends, which allowed the gate to open either way. The wires at the swinging end were tied and retied as the gate was used, producing fatigue failure while rusting.
The result was short kinks that barely met but would if forced. Unlike fancy-schmancy zip-ties, baling wire was a many-timer. Usually one time too many, in fact.
During the 1950s an animal scientist desperate for a thesis topic calculated at any time, several million animals were only 1" of kinked wire away from going AWOL.
POSTS AND PASTS
While this ode to baling wire might seem a little over the top, consider this: when balers switched to twine and/or large bales, small livestock producers melted away, farm lots sprouted corn and beans and fences were gradually ripped out.
Baling wire tied farms not just to posts but to pasts.
