A Farmers Friend

Okay, you’re on the other side of the farm and the chain around the gate breaks. cattle on the other side of the gate only waiting to burst through at any sign of weakness. What do you do? Well of course, you reach into your pocket and pull out a piece of baling twine with which to tie around the gate until you can go and fetch something stronger.

Baling twine can be used for just about anything, it’s got a thousand and one uses, but mostly just for tying things together. From tying gates, to keeping things shut, to tying pallets together to make a temporary wall, to using it to hold up your pants when there’s no sign of a belt! It is always handy, but it’s like a box of biro’s. You just do not know where the rest of them went to. But then you realise that they’re all around you, but they’ve just become invisible, and blend in now with the scenery.

The one bad thing with them is that the sun breaks down the plastic in them in a year, and then become fragile and brittle … but by then they’ve probably earned their keep!

There’s lots of people that say that you should never use twine, but it can be an immense time-saver, and money saver too to be honest. But they can be bad for cattle, or calves more precisely, because the young ones get their teeth into them, and swallow and it has the possibility of choking them, or at the very least damaging their throat. So I use them sparingly, and only for as long as I need them

The gate in question … which is not in the best of shape itself, but it is okay because the baler twine is holding it together!

Of course I was out looking to see if anyone else called baling twine the farmers friend … and sure enough there is always someone else isn’t there: Farm Diva’s Best Friend