101 Uses for Baling-twine: Part Two

For someone who doesn’t enjoy making lists, the task will no doubt be insurmountable. Still, I’ll give it a go and see how far I get. I’m grateful that the challenge doesn’t involve my least favourite kind: the ‘to do’ list.

To lighten my mood beforehand, I’ll share with you a list that, whenever I go back to it, makes me smile. It’s a classification system devised by Jorge Luis Borges, in which he claims that:

A certain Chinese encyclopedia divides animals into:

1. Belonging to the Emperor
2. Embalmed
3. Tame
4. Sucking pigs
5. Sirens
6. Fabulous
7. Stray dogs
8. Included in the present classification
9. Frenzied
10. Innumerable
11. Drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush
12. Et cetera
13. Having just broken the water pitcher
14. That from a long way off look like flies.

There’s another classification system devised by me, in which I claim that:

A certain New Zealand encyclopedia divides baling-twine into:

1. Belonging to the Prime Minister
2. Embalmed inside the rumen of a cow
3. Tethering a tame goat
4. Hog-tied
5. A cause for alarm
6. Fabulous
7. A leash for stray dogs
8. Included in the present classification
9. Hyperactive
10. Innumerable
11. Drawn with a 4B pencil
12. Et cetera
13. Having just fixed the water pipe leak
14. That a heap of twine from a long way off looks like blue spaghetti.

Now I’m in the right mood! Let’s make a start.

Our 101 uses for baling-twine:

1. Tethering a tame goat – see 3. above (actually a leash used as a brief restraint – we don’t tether)
2. Hog-tied – see 4. above (piglets transported in sacks – in the days when we kept pigs)
3. Drawn with a 4B pencil – see 11. above (by June – she also uses an HB pencil for her drawings)
4. Having just fixed the water pipe leak – see 13. above (by bending over the end of the alkathene pipe)
5. Farm gate hinges (most do have gudgeon pins)
6. Ties for closing a farm gate (most do have hook and staple catches)
7. Tied around a permanent wooden fence post and then an electric fence tread-in post to hold it firmly in place at the end of a temporary electric fence line
8. Tied around a permanent fence post and then looped over the top of a temporary electric fence tread-in post to act as both an insulated (plastic) latch and to tension the fence
9. Tied around the top of a tread-in at the end of a temporary electric fence line to replace the top plastic hook that’s eventually broken off as a result of the tension placed on it by the pull of the wire (See use no. 8)
10. Used as a pretend length of temporary electric fence wire when you’re moving cows along a channel
11. Used as an insulator to attach the end of a temporary electric fence line directly onto a wooden post or metal warratah
12. Used to ‘repair’ and secure wooden gate and fence rails when you’re out in the paddock and don’t have hammer, nails and replacement rails (if needed) to hand
13. Used as a stay at a right-angled corner of a temporary electric fence
14. Strings for hanging bunches of onions from the garage rafters
15. Strings for runner beans to climb up
16. Stringing up tomato plants in the tunnel house
17. Attached to posts and stretched out and tensioned horizontally to support the broad bean plants
18. Tying up unruly shrubs and bushes
19. Sack ties
20. Looped around the ballcock housing of our two portable plastic water troughs, to add strength and rigidity to the sides of the housing (fixes a weakness in the design)
21. Ties to support sunflowers
22. Ties to support capsicums
23. Stretched across roof trusses to support building paper
24. Looped around a 15,000 litre concrete water tank’s outlet pipe and then tensioned and tied around the tank to prevent cattle from moving the pipe back and forth as they rub against it (the movement eventually broke the seal round the hole which fed the pipe connector to the ballcock and water streamed down the side of the tank)
25. Replacements for broken horizontal stays on an aluminium dual purpose ladder (2.1m closed, 3.85m extended)
26. Securing a stand-alone wardrobe to a bedroom wall so that it won’t topple over in an earthquake (I did that when our daughter had our bedroom for several months after she gave birth to her second child)
27. Suspending a hen feeder from the centre ridge support of the hen house
28. Tying off the oesophagus of a goat carcass before hanging it from a gambrel (otherwise you get the stomach contents pouring out)
29. Securing one side of a goat’s carcass by a back leg to a gambrel so that you can unhook the other side for butchering (with no counter-weight the remaining side would end up on the floor)
30. Tying down tarpaulins
31. Securing a goat hay feeder to the wall of a shed
32. Attaching a hammock between two tree trunks
33. Marking out the perimeter for a teepee by attaching the twine to a stick at the centre point and scoring the ground as you walk around with the twine stretched tight at the radial length of the teepee
34. Tying overtrouser suspenders tight across my chest so that they don’t slip off my shoulders and the trousers end up round my ankles
35. Et cetera – see 12. above
36. Et cetera – see 12. above
37. Et cetera – see 12. above
38. You can see where I’m going with this: 35. to 101. (inclusive): Et cetera – see 12. above.

Et cetera

Well, there you are, our 101 uses for baling-twine. If you think I’ve come up a little short, I’m sure you’re more than capable of coming up with uses of your own devising. To get you started, I did a quick Google search and found Dave’s Garden: 25 Uses For Baling Twine (davesgarden.com).

That’s all from Little Owl Gully till next Monday. It’s late autumn and leaves are strewn about the place. In my next post, I’ll tell you about our autumn leaves. Bye for now and thanks for your company.