My Dad used to say Most anything could be fixed with bubble gum and baling wire. I remember our old car often breaking down out in the Thules. once DAd
handed me a wad on the side of the road and asked me to chew the flavor out. After a while, and it was stale, he took it, and patched a hose and splinted it in
position with baling wire. We made it home. We often used bubble gum to hold carburetors open. Baling wire was in every tool box.

That baling wire is real strong stuff. Occasionally , I still get it in our tires when we cross fields decades later. When I was a custom cutter. (Combine driver)
working for a migrant thrashing team I lost 5 tires in one day to baling wire. I still keep some around our shop. Used with a pair of pliers its great pinch vice.

I still help my father in law square bale every year. I have to say, By third cutting those round balers are looking pretty good. Still in tight new England fields with
winding edges nothing picks up a winnowed and tedded row like a square baler.

We have talked a lot lately on this KBBS about dangerous tools. I remember the most dangerous tools on the farm as being the bale hook. They were about a half
inch steel hexagon rod on a T-grip hickory handle. The rod was curved into a about a 4 inch question mark hook. Using a bale hook kept straw from stabbing into
your skin of your hands and breaking off, from handling bales. that kept infections down. The tool dangerous as it was had its place. But it could only be worked wit
hard and fast operational limits. We sharpened them till they drove through anything pretty much every morning before we went out on a wheel. It was good
reminder that wicked sharp was a close at hand for the rest of the day. We used them to to hook 90 pound bales and toss them up on the wagon on every dry
summer day. Ya swung them over your shoulder and down hard in one fell swoop lifting the bale and send it on its way. Landing at the feet of the guys on the
wagon. So they could stack it. Some guys were powerful enough to catch it in mid air and divert it to it right full place with out ever letting it land. Young guys used
two hooks old guys could finesse with one hook. Lots of hot sweaty dusty farm hands numbed by dehydration, the roar of the machinery, and the heat would swing
for the same bale and it was a big hurt on self or a friend. Rule used to be: everyone had a zone behind a wagon and you didn't work someone else's zone. Even
when you wanted to help a lagging friend doing so someone might get hurt.

We had to earn the privilege of using our tools. ...Every day. Adult hood meant you were respected enough to be trusted with tools. We learned that there was a
difference between tools and toys, and we treated tools differently reverently. Not just as systems but right down to the materials they were made of.
Respecting one's tools and keeping an edge on fear was a good thing. Knowing when you were dangerous was a gift you gave the people you worked around.
It was an absolute right to walk off a field if you felt the baling team you were working with was unsafe, and walking off. It wasn't appreciated, but everyone
understood.

In those days safety was more of an operational and training thing. Before guards and safety devices it was about doing it by rote the same way the right way
every time. Don't mistake me. Those were not the good old days I am pineing for. Most everyone got hurt on the farm at one time or another. the safety devices are
a very good thing. Still I sometimes think, the safety devices give us a false sense of security that have us weakening on the procedural and psychological aspects of
safety and tool use. Its better when we can be in the zone and apply all the parts of safety Devices, training, team safety, thought and mindset

I often wonder as we lose our agriculture what we will gain and lose as a society. Agriculture has largely been the creshe of our national character. As it disappears
in this nation, I find myself wondering what that means for our national character. Sometimes I think one of the first things that we are losing is a respect for our tools.
using them as toys. It seems to me what that the line between what is is tool and what is toy is is blurred. That's not an implication of the members of this BBS. I think
perhaps we are the hold outs. I think its more of a social commentary.

Today we can buy a tool with some cash and never be trained on it. We can bring home tools with much more power then ever once imagined and never be vetted
by others. We don't have to earn the right. We often work alone rather then watching out for each other. I am from the state of live free or die.. (Or wast hat live
freeze and then die ) So I appreciate the new freedom of this way of working, butI also see we pay a price for it.

I guess I am just wondering out loud, Still its worth thinking about
Guess I better get up to the hay maow.

!RUSS