It’s been a long winter. Spring should be around the corner. However, yesterday, we had another snow storm. Well, half snow, half rain. Roads are a woefully-muddy mess. Ranchers are using up the last of their winter hay and some are having to buy more, which means bale string accumulates everywhere.

In the bed of the pickup. Or hanging like orange hair off a broomstick stuck vertically in the corner of the truck’s framework. Or making a floor mat on the passenger side of the vehicle. Sooner or later the wads of string might make it to the burn barrel, but don’t count on it until green grass arrives.

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THE TWINE THAT BINDS

“Ranchers are using up the last of their winter hay and some are having to buy more, which means bale string accumulates everywhere.”

Now, baling string’s a common thing

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Real useful on a ranch

It fixes fences, ties up gates

And maybe holds up pants

It binds together bales of hay

Of brome and orchard grass

Or timothy or clover or rye

Or grains of any class

When winter comes, and snow lies deep

A ranch man loads a bunch

Of string-tied bales into his truck

To take the cattle lunch.

Each time he busts a stretched-tight string

And scatters out the hay

He’s left a-holding loops of twine

That pile up day by day

What a rancher does with string

Reveals which traits are native

Cuz some are neat and some are slobs

And some downright creative

Now some just drop it on the ground

That ugly tangled string

It makes a mess and chokes out growth

Of new grass in the spring

While others toss it in the truck

In piles behind the cab

By spring the string has turned into

A heavy, concrete slab.

Or if the stockrack’s fastened on

It makes a handy place

To loop the strings like strands of hair

A kind of burlap lace

Or if the wife does arts and crafts

In a unique artistic way

She might braid those colored strings

In handsome macramé

No matter how the stuff gets used

When winter comes around

In every rancher’s pickup truck

More bale strings will be found!❖