I can remember as a young kid when feed came in feed bags. Big burlap bags, some were softer cotton bags, and we brought livestock feed home from the feed elevator in them. Sometimes I would get to see them filling the bags with fresh ground feed. The feed came out of a hopper with a slide gate and the man would wrap the top of the bag around the opening and open the slide and the bag would fill with feed, along with the fragrance of grain and molasses wafting out all over. Then he would wrap the top of the bag together and wrap a twine around and pull it tight. It was secure. They would throw it in the back of the truck and stack them high.
My dad would stack them in the feed room in the barn. I couldn’t lift the bag, but I could open it and fill a pail to feed it to the livestock. One day I built some pallets out of 2 x 4’s to stack the feed on. My dad commented that it seemed like a waste of effort. The bags were just as good on the floor. One day when I got home from school, he handed me a $20 bill and thanked me for building the pallets. Seems like a water pipe leak had flooded the feed room that day. Those pallets saved a lot of feed.
Some of the bags were pre-filled and they had stitching across the top. There was a way to open them. My dad did it so simply. He just found the right string and pulled it and magically the string came apart. It looked so easy. I think it was really algebra because I never got it. It was necessary to open it properly as not to damage the bag. These were valuable and we returned them to the elevator each week to be refilled. I usually resorted to cutting the string with my jack knife until I got the right one or completely removed the offending string holding the top closed. That trick would not be handed down because I could never master it.
I have come across some of these colorful bags around the farm. They bring back memories. A trip to the feed store was always exciting for an 8 year-old farm boy. I remember the jingles on KDHL radio for the feed companies. The Checkerboard song still rings in my mind. Purina Feeds were popular back in the 1960’s. Now bags are easier. They have a tab one can pull and usually directions on how to open it quickly. And bags are paper or plastic and you dispose of them after the first use.
I remember my mom telling me about how housewives would clean the soft cotton bags and make clothes out of them. Feed companies during the depression would dye the bags colorful patterns. I don’t imagine the burlap bags were used for clothing. I found a white bag used for oats with a picture of a stallion on it when I was young. It had escaped the mice in the granary and was in great shape. My mom sewed a drawstring in the top and I used it as a gym bag at school.
Another knot I was never good at tying was baler twine. Rolls of baler twine had to be connected every time they were replaced. I was too young to lift bales so I drove the tractor and my neighbor Walt loaded the wagons. He would lift the new twine roll into the compartment on the baler and fish the end out of the center and tie them together. If it wasn’t done right, it would jam when going through the knotter on the baler. He made it look so simple. Many years later when I was in charge, I discovered it was not as easy as it looked.
