Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

They, usually right-leaning They, like to say that Smith and Wesson built the West. (More centrist frontier historians generally maintain that it was the windmill — so you could produce water if you lived, you know, more than fifty feet from a river — and all of this of course refers to the time after most of the non-Western folks who earlier dwelled in the American West were either killed, relocated or subjugated.)

But the truth is, when you live here fourteen minutes and actually ranch (as in a verb), you’re let in on the open secret that in fact not only did baling wire build the modern West, it continues to hold it together by a metal string, to put a fine point on it. The typical roll of baling wire, pictured above, is sold in a zaftig, deceptively tightly-wound, immediately-unraveling blob for just a couple of bucks in the nails-and-screws section of the hardware store. No label indicates in what country, by what process, or even of which metal the miracle product derives (although I did read somewhere that there are ANSI regs for the stuff). It just sort of sits there quietly on the bottom shelf. Your roll will either be the consistency of spaghetti or fettuccini, depending on the gauge (and there always seems to be only one gauge available whenever I mosey into town for replenishment), and you use it to connect anything…anything, well, anything two that you want to be one. This kind of wire was initially used for baling hay (hence the name), and now is in more rural households than Garth Brooks CDs. With all due respect to priceless home/life maintenance tools like duct tape and zip ties, baling wire is the most useful tool in the box, by far, for any rural Westerner no matter what the political persuasion.

Even a cursory examination of my day illustrates the phenomenon. At this point, three-and-a-half years into my life on the Funky Butte Ranch, I not only keep a roll of baling wire (sometimes called “tire wire” by really, really right-leaning people) in my barn and in my truck, I practically sleep with one under my pillow. In the past week, I realized yesterday as I was baling wiring the garden gate so as to be arguably more goat-proof, that I might as well not even return the oft-depleted roll of the precious stuff back to my tool box at all. It should have a sort of dispenser attached to my belt, the way we have a toilet paper dispenser in the bathroom to reflect the ubiquity of that product in our lives.

As a bee late for dormancy zapped past my ear for some last minute autumn pollinating, it occurred to me that in the past two days I’ve used baling wire to fix a loose piece of orchard fencing, a stripped piece of rose bush fencing, and a wobbly piece of goat corral fencing. I’ve also employed it to tighten the Funky Butte Ranch entrance sign, secure the R.O.A.T.’s engine block heater cord, and lovingly discipline an unruly goat during hoof trimming (I briefly slipped the entire roll over Natalie’s left horn). Indeed at this stage of things, some parts of the Funky Butte Ranch goat corral can be said to be crafted primarily from baling wire “repairs” to caprine mischief (by which I mean intelligence — a bad goat being a good goat, Darwinianly-speaking). I have not as-yet used baling wire for surgical, dental or veterinary procedures (beyond goat husbandry), but sense those days may not be far off. I deeply suspect that a future edition of The Boy Scout Manual will read, “In the case of a severed limb, simply secure the injury with three coils of wire topped with a bowline knot.”

By way of the physical process of baling wiring, there’s a sort of pull-up-and-twist art to getting the wire tight enough to really fuse two objects (using pliers or a Leatherman) without slicing your fingers off like deli meat, and I’d call myself a journeyman at the craft by this point. Like so many of my endeavors in this life, my baling wire work ain’t what you’d see in an instructional video, but it usually holds. True, when I examine my original garden fence job, it is eminently clear which posts were joined to their nearby fence material by myself and which by the considerably more experienced Abbot, with whom I was working. But the point I want to impart is that the whole fence is still standing.

I simply don’t think I’d be able to live this neo-Rugged Individualist life without baling wire, and so I dedicate this Dispatch to the mystery factory that produces it. I wish I knew Mandarin for “nice job.” Meanwhile, the debate about what built the West can continue at honkytonks along party lines. For me, thanks to solar power, I’m making it just fine without a windmill (though I reserve the right to activate the ancient, groaning Funky Butte Ranch windmill if necessary). And as for Smith and Wesson, well, let’s just say I’m a peaceful man, but I’m prepared. If I have to use a gun for something other than hunting, to me that’s not a sign of “building” the West, but of something wrong with its core.

In closing, here’s a photo showing my classic implementation the “if you don’t know the knot, use a lot…of baling wire” philosophy on part of the goat corral (don’t worry about the rust – it adds to your property value by conveying what Realtor propagandists call a “rustic feel”). Hey, laugh all ya want: no goat has gained access through this spot since I did this piece of Ranch upkeep. Though I hear the mischievous Pans outside the Ranch House even now as I write, and I would take a very educated guess that they’ve isolated a new weak spot in the rose bush fence for which I am already reaching into my baling wire holster.

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