Duct Tape and Baling Twine

After my “Farewell to the Red Boots” blog, my friends came through with some great advice.  They advised me on other good boots to buy, where to find red boots, and how to find them cheap (look on ebay!).  My kind of friends!  But more importantly, they described how to fix the leaky boots.  I am always trying to eke out one more week, one more season, or one more year to save money.  Notably, this also saves resources. 

My friends suggested patching my boots with E6000, a very strong glue.  Or Gorilla Clear Grip Waterproof Adhesive to apply a patch, or to use on its own.  I love having fix-it supplies around the house.  We may already have some E6000, and I’ll be shopping for the special Gorilla glue.  This will add to my ever-present availability of duct tape and baling twine.  With all of the above, I should be able to fix most everything around here, except car and truck engines.  There you need tougher stuff.  Like hose clamps. And a hammer.  And a big bank account for the real mechanic.

But for other things, baling twine is very useful.  I use it to fix fence, tying the mesh to the posts.  My older son hates blue baling twine.  When I used it on his pheasant pens, he gradually cut it off and replaced it with wire.  He’s right in that it looks funny, and it doesn’t last more than a couple years.  But its free!  And I have an unending supply! He needs to come visit, and replace the twine on our recent fence repairs.  It will make our place look so clean and finished.  Ha!  We still have the crooked and saggy fence lines and mismatched materials to deal with.  This hobby farm will never look like a manicured and formal Thoroughbred breeding farm in Kentucky.  We just don’t have it in us.

Duct tape remains useful all around the house and farm.  I’ve used it to protect the water trough heater wires from horse nibbling.  I’ve used it to hang electric fence insulators on the mesh fence between the posts.  I’ve used it for shoe and boot repair.  My younger son even used it once to create a duct tape rose.  All things can be accomplished with duct tape.  Although out in the weather it really is a temporary kind of fix, it falls apart over time.  But temporary can last for years around here, until that duct tape project works its way to the top of the to-do list.  Our to-do list is very long.

One time at my office we had some server issues.  Servers are the big computer thingy’s on trays that connect all the computers in an office.  They hide them in secure computer rooms. When they malfunction, the office computers don’t work.  And when you work in a small sub-office, the strangest people end up working on those things.  Like me.  With in-person, and remote help from our IT staff, we ended up stringing cables from one server to another server 10 feet away.  It was a mess of wires strung across the room.  It made me laugh, it looked so rinky-dink.  I especially was laughing because they had me helping.  I am not techy.  Nonetheless, we got a temporarily functioning system, with a web of wires that we had to duck under.  And when we finally got it finished, I added some baling twine and duct tape.  Just because.

Then there’s my barn roof.  It’s a small hobby-farm barn, just one story tall.  We’ve had some fierce winds over the years, and several aged shingles have blown off.  We tried some quick and dirty nailed on repairs, that again blew off.  Last year I considered re-roofing the barn. Then I learned how much professional repairs or re-roofing costs.  Surely I could get another year or two out of the current shingles.  So I you-tubed how to properly (sort of) replace missing shingles.  Oh… one must pull the nails out of the previous row, then tuck the new patch shingles underneath, and re-nail everything.  Got it.  The other key ingredient was roof tar.  We’re not talking a couple calking tubes of tar, we’re talking a gallon can of the nasty black goo, and a thick putty knife.  And of course my husband and son claim to be scared of heights, so guess who got to do this job?  Yup.  Me.  Add roofing contractor to my resume, right after computer hard-ware technician.

Weirdly, I enjoyed being on the roof, prying up nails, re-placing shingles, and spreading black goo all over.  With my mom’s help as the ground crew, we got it done.  It is not beautiful, and the new shingles don’t match the old shingles, but it’s on the back side of the barn; no one will ever see it.  I must admit, that after tarring the heck out of the roof, I had a craving for chocolate cake with dark chocolate frosting.  Roof repair and frosting a cake are more similar than one would think. Especially the way I frost cakes!

So there we have the list of items to fix almost everything:  E6000 glue, various Gorilla glues, Duct Tape, Baling Twine, and Roof Tar.  Let’s be clear that you can’t find lengths of baling twine in any old hardware store, but I’m happy to send you some.  Free.  Please. Take some baling twine.

[photo credit Margaret Eames]