900 pounds of organic goodness that didn't end up on the highway.
I like to think of the inventor of the ratchet strap as a man named Henry… Henry Ratchetstrap. As I travelled down the interstate a few weeks ago, my load suddenly shifted, and this enormous round bale nearly fell off. These simple ratchet straps kept a half ton of beautiful July hay off Rt. 7. I will admit, seeing a round bale at this angle in my rearview mirror did a great job of clearing the sinuses.
Well done, Mr. Ratchetstrap. Well done indeed.
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Crisis narrowly averted! Gotta love those ratchet straps!
Exactly… like that old Bob Weir introduction to Monkey & the Engineer… “from tragedy impending to tragedy narrowly averted,” ha.
You were, indeed, lucky. Several years ago not far from my farm, someone lost a big square bale of lovely alfalfa along the road. You could see where they had just pushed it to the side of the ditch since the strings had all broken. Not wanting to see such beautiful hay go to waste, I fired up the truck and told the kiddo to go fetch us a pair of pitchforks.
“Oh my god, what if someone sees me? I’m going to be so embarrassed.”
“That’s at least $75 of hay. How much was that dress at Polly Sue’s I bought for you on Sunday?”
She shoveled every stem into the back of the truck before I crept home so as not to lose too much.
I would later find out from the farmer who lost the bale (and three others that didn’t break open) when navigating the curve too fast without his ratchet straps that those bales weighed 800 pounds!
“Can I pay you for the bale?” I asked.
“No ma’am. I drove past when you were loading it up. You gals earned every bit of it.”
Sandy, that’s a great story! I’m relieved to know that I wouldn’t be the only one to load up that ‘free’ hay