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By Joan Jarvis Ellison
Lambing was definitely the most
time consuming activity of being a shepherdess. It also used the most
emotional energy. But summer was the time when we expended the most physical
energy on the sheep. In the summer we put up hay. In the summer we fenced
pasture; digging post holes, stretching out thousands of feet of barbed
wire and nailing it to the posts. In the summer we cleaned up pastures,
killed thistles, fixed gates, straightened posts, cleaned up patches of
barbed wire which had sprung up over the past year.
I began our barbed wire harvest one weekend. For the last hundred years,
farmers on our place had planted most of the pastures and wood to barbed
wire. Although this appeared to have been done in a random manner, the
wire was well planted and had flourished. But I raise sheep and sheep
do not coexist well with this particular type of barbed wire planting.
So I decided to reap all the old woven and barbed wire.
It is incredible the way that wire grows. The roots run for yards underground
or, preferentially, under rock piles. Perhaps because of their excellent
aeration). Barbed wire grows amazingly rapidly. I left a partial roll
in my pasture and several weeks later it had taken root. At this young
stage, barbed wire is aggressively carnivorous; it actually reaches out
to bite. I've never found any skeletons entangled in the rolls of barbed
wire, so perhaps it doesn't actually consume humans, but just tastes them.
Prevention is only reasonable. A heavy longsleeved shirt, jeans, and leather
gloves improve your chances of surviving harvest unscathed.
Barbed wire also reproduces well. Many of the cuttings we left lying around during harvest seem to have grown into new long healthy wires by morning. This reproductive capability can be a problem when you are replanting barbed wire along a fence line. You absolutely must pick up any stray ends of wire that are cut from the fence or the main roll. If given a chance to reproduce, they can be deadly to sheep, machinery, and people careless enough to sit, kneel, walk or lean on them.
Barbed and woven wire both come in several varieties- and I don't mean
two barbed versus four, or twelve inch spacing versus six. The most common
variety of barbed wire is the creeper. Most of the trees along the edges
of our old pasture are slowly being strangled by Virginia Creeper and
barbed wire, a lethal combination of clinging vines. We found that this
variety of wire was best harvested with a hacksaw and wire cutter. After
cutting, the wire can be carefully untangled from the tree.
The most common woven wire variety is the dense mat, which is found immediately above or immediately under the surface of the ground. This type is most often rust colored, although occasionally the silver galvanized cultivar is seen. The mat type of woven wire is usually reaped with a shovel. Pulling the mat with a pickup truck improves the yield and speed of harvest. If this variety is well rooted, a tractor pickup is essential.
The second most common variety of barbed wire is heavy on roots and sparse on stems. Not only do the roots grow hundreds of times longer than the stems, but there may be two separate roots emerging from both ends of a short horizontal length of stem. Although this variety can be harvested by hand if the wire is not yet well rooted, the most reliable method entails looping one end of a chain around the horizontal stem, the other end of the chain around the bumper of a pickup truck, and driving away.
Another woven wire growth pattern is the large roll, usually intimately associated with a clump of trees. The trees invariably need to be cut down to completely disengage the wire. Unfortunately, a chain saw cannot be used, since the wire wraps the tree in the only place where it is possible to make a cut. The large roll of woven wire is best harvested by first cutting an area of wire with a hacksaw, then cutting the tree trunk with a hand saw. You might think that merely cutting the wires would do the job, but that is the secret of the large roll variety: there are simply too many wires to cut them all. Once you have cleared a space on the trunk with a hacksaw, you cut down the tree and haul the whole mess away. Frequently you must cut down two or three trees before you can harvest a particular roll of wire.
With the quantity of ripe wire on our property and the presence of several varieties of both woven and barbed wire, I had great hopes for our harvest. New woven wire was selling for $58 per hundredweight, considerably more than the approximately $8 we'll get for our barley. But there doesn't seem to be a very good market for vintage woven wire. The shepherds, who have traditionally used woven wire to keep the sheep in the pastures and the predators out, are going out of business.
The market for used barbed wire among farmers is even worse. No one seems to have the time or the patience to untangle and straighten vintage wire. Although collectors pay good money for ridiculously small pieces of barbed wire, I can't even give mine away. It is too common. Finally, in desperation, I called the sanitation service in town and filled a huge dumpster three times. I had to pay them to haul my harvest away.
I also had to pay Dave's brother Paul to help me with the harvest. We
worked two entire days, cutting and gathering the barbed and woven wire.
The wire dulled my wire cutters, a hand saw and a hacksaw blade. I ruined
a good pair of leather gloves and am nursing numerous holes in my body.
Despite the obvious affinity
barbed wire has for my land, I realize that I could never raise it as
a cash crop. The only people who should even think about it's economic
potential are tool manufacturers, sanitation companies, and Paul.