I never imagined, when I was a boy on the farm, that the day would come when I couldn’t count on finding a tow sack when I needed one.
That day, of course, came for many of us years ago, when we moved off the farm; but on trips back home I could generally scavenge a few from the barn.
Those days are now long gone, too.
It used to be that cattle feed came in 100-pound burlap bags, providing for a seemingly unlimited reserve of used “tow” or “gunny” sacks. Several years ago, however, feed companies replaced the versatile burlap bag with paper sacks and life on the farm has never been the same.
Had it not been for tow sacks to wick water up from the tub, we might never have kept cans of milk cool on summer nights.
Long before wire fish baskets were common, we used tow sacks to bag redhorse suckers, fastening the tops with our stringers.
Where modern campers use knapsacks or packs, we lugged our gear to the creek in gunny sacks, and hauled out our trash in the same, sturdy bags.
From potatoes to walnuts, those coarse, jute feed sacks stored our winter provisions, and filled with oak leaves bedded our hounds. They also came in handy to dry off a newborn calf, chink a hole in the barn or haul home a weanling pig.
For FFA Greenhand initiates, they also made interesting attire when adorned with onion bulbs and worn to class.
They were also mighty handy just to have stuck behind the truck seat or in the car trunk as a just-in-case bag or rag. And, if they were in good shape, we also had the option of selling them back.
Just like soda pop bottles, tow sacks could be used again.
Many times in recent years I’ve wished I still had a stash of old burlap bags. I could’ve used one for sweet potatoes just last week, for onions earlier in the year, and again a couple of days ago when I was scrounging up a bed for a cat.
Baskets, boxes and towels I used instead— all those for the lack of old tow sacks.
Though burlap bags no longer accumulate in the corner of the dairy barn, they are still around. Searching the Internet I found 10 companies which manufacture or market burlap bags.
They’re still used for potatoes, by nurseries to wrap tree roots, for some feeds and for many other uses; but, they’ve mostly gone the way of those colorful cotton print poultry feed sacks which used to find extended lives as aprons, kitchen curtains or dresses.
They’re just a part, now, of our once upon a time. What I wouldn’t give for a stack of those scratchy sacks we once folded and stacked in the feed room. Little could I have imagined as a boy how precious a common tow sack would become.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
