How to open a feed bag

 

You know those feed sacks (and bird seed bags) that bulk grain products come to us in, that seem to come from out of the past?  They’re out of the past because they are in bulk and don’t conform to our modern plastic, zip-lock, glue, or taped closure technology.  They are things in very large paper bags that are sealed with a slip knot.  It is apparently a knot whose name is lost in the fog of Google; I can’t find a name for it, lock stitch?  It is the knot that isn’t a knot if you pull the right string.  A long slip knot.

 

Well, I feel sorry for everybody who hasn’t had an old man show them which string to pull at the top of the bag; an old man with hands that look like splintery drift wood,  who can explain what will work every time.

 

Today, on the bird food bags, there are cheater strips of paper that make it pretty easy, but it wasn’t always like that.  Many of us needed those old men to show us the way, back when the bags weren’t “idiot proof” and nobody was worrying about coddling the idiots.

 

This may seem pretty simple to you (those of you who don’t actually ever try to open one of these sealed bags, or maybe those of you who have given up and just slash away with scissors).  But, at the least, in a written instruction, it matters how you look at the bag, how you hold the bag, how you think about up and down and right and left, and, front and back.   That’s at least 2 to the third; eight permutations.

 

Then there’s that sealing knot at the bottom, the one that has two strings, over lock stitch, double running stitch?  I can’t find that one either.  Getting that one off requires a different strategy.  Next time.

 

 I set the bag up front side, writing side up and step behind it and hold the bag against my shins looking down at it (so it looks upside down, writing looks right to left).  You pull the top string closest to you right hand.  This works for me. 

  

Now the important thing is for you to save that string in an ever enlarging ball.  That's the pic of mine.