Fixin' Fences

With approximately 6 acres of graze-able pasture (10 acres with the pond), we think we have plenty for the goats to eat during the winter. But its been a few years since any livestock haunted the pasture. Fences had gone un-mended for quite some time. With beautiful early Winter weather, my father-in-law and I took advantage of our opportunity to put some woven wire up.

Long old fence row to fix...looking across the pond to the barns

Since the farm has been around a few years, we have plenty of materials tucked away. The older goats helped clear enough brush that we found rolls of forgotten woven wire. No need to buy new!

Wendell cut the wire to wrap around the corner post. It was tricky business but we got it done.



It's essential to get the wire tight before attempting to hammer metal staples into posts. Wendell wrapped one end of the woven wire around a small post, hooked log chain to it, and pulled it tight with the tractor. At times it was too tight and the staples would be repelled by the tension in the wire and send a sharp, double-pronged staples zinging towards our eyes. I got a small flesh wound on my cheek from one. We were able to use trees and tree stumps for wood posts along the fence line which allowed us to avoid having to put in new posts...awesome!

We took the fence line as far as we could but we have a new challenge: There's so much debris laying on the fence for the last 1000 feet or so and that part of the fence sits in a very marshy part of the pasture that there would be tremendous amount of re-working required to fix it. We decided to skip fixing this part of the fence and will instead reroute the fence line. We'll soon be driving metal posts to a fallen tree close to the pond, which will serve as a corner post, and run woven wire to it. From there we'll run it back toward the corner post of the original fence. It'll be a lot of work, but less than trying to fix the destroyed fence.

After a long day I followed Wendell and the tractor out of the field, but not before I took a few photos that depict why I country boy. What a great way to wrap up the day!