Wire

Have you all discovered Pinterest?  I've been resisting adding one more "social" site to my list, but it finally sucked me in.  In the course of early morning browsing I ran across a pin that I just had to try - the original post is from Cranberry Morning, who dressed her wreath much more fashionably, but here's my version:

And I have no shortage of old barbwire!

The DIYs and recipe pics are just way too addictive.

It's been pretty quiet around here.  Still no rain.  Or snow.  South of us has had some rain.  North of us has had a fair amount of snow.

Other than the usual junk/metal runs this week, we tackled removing the old chicken wire off the rock chicken house in preparation for pulling it down.

Before

You can't see the wire in the photo, but the boards form a framework for three sides and a top.  The wood was pretty rotten, but the wire was still in surprisingly good condition.

It was the original homestead house, but two of the walls have cracked so badly that it's become a hazard.  We'll leave the lower portion of the wall standing on the west and north as a retaining wall on the hill and put a flower garden in against it (the floor is dirt), and use the rest of the stone elsewhere.

Saturday we got the posts up for temporary fence around the open spot on the north side of the driveway.

Pasture to-be

I'll be able to put the horses out there for a bit every day until the big pasture's ready, and once they've nibbled it down we'll get it dragged and reseeded like the orchard.  They'd have been out on it yesterday, but I ran out of insulators, and wouldn't you know everybody else in the county must have had the same idea, because the only places open on a Saturday afternoon were out in both the two neighboring towns as well.  So, today I'll check at the Co-op. 

Yesterday we dug post holes and drove steel posts to fence off  the 10 acres we rented from the neighbor to the south.  The whole pasture is probably 30 acres or better, but it has oil wells and cattle guards.  I'm not too worried about the pumpers, as they're mostly fenced off.  But cattle guards and horses - not a good mix. 


They were willing to rent us just the stubby rectangle at east end and didn't mind if we put in a cross fence and a gate.  We'll also run electric around the other three sides to keep the ponies off the somewhat antique - but basically sturdy - barbwire.

We didn't get wire run, but the steel posts are in and the wood posts are in the holes but not set yet.  We have to bring up some dirt, because the top of the hill is gravel and rock starting about 3" down.  Which made for lots of fun digging holes, let me tell you.


I was bound and determined I wasn't going to post again until I'd gotten a ride in.   Which we planned to do yesterday afternoon after fencing.  But T's brother showed up as we drove into the yard, and he stayed for 2 hours, and then T's mom and a friend stopped by and ended up staying for supper...

So I grabbed 10 minutes on Sunny in the pasture while T and his brother talked shop.  Hey, it counts.  At least Sunny thought so.  Then I did laundry and made supper.

This morning's agenda was getting Friday's load of old boards and posts taken to the dump - it was closed for President's Day Saturday, which I didn't discover until I was there. And then I did the same thing this morning.   Grrr!  And then picking up insulators I need to get Saturday's fence finished up.  And of course the Co-op turned out to be closed, too.  Best laid plans, trampled all over by dead presidents.

Is is scary?  We're not sure...

When in doubt, run away in all directions

"Hoss high, pig tight, and bull strong..."

The ponies are annoyed with me.

I cross-fenced the orchard.  The snow has almost entirely melted off, and the grass needs some time to recuperate so... they're now restricted to a narrow strip along one side that leads down to the pass-through to the creekbed.

They spent the last couple days staring longingly over the new fence and loafing by the barn.


I've been thinking a lot about fence lately, mostly because we have a lot of fencing to do.  But also because out walking I pass a lot of it.  Mostly barbwire.  Some of it's horse-high, pig tight and bull strong - the kind Louis L'Amour wrote about in The Rider of Lost Creek (the phrase stuck with me, but I had to go look up which book is was in).

Some of  it's hanging on by a few shreds of rust and the grace of a line of creaky, weathered posts.  Most of it's somewhere in between.

Apart from high and tight or old and disintegrating, it pretty much comes in two varieties: 2-5 wire barbed, and single strand electric.  Farmyards and lots might have continuous pipe fence or panels, but not fields.

Once you get off the paved roads, nice straight, factory-milled posts are a rare commodity.  Hedge posts - weathered, weirdly warped, spindly or thick and knobby with bulbous burls - are cheaper and just as durable. 

They're set to last, too - 15 yards apart, with a wood post every two metal stakes.  A good, tight fence might last 40 years or better.  Here and there you can even find a barely listing line of World War II-vintage metal posts. 

Further south is limestone post country, but I haven't found any within walking distance yet.  

Which reminds me - I met some more neighbors out walking.  The four-footed kind...

They've watched me from across the pasture, but yesterday they finally came over to see what I was up to.  The old grey mare (she really is) was skeptical... two-footed people type critters might mean she'd have to work.   But the gelding was friendly.  

And stout.  He's supposed to be a barrel horse... he certainly has the barrel part covered.  He liked getting scritched enough to trot down the fence after me, but once I hit the corner of the field he took off like a shot back to the bale feeder at the other end of the pasture, the mare trailing behind him. 

I've been itching to ride, but had to settle for giving all four a good brushing tonight and a few minutes each grazing on the narrow patch of green grass by the granary.  I hopped on Sunny really briefly to test the footing, but everything's still squishy and slidey.  Not safe.  The moisture's great to have though, so no complaints.  Well, maybe just tiny ones...