Mending Fences

Hey there! It's been so nice to able to get outside a little lately and the forecast for this week looks great-finally! One of the outdoor projects that we want to get completed in early Spring is to fence the North pasture.

The people who lived here before us had kept horses there, but it has obviously been awhile because it's very overgrown and the fencing is all down. There are many spots where trees and branches have fallen across the fence line also, so all of that had to by chopped up and moved. After a lot of clean up, it was time to start putting in the fence posts. Of course, like everything we do, we have a very small budget for this project so we started searching the old buildings and walking around the property looking for old steel posts that had been left behind over the years. Fortunately, we found a LOT of them! Enough for the entire fence. We also found a lot of the wooden posts we need to put in between the steel ones.

We loaded them up in truck and took them back to the pasture. The fence on the North side needed to go on the other side of the creek, so we started hauling the posts across by hand. Actually that's why I took this pic-I needed an excuse for a quick break! Then to put in all the posts...I will have to admit it turns out the Husband is far better at this than I am. I mostly helped sight the fence line and carried about a thousand posts to where they would need to go in and he followed and put them in the ground. Putting the wooden posts in with a shovel and an old-fashioned post-hole digger was a a bit tough and we ran into some spots where the ground was still frozen, making it even harder. Yes, this would be much easier with a gas-powered auger, but again, there's that budget issue!

I also had to make a couple journeys back to the house when one of the Farm Kids got a little to close to the creek and fell into a huge mess of mud. (Don't worry the creek is very shallow at the spot they were playing at and it was just a matter of getting dry boots and clothes and washing off a few layers of mud later! So worth it for all the fun they have!)

Even though we had a lot of land to cover and were doing everything the old-fashioned (slow) way, we really enjoyed being out there in the warm weather and sunshine, working together, and watching the kids enjoy being outdoors!

 Next we have to see how much old fencing we can find around the property and then purchase however much more we will need. It will be great to see the completed project and even better to see animals back here eventually!

What's new at your place?

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