Fencing Project 1 - 2019

We have over a mile of fencing on our property, dividing it up into three pasture areas and the farmhouse and working area.  When we bought the place we knew the fencing was old and in bad shape, but we had some hope it could be used at least a little while since the pastures were being leased by a local cattle rancher.   Last year we stretched nearly 400 feet of fencing to divide the big pasture, which gave us the three pastures we have now allowing us to rotate animals.  Unfortunately, hope doesn't keep the cows contained.

Our last Angus steer (Ron), and even the heifers occasionally, demonstrated how easy our fences were to breach.  We also recently learned from some of our neighbors that the rancher's cows would find themselves wondering the roads periodically, so the fences haven't been doing their job for some time apparently.  We did our best patching it up after each incident of Ron's escape, and even tried a hot wire in spots, but the overall condition of the fencing is just too much crap to work with.  So this year one of my (our) big priorities is to work on replacing the perimeter fencing so we'd worry less about cows getting out and could focus more on all the other work needed on the farm.  Fencing isn't cheap, and we have a lot of it to replace, so we decided to focus on the worst perimeter sections first this year and wrap up the remaining perimeter fence next year.  So, the west and south sides are where we started--roughly 1,600 feet.   That amounts to about a $1,200.00 truckload of wood posts, t-posts, rolls of fence, barbwire, staples, and clips. 

Truckload of fencing

  

First perimeter section to tackle

The work began in February, the weekend of the 23rd right before the big snow storm hit.  I spent a rainy Saturday and a rain-mixed-with-snow Sunday getting started on the southwest corner of the pasture.  Unfortunately, we didn't get any pics using the tractor bucket to drive the corner posts in on the south side of the creek.  We placed some heavy planks over the creek creating a makeshift bridge, and drove the tractor onto them reach the posts on the other side..  It was one of those "hold my beer" moments and Theresa was certain the tractor and I were going for a swim.  Several whacks with the bucket later the posts were driven into the soft creek bank and no mishaps occurred.  It was onto driving t-posts by hand before the heavy snowfall.

Tractor in the snow

Taking a moment to enjoy the weather

T-post driving

The snow storm slowed us down a bit, we lost our power for a week so there wasn't much fence work going on with all the snow on the ground.  We also had to deal with a lot of cleanup with downed tree branches, so after another week of cleanup work and waiting for the snow to melt we didn't get back to working on the fence until around March 9th.  That following week we finished the southwest end of our south pasture, and then moved onto working on the west end.  Thankfully, our neighbor on this side wanted to pitch in and help.  With his assistance we made quick work of installing the fence on between our properties, and installing a good neighbor gate.  That gate will come in handy if we ever need to help each other with pasture work or deal with cows getting out.

West end of South Pasture

Good Neighbor Gate

With the west end finished we were down to just the southeast fence on the upper pasture.  This fence line has a couple old apple trees right on the property line and also adjacent to an old Christmas tree farm field left to grow out of control in the upper corner.  That meant I had to deal with a big apple tree branch that was growing over the line about 18" in diameter, almost seemed like half the apple tree, and a bunch of 6-8" saplings of various species.  I believe they were mostly wild cherry and maybe a few alder. A few hours of chainsaw work, piling, and hauling away to a big burn pile; we ere ready to finish the last stretch.

Thankfully I got the last of the major work wrapped up before all this rain started.  I haven't gone out to take pics of the finished product because of all the rain and foul weather.  Theresa and I did walk the finished fence line last night after work, looking for any old fence wire still in the pasture or other trash from our work.  Only found a few pieces to clean up and things are looking good.  It's an incredible relief not fretting about the cows while we're away.  Having good pasture fence relieves a lot of stress.  Now if we can only get those cheeky heifers calving then we'll be in business!