Fencing off the creek

   Sometimes it seems like having goats means being doomed to constantly putting up new and better fences. Our sweet twins Francesca and Lucia seem to be especially good at finding and exploiting the weak point in any fence we put up. As a result, the girls were making forays into the neighbor's yard, munching on his vegetable garden and nibbling his fruit trees. While our neighbor's love all the animals, especially the goats, there is a limit to their hospitality, understandably. 

  Our other problem was the ducks getting into the creek. We have been told that they were making their way up to the road and beyond. Not good. With goats going over and ducks going under, the old fencing we had up around the creek just wasn't doing the job.

  We decided to take down the old fencing and put up something that SHOULD hold in both the goats and the ducks, and hopefully keep out predators. Without a lot of funds for the project, we invested in several 4 foot tall rolls of welded wire and some 7 and 8 foot T-posts. The farm dogs inspected our purchases for quality.

 The first step was taking down the old fencing. Several bouts of heavy rain and flooding had buried the bottom of the fencing in deep layers of mud and dead leaves. 

    In some areas we actually had to use the winch on the front of the four wheeler to pull the old fencing out of the ground.

 Once the fence was down, Gwen decided to take advantage of access to the previously blocked off area and fill her belly with some overgrown forage. She was a very happy goat.

   Since flooding was an issue, we decided to put up the new fence well above the flood line. Here Big Onion is driving in the new post while Luna supervises and Rialey has a chat with her bunnies.

  While Big Onion was doing the manly job of driving in the posts, I decided to move one of the rolls of fencing into place near the bride so we could start securing it to the first post. Well, those rolls are heavier than they look. First, let me assure you that I am no wilting flower in the strength department. I can sling around 50lb feed sacks and wrestle full sized goats with the best of them, but for some reason those rolls were just a little more than I could handle.

  Well, my motto is work smarter, not harder so I thought I'd do the smart thing and start rolling the fencing where it needed to go. I was happily walking along, kicking the roll ahead of me, not paying very close attention to the fact that me and that heavy roll were getting closer and closer to the embankment of the creek. Suddenly the fencing seemed to take on a life of its own and started rolling slowly then with alarmingly increasing speed diagonally down the bank of the creek. I started yelling, "no no No No NONONONONONO!!!" as if the damned roll was going to listen to me and stop its swift descent into the moving water below. Just as I was about to hurl myself forward and onto the roll to save it from a watery, muddy demise, one corner caught the edge of one of the fence posts we hadn't yet removed. The post turned the fencing just enough that it swung around sideways and stopped rolling long enough for me to grab hold of the post in one hand and the fencing in another. A couple seconds more and both me and fencing would have ended up a big soggy, muddy mess.

  Once I had recovered from my ordeal, we started putting up the fencing. Once again the four wheeler was key in getting this job done. Big Onion built a fence puller using a 2x4 and some hardware. Once it was hooked up the winch on the bike, we were able to stretch some pretty tight fencing. Before we moved to the farm, I had no idea that tension is the key to good fencing. A loose fence is a saggy fence and nobody wants that (except maybe the goat who will happily pull it down and hop right over).

  Big Onion and Rialey holding a length of unrolled fencing.

  Once the fencing was in place and properly stretched, we secured it to the T-posts and the job was done! About halfway through the job, Big Onion finally broke down and purchased a clip bender and that little dojobby was well worth the cost. It saved us a lot of time and busted knuckles.

  The final product. It's been several weeks and the goats have not managed to knock it down or figure a way through so we consider that a success. The next fencing project will be replacing the 3 strand electric line that's running in the second and third pastures with real fencing. Hopefully we can wait until the weather cools a bit before tackling the next area. Whew!

New Years Eve

We spent our new years eve working around the farm. We finally started fencing off the creek. Lately our ducks have been going for swims and finding themselves in the neighbor's yard. It's not very far from there to the highway, so we decided it was time to block off their access.

Gwen and Thea thought putting up fencing was just the most interesting thing in the world. Gwen kept trying to steal tools, gloves, and bags of clips, and Thea turned herself into a ginger by rubbing her head on one of the older rusted t-posts. Life is never dull with goats around. Big Onion got half of the fencing up before darkness forced us to finish up evening chores and head inside.

I made a cozy fire in the fireplace and Big Onion cooked us up a huge dinner that included some of the broccoli from the front garden boxes.

When midnight rolled around, we toasted our first year here on the farm with a cold bottle of bubbly Gingeroo. Then we decided to go for late night stroll out to the back pasture.

The sheep were very happy to see us. I'm pretty sure all the fireworks had them convinced that the sky was falling.

And of course Gwen and Thea accompanied us on our jaunt.

This is a view of the house and out buildings from the bridge.

Overall it was a very nice way to end what has probably been the most amazing year of my life. This year Big Onion and I bought a house, started a business, and populated this empty piece of land with animals of all shape and sizes. We worked our butts off and loved every second of it. Everyday was a learning experience, and I can't wait to see what the next year has in store!

Happy New Year! 

Fencing the Pasture

Thank goodness for the Grizz!

Currently, we're only making use of about half of our property. In the "back pasture," as we call it, we have another 5-6 acres and a couple of small ponds. However it's all partially fenced, so we're hesitant to put any stock out there.

The north side of the pasture is creek; the west side is half fenced, with posts already up along the rest of it; the south side was fenced by the state; the east side was completely lacking fencing.

I had been pricing fencing for awhile, but we had a lot of other more immediate concerns on the half of the farm that we were using. I suspected in a few months we'd be able to afford what we needed and would eventually get some time to get everything up.

Lo and behold, a friend of ours told us of his grandfather's old dairy farm. Apparently he had recently passed away and our friend found a shed on the property absolutely full of rolls of fencing, posts, and barbed wire. He said we were welcome to whatever we needed.

We also had a roll and a bunch of barbed wire in the back of the Element!

It took us awhile to get it out of the shed and loaded up on the trailer. Many thanks to our friend and his father who helped us with this rather daunting task! We sadly didn't get any photos while we were there, but you can definitely take a look at how loaded up the trailer was. And, of course, it had to rain cats and dogs on our drive home. I won't bore you with too many details on how fencing is put up, mostly because I can in no way claim to be an expert. There's a variety of sources out there to learn how to install field fencing. We're big fans of Google when it comes to research, and if you're a new farmer you might want to do the same.  Properly installed fence should require little maintenance for some years, so I'd rather do it right from the start.

First off, our neighbor was kind enough to bush hog our field for nothing. I offered him a turkey and he refused. He did it just to be nice! How awesome is that? It's good to make friends with your neighbors. I hope we can return the favor one day soon. Clearing that whole field saved us from a whole lot of extra work!

Now came the fun part of actually putting up the fence. We decided to make use of t-posts. While we have an excess of 4x4s from the southern property line we had no auger and not enough manpower or time to dig those holes by hand. The t-posts had already been purchased months ago in preparation for fencing, so it was just a matter of hammering them in ... which sounds easier than it looks.

Using a "mother-in-law" to drive in the posts

We decided to space them fifteen feet apart, and to leave a twelve-foot opening where we'd like to add a gate. While we want it closed off, we do want to make sure we have access from either side, especially since we're not sure if the small bridge that crosses a drainage ditch would actually hold the weight of a car, truck, or tractor.

For the H-braces we used Wedge Loc, a system that lets you build the whole fence with t-posts, as normally you'd need wood for the braces. This way we didn't need to dig any holes and save us some time. Wedge Loc doesn't seem to have a huge reputation (I'm surprised I even found it) but we'll see how they hold up. In theory it should work well, but only time will tell.

Since the fencing we got from our friend was only about four-feet high, we'll be stringing a strand of barbed wire across the top. Sheep don't typically climb things, but this will help more with keeping the goats in and some potential predators out.

Putting up the actual fence requires anchoring one end of the roll, unrolling it, standing it up, then pulling it taut before attaching it to the posts. I fashioned a fence puller out of a 2x4 and some hooks and we used the winch on the Grizzly to do the pulling for us. It got it pretty tight, but a tractor would probably have worked better. At one point I put the Grizz in reverse to give it some extra tension and snapped the 2x4 fence puller in half. Oops.

A week ago I finished the fencing on the western side, save for the barbed wire. This past Monday was my birthday and to celebrate I took off work to try and get as much fencing done as possible (don't worry, I took plenty of time to relax as well). We brought Thea and Gwen out with us. They keep us so very productive.

We ended up running out of t-posts and sunlight that day but we're very close to finishing. Hopefully in the next couple weeks we can get the last bit of fence, barbed wire, and gates up and put all of our land to use. We have plans on building some large, mobile chicken tractors. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the field dotted with sheep, goats, and chickens. For now, I'm certainly content just being out there and admiring the view.