Fencing is hard work.

It takes money and help and patience and planning. And a lot of guessing and measuring and re-measuring and then replanning and well, as you can see, it’s not quite that easy.

For one thing, once you get it done, you want to be done. It’s not like something you can just pick up and move around on a whim. Changes are hard to make once you start laying down wire. Heck, just getting the stuff to your homestead can take some major finagling. 330 feet of field fence is HEAVY. And makes old Blue groan a bit when the TSC guys drop it in the back. And t-posts, shesh, those things are pricey, so you want to make sure you get just what you want or need. I think I will start to buy just oh 2 or 3 every time I go and stockpile them! It will be less painful then going and buying 20 at a time.

Originally, we were going to fence in the back pasture, just a big rectangle. It would be about 100 foot by 150 foot and back again. However, that would end up over 500 feet of fence. And the more I stood back there, planting the corn garden and just watching the sun and all, the more I decided it would not be as nice for sheep. It’s a horse or pony pasture, and just not enough sun and the right length of grass for my little short sheepies. And it’s so far back, we’ll hardly ever see them! I want to be able to look out and see them day to day when we’re working and all that.

So I got my trusty measuring tape and began to realize that if I fenced in the middle yard, they would have almost a whole acre to wander, and would be a lot closer to the house, have TONS of shade and shelter and we would have another safe zone for the dogs. (When the sheep were in their little paddock area.) We are not foolish enough to let our untrained sheep dogs in with non-dog sheep… nope.)

Basically, we saved a ton of fencing by utilizing many of the buildings into the plan. We played connect the dot with the coop, to the wellhouse, to the pig barn, to the poultry barn and to the garage. It might not be the way a large commercial farmer would do it, with curves and using trees as posts instead of all t-posts and sunk posts, but you know what? We’re just little smallholders and the farm police could care less. Sure, it would have been easier, say, to install a lovely big gate by the garage so that whenever I wanted to bring a vehicle back up near the barn, I could just swing open the gate and roll through. But we’ve done that like 2 times now. And only because we didn’t want to drag stuff out there with the wagon. Purely connivence. Now, if we want to do that, I’ll have to cut a few nylon tie wraps and then re-tie it after we’re done. You can bet I’ll be watching for a nice used gate on Craig’s List, but in the meanwhile, it works for us.

We did buy one nice tube gate for the back, by the wellhouse. That made sense. We’ll be going through there at least a couple times a day to get to the bunnies and the poultry. And it seems that another gate next to the little coop would be welcome, so we’ll probably work on that next week.

The line of fence in the back is mostly working with t-posts, but we were so lucky and got to use a LOT of the trees along the sides and such. We only needed 10 t-posts! Yeah! And the fencing fit JUST perfectly… we used the very last bit at the garden pathway… now to design a cool garden gate out of some salvaged wood from the farm. I’m hoping to get that done today or tomorrow at the latest. We are planning to bring the sheep home on Monday!!! Yeah!!!

Bucka Roo and his posse are checking out the new fence. They totally approve of the work being done and as our official chicken inspectors, they were on the job to approve all alterations to their farm.

A HUGE HUGE thank you to Julia and Jr. and Jeremy for all their wonderful help with the fencing! Oh my gosh, how could we have managed without your assistance. Just getting the roll out of the car would have taken an all day effort on our part! Those things are super heavy to begin with! I’m telling you, good neighbors and swell friends make life just as sweet as can be.

Junior even cut up the remains of the dead pine for us and we offered him the cut wood for his winter needs! It’s nice to finally have that out of the way so we can mow back there a bit easier. He also took down the dead apple tree near the house and chopped it up for our bonfire use. That is going to make some wonderful campfires for sure… great for hot dog roasting I’m sure!

Well, today is finish the stick fence day and make the garden gates day! Going to be fun stuff… Junior also trimmed up the windchime tree some and we got a nice little electric limb chainsaw to do a bit more tree surgery around the homestead. We have over 50 mature trees on the place, and they are all in various states of overgrowth and ill care from the last 10 years or so of being left on their own. Although, at the first of the spring we did a TON of cleanup and all, there are still pockets that need more attention. We are slowly but surely whittling the place into shape!