Whole Lotta Fence Posts

 After doing zip, zilch, zero, nada on the 'bring horses to this little place here' portion of our building projects between October and early May, right around Mother's Day DH and I went and purchased the perimeter fencing for my pastures.  The pictures show just a very small portion of what we bought, mainly because nowhere had 200+ wooden fence posts in stock, nor did they have 2000' of non-climb horse fence on hand.  So we paid for it all, brought home what was available that day, and went back three weeks later for the remainder after the order came in.

While waiting for the rest of our posts to come in, DH and I set to work getting the corner posts and brace posts (and perimeter gate posts) installed.  From there came the long task of drilling holes (thank goodness we have an auger for the tractor) every 10 feet and setting line posts.  On days we were both available we got more done, one of us on the tractor working the auger and the other coming behind with the four wheeler pulling the wood hauler trailer with line posts on it.  That lucky person (typically me) got to hop off the four wheeler to drop a post into a hole, hopping back on and driving to the next hole to do it again.  Then after all the holes were we drilling that session were done, we went back and plumbed and set the posts, tamping the dirt back into the holes.

Some of the holes dug easily. That was the sandier/loamier ground, which isn't much.  We have a lot of dense heavy clay.

Some dug less easily and needed a little extra encouragement in the form of DH leaning  all his weight on a really thick/heavy pipe leveraged on the top of the auger.  Definitely not an OSHA approved method, but rather one of those old-school death defying things. Those were the holes where I got to be the lucky person sitting on the tractor working the auger, hoping to God that the pipe didn't slip and my husband didn't become a farm accident fatality.  

Other holes had big rocks that had to be dug out with the tractor bucket, post hole diggers, spade, crowbar, log chains, whatever we could make work.  And some holes just busted the dang auger.   Not to mention the two sets of points that wore out before the auger went kaput. Guess it didn't help that we'd bought it used a good 16 years ago, it's lived outside all it's life and very possibly is the same age as I am.  

So our project got a little more expensive when DH bought a new auger, but boy, is that thing slick!  It's much easier at attach and detach from the tractor, not to mention being sharp.  And it has shear pins that aren't rusted in place, so they do their job and break rather than breaking the auger itself!  The remainder of the holes went rather a bit faster using the new auger (and going through about 4 shear pins).

By the last week of May I was busy in the garden, so DH had to do a lot of the post holes and post setting himself.  It took us, working mostly evenings and some weekends depending on weather and other commitments on our calendars, about a month and a half to get the holes drilled, posts plumbed up and set.  

Once all the posts were in, and the brace posts had been tensioned, it was time to try our hands at putting up the non-climb mesh fence. Neither DH nor I have experience with that.  Hot tape and hot rope, yes.  Hot wire, also yes.  Wood, yes.  Even barbed wire is a yes. Mesh fence, nope.  Here we go into the learning curve. Do much research.  Watch many videos on how, exactly, to do this with the least percentage of failure. Which brings us to this past week.

This is a two-man project, the installing of the mesh.  So we were only able to work on it when we both had several hours of time available.

First, we chose a fence line to start with.  Being a mid-length line, and also the least noticeable from the road (or house, as DH's shop blocks the view of 99% of it from the house), we decided to begin on the East line.  Hopefully any less than perfect outcomes would be less obvious here.  We attached the mesh to the Northeast corner post, and then began unrolling all 200 feet of the roll.  I'll just say it's heavy and you really should make sure it's square to where you want it before you begin unrolling.  Learning curve.

When we got to the end of that roll, then came the next new skill to master: weaving the mesh together where one roll joins another.  Honestly, that was kind of nice, sitting in the grass across from each other, talking as we twisted the horizontals from the first and second rolls of fence together where they met. That was much less strenuous than unrolling the fence, which we had to do with the second roll once they were joined.

When we got to the Southeast corner post, it was time for the scary part: stretching the fence taut,  attaching it to the corner post and then tacking it to the line posts.  There may or may not have been some terse words exchanged during this process.  It had a rather uncomfortable learning curve. 

But, we got it done!   And before dark, even!

Now we just have three more fence lines and about 1650' of mesh to go! No problem, right?