Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out /

That's from Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall." (Okay, we have the cultural part of the post out of the way.)

In our case we are walling out The Angus Boys,  those curious cattle who most recently had a (literal) bash in our Growing Dome greenhouse. The fence should have been done a long time ago, but we let it slide and those were the consequences.

Oh, well. Our fence guy has been on the injured list, so Tom decided we should do it ourselves. Tom is a fence man from way back and I have infrequently been his assistant, so it wasn't like we didn't know what we were doing.

So the first order was to cement the corner posts. We dug something  like two holes a day. We're retired, you know.

We gathered our materials:

Tom used the trusty Polaris Ranger to tote the stuff around.

Tom stood in the bed of the Polaris, swinging a sledge hammer to drive in the tee posts while I crouched below, my gloved hands holding the posts semi straight, expecting at any moment to have my head bashed in. I was very nice to Tom to ensure he didn't miss. Later we were smarter and bought a tee post driver, which made it much easier.

Rolling the wire along the ground the length of the fence was fun, especially the first time when I didn't hold the wire after it was cut. It rolled right up, just like a roller window shade. I just stood there and watched it go.

It took us about a week, working little by little, but it is done now and the cattle will not be able to get in. This week Tom is running some barbed wire along the top and once we get the bees, we will need to electrify part of the fence to guard against bears. But it's great for now.

So what was Miss Pearl doing during all this labor?

She's a smart dog!

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