Hobby Farm Honeymoon

The animals would be coming before long, so we needed to fence in small pastures as quickly as possible. Wire could fit in our car, but a large quantity of posts would have to be delivered. Then we discovered something amazing. Cedar fence posts were growing in our own woods! Since we were working towards sustainability, you can imagine our excitement. The problem was, it would be time consuming harvesting them. We settled on using our homegrown posts close to the house, at least, because we thought them unique. Later, we could order posts for the bigger fields if we wished.  

The men were amazing, as usual, working like well oiled machines. Todd cleared a path through the forest and marked trees of the right size. Larry trimmed and cut them down, and I helped throw the trimmings into the forest to decay, and drag out the newly harvested posts. In one area, we hauled them out by tractor. We cut 96 altogether and admired our pile of posts to no end.  

Finally we were ready to install fence, and thankful for the posthole digger on the tractor. We used a fence stretcher, high tensile wire, and learned to make the H-braces needed to keep the fence taut by checking out the neighbor's fence installed by a pro. It was all so interesting. Later, Nancy and Erin also helped with the wire.

Our farmer neighbor saw our fence on a visit, was impressed, and said the cedar should last as long as treated fence posts. It was just an experiment to us, but we were happy to hear those words.  

Never thinking much about fence before, suddenly it became a curiosity and the topic of conversation as we drove down the highway. Did you know there is fence just everywhere?!