Weekend Fence Adventure

The gate (and Sassafras)

The electric fence divider keeping Sass from that 'burn' pile in the background (until we can clear it out of there)

The whole fence - gate on the far right, electric divider in the middle, corner posts still needing to be shortened and the unfinished (but rotated!) lean-to.

I haven't been here since Friday. There is a very good reason for that. We were putting in a fence. Yes, the fence that I'd thought we were going to have professionally done? We did it ourselves. $700 later, Sassafras has a REAL fence and we are ready to find her a companion.

How do two suburbanites build a fence, you ask? THE LONG WAY. Ugh. Basically, H did some research online. We measured the area we wanted to fence in (the perimeter) and planned where the gate would go. Then we made a list of supplies. Early Saturday morning, after the chores were done, we headed to Home Depot to make our purchase. We opted to shop at HD because they are offering no interested, no payments on charges over $299 on their card right now. We have an HD card from the home renovations we did on our house in FL, so we just used that. We both will be getting bonuses in our next paychecks, so we can pay it off then. This way, we could do the fence ASAP and not have to wait for the $. Anyway, we got what we thought was everything we needed and headed back to the homestead.

On Saturday, we got all 5 wooden fence posts installed. This was one at each corner and one 12 ft from one of the corners for the opposite side of the gate. We also started pounding in the T-posts along the line that the fence would go. We finished two sides before we both basically gave up from exhaustion. We had to go pick up an extra bag of cement (miscalculation) to finish up. This gives the posts the overnight to set up.

Sunday we were up and working as early as our bodies could handle it! We started installing the rest of the T-posts when we discovered that the lean-to was too close to the new fence line. We had to move it. Yeah...not an easy proposition. It weighed WAY too much and was sitting on totally uneven ground...so it wasn't budging. It occurred to me that if the ancient Egyptians could move 2 ton blocks of stone, we could move a stupid lean-to. I suggested a pipe as a 'wheel'. H found one, and we able to slip it under the structure. Using that, we were able to not only move it away from the fence line, but we turned it so that it was facing the right direction (not north!). Then we managed to get the balance of the T-posts installed before lunch. When we started to pull the first side of fencing up, we discovered that we needed a longer cable for the come-along. We ran out to ACE to pick one up, and grabbed lunch while we were out. When we got back, we were able to get the first side up. H changed the way we did it for the last three sides, and was able to pull the fence beautifully even using the truck as the anchor. In the mean time, I was able to get part of the lawn mowed.

Lastly, H hung the gate while I installed a partial electric fence to keep Sass out of the worst of the weeds until we can get our 'burn' pile out of the paddock. Then we installed all the T-post clips to secure the fence and we were done! That was a lot of work, but it really turned out well. I think we are both quite proud of ourselves!