We were having a flood watch. They seem to have been right about it. When I looked down this morning I could see the high water and the lower gate looked funny. It was standing open and the close post had been pulled over by the wire pulling it. I tied it closed with a piece of baling string. We'll have to go work on it when the water recedes.
Everybody was piled into the sheep shed. We're thinking we need to expand it.
We got the boards up on the chicken yard today. The horses ran us off before we could get the last board up and the barbed wire adjusted. We are leaving the last set of boards next to the water tub open. That way Bo can go in there and drink from the small bucket. He can't reach the water in the big tub when it gets below half. If we left it out where Heidi could get to it she would slobber in it and put her hooves in it. With her being far to the right of dainty the little bucket would be broken and down the hill before long.
They actually let us work for quite a while before they came up to visit.
The hitching post blends in well with the rest of the fence. Once the wood has dried out Lisa is going to paint it with the black fence paint. It was a really wet batch of pressure treated wood this time.
The hen house and coup will go in here. We'll probably do an 8'x8' house with an 8'x16' coup attached to it.
Bo likes to stand in Heidi's shade. Phoenix has taken to Heidi as well.
Jasmine likes to stand in the barn during the day. She was down by the walnut trees when we came home tonight, so she's getting out.
Heather's horses came to stay here for a while. Phoenix was in a bad mood when he first got here and was lunging and biting at everyone. He is settling in nicely now. Yesterday, Andy went out in the fog and let them sniff and lip at each other.
It was quite foggy in the morning.
The big horses are getting along.
Bo can be a little annoying. When he isn't rolling in the mud, that is.
We're putting up a pen for the chicken house. Obviously it won't do much good containing the chickens. Its purpose is to keep the horses away from the chicken house. The horses tend to be somewhat destructive.
It looks messy now but it is still under construction. We string the shock tape up when we finish for the day. Heidi would just love to scratch herself on the nice posts. Giant horses rubbing on posts with fresh concrete is not good.
We notched the last two posts beside the gate. This is the method commonly used for a stretcher post or gate post. We are hanging a gate on the post but the cross piece here is for a hitching post. Lisa can tie the horses to it to work on them. I am going to add some steel cleats later or maybe a hemp lashing. The fence boards will also add structural support.
Big nail. They're called spikes at this size.
The tape is temporary. The far post may look like it is out of line with the others. It is. We put it there for the gate to slam against. We hope this will help preserve it when the giant horses rub on it. The perpendicular fence run to the back fence will start here. Doing it this way caused the fence line to be out of square. We did the math and we lost our perpendicularity by nearly 2 degrees. I know it seems like a lot but this is just the fence. In our defense, we were trying to keep the lengths divisible by 16 or 8 so we wouldn't have to make as many saw cuts. The long run is 32 feet and the short is 16 and terminates on the back fence line at an existing post. The gate is 4 feet but we lost 2 or 3 inches on the slam. We might be able to compensate with a spacer on the last post. We'll see. Is there an engineer in the house?
We got the posts on the long side finished today. Next is the short side posts and the fence boards.
