Furlough Special

It wasn't a holiday but I had three extra days off this week. We decided to fix the front fence in the bottom sheep pasture.

After millions of emails and comments I have to apologize for not posting in a while. To make up for it I give you 15 pictures and a video. Since all we do lately is fencing , the pictures and video are about us doing fencing.

 Demolition came first.

 Lisa pulled all the staples out of the old fence wire. I rolled up and hauled off the barbed wire.

 There was a lot of trash from the road and weeds to clear out.

 The post in the corner is leaning from when the drunk driver hit it a few years ago.

 After pulling the staples we cut the wire in sections and I pulled it out with the four wheeler.

 Everyone was in the same pasture here. 17 sheep and two llamas.

 Duane came home today so we have them sorted out now. He's breeding ewes for the spring lambing. This was the last day of really nice weather. It was in the 50's and sunny.

 After clearing we installed the new posts.

 We had two end braces and a corner to add the wood posts.

 We left the existing wood posts and added steel t-posts halfway in between.

 The existing posts were not evenly spaced so I had to calculate center for each t-post. The math wasn't so bad, in case you're wondering, I divided by two. The t-post pounder is a handy tool. We got all the posts in before the rain started.

 We started hanging the wire on Saturday. I drove the tractor down the road with the wire unroller while Lisa pulled it to the fence line.

 We had to use the tractor for the stretcher because it was too muddy for the truck.

















The tractor worked fine for anchoring the come along.
 We had to work between rain showers. We got wet a few times. This was a particularly heavy downpour rolling in.

 Lisa worked along the outside of the fence hammering the staples. I held the wire in place from the inside. We couldn't get it all finished because of the flood today. Some of the posts were loose to start with and they shifted in the high water. We didn't want to stretch to our new corner brace because the ground was so wet.