Been working on fencing about an acre. The existing fence you see around the barnyard/pond area is weasly
This is the modified plan
2 threads with questions and answers might be of interest to others:
http://www.backyardherds.com/threads/fence-post-bracing.34779/
http://www.backyardherds.com/threads/6-5-tposts-4-fence-hotwire-at-5-opinions-please.34768/
I have the line posts in down the west side for 4' field fencing though I need to make 2 H braces for a gate about halfway down. I hit ledge at 2' on the NW corner. Really wanted that post in 3' but it isn't going to happen. Hopefully the floating brace I plan to make will be enough to hold that post. I also wanted to make an H brace there coming south for a gate but I can't find anywhere even reasonably close that doesn't also soon hit ledge. Guess I'll have to figure something out next year.
The reason for not following the property line on the south side is a pile of really big rocks (*) around that tree and a rock lined swale for a culvert under the road. Didn't realize it was there. I wonder if that explains why the people who live on the other side of the road are suffering floods and driveway washout every year. They even had someone with a bulldozer work on it last year. No difference this year near as I can tell.
And if you are wondering why the south line on the right doesn't follow the existing fence line, it is because it is outside the property line. The guy we bought from said it was "grandfathered" but there is no mention of it in the deed. Why he built the riding ring with the north and south fences not parallel nor even the same angle to the fences running N/S is beyond me. They owned an additional 20 acres and split it off to make 8 building lots. That is where the road goes. In any case, I see no reason to build a fence on the Association's road right of way.
If you look at the first link you can see that I got a good suggestion from
@farmerjan and expanded on it. I got the SW corner 6" post in today and all of the 7' T-posts (2' in the ground) for the cattle panels on the south side EXCEPT ONE! Hit a big rock at about 18". It happens to be a place where 2 CPs overlap so I can't move 1 post too far. I tried 6" left and right, no luck. I am going to pull one of the 6.5' T-posts (that were SUPPOSED to be 7' but someone at TSC had dumped MANY bundles of 6.5' posts on the 7' rack and when I bought the first 25 posts, the guy helping to load the car reasonably ASSUMED that the ones in the 7' rack were 7'. I had done the same). Anyway, I'm hoping having 1 post 6" less deep will be OK.
@greybeard said they are pretty stable as long as the plate is in the ground.
At
@greybeard's suggestion, I bought two 12' corral panels to use as gates so they can be 5' high instead of 4' like standard "we don't care that you want your chickens to stay on one side of a fence" agricultural gates. That way I won't need to carry the hotwire over the gates and screw around with moving it out of the way when I open the gate, then put it back when I close the gate. One gate for the west line as mentioned and one on the east side between the two pieces of existing fence (except most of the lower fence was removed to make room for the concrete truck when the solar arrays were put in last December. So were 2 sections of the south fence. There is a falling apart wooden gate on too short and unstable posts in the east side fence, I will be replacing that. The 2 solar arrays are in that area between the not parallel E/W fences in the middle of the picture.
At some point I will make a fence that runs gate to gate (the ones mentioned) with an inline gate toward the east end so I can choose to have the alpacas in one pasture or the other.
I'm also thinking I will use
@farmerjan's cattle panel idea for the short E/W sections projecting from the little barn.
Tomorrow I will work on an H brace for the SW corner so I can put a gate there. Probably a rework next year because I have only so much time (and energy, digging post holes in ground with rocks is not a quick task) to get this fence up so at the moment it will be bracing the fence between the SW corner and the mid point gate. And, hopefully get a 6" 8' post in the SE corner. The existing post is fairly stable but too short. Depending on how much energy I have (and how long it takes to put in those two 6" posts!) I'll start on the H braces for the gates. When I'm too low on energy to dig holes, I'll fix the cattle panels to the T-posts I put in today.
* I have mentioned that prior owners seem to like to put rocks where I want to dig holes or put in posts, right?
Started unloading square bales this morning - but not even going to think about finishing them until that sun heads a little more west...
