JHP Homestead’s Journal

JHP Homestead

Loving the herd life
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We’ve been working on fencing in a pasture for our horse, Buddy. He’s currently with our 3 cattle, but they’re only on about 3 acres of fairly mediocre grass, so it’s way overgrazed. Step 1 in the plan to fix this is to fence in a new area for the horse, since he grazes so much lower than the cattle.

The new pasture is about 2 acres, about half good grass and half woods and brambles.
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To save on fence posts and be able to utilize more area, we’re using the pine trees that border our property as two sides of the pasture. That’s the blue lines in the picture. We had to dig fence posts for the red and green side, which was fun. We’re in a former glacial area so one hole is sand, then the next hole over is nasty red clay. There’s also a natural gravel vein that runs through, so a half dozen or so posts are in rock and gravel. Digging holes around here is “like a box of chocolates” as Forrest Gump would say :)

We’ve been working on it since the beginning of July and finally have all the posts dug and corners braced. We also have the wire strung on two sides. Only two sides of wire and 4 gates to hang, and then we’ll be done!
 

B&B Happy goats

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I remember gasoline at 15 cents a gallon--AND the gas station attendant pumped the gas for you, checked your oil, tire pressure and washer fluid. I was 21 when it went to self serve and hit a crisis when I was almost out of gas and didn't know how to put the darn gas in my car! I learned really quick.

Same here, And they washed your windshield too !
 

Baymule

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Having already run a fence attached to trees, the voice of experience says, DONT DO IT! When a tree dies and falls over, there goes your fence. Tree posts are not a good idea. If a tree is on the fence line, you are better off to cut it down and run your fence. Trust me on this.

If you need this pasture like, 3 months ago, run a hot wire on those sides and continue to work on a real fence line. Don’t settle for second best. Do it right the first time. Do it right now, you will be glad you did. I promise. Don’t repeat the mistakes I made.
 

JHP Homestead

Loving the herd life
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Having already run a fence attached to trees, the voice of experience says, DONT DO IT! When a tree dies and falls over, there goes your fence. Tree posts are not a good idea. If a tree is on the fence line, you are better off to cut it down and run your fence. Trust me on this.

If you need this pasture like, 3 months ago, run a hot wire on those sides and continue to work on a real fence line. Don’t settle for second best. Do it right the first time. Do it right now, you will be glad you did. I promise. Don’t repeat the mistakes I made.
I agree that it’s going to be bad if a tree dies and falls on our fence. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) we live “out in the woods”. The few acreage there is for grazing is all carved out of the woods, and is lined on almost every side with trees.

In order to prevent the possibility of a tree falling on our fence, we would either have extremely small areas only fit for drylot, or maybe a small animal or two. Or have to cut down hundreds of live, healthy trees.

Since the fence is in the trees anyways, it doesn’t seem any riskier to have the trees themselves as posts. Either way we’ll have some work to do if they die or get torn down by a tornado.

We have had one tree fall on our fence a couple years ago, but that was a long dead ash tree. We’re hoping to lessen the risk of it happening again by removing trees from around the fences quickly if they die.

I know we have a lot of risk from it, and there’s a good chance I’ll be coming back and saying you’re exactly right, but I don’t really see any other path.
 
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