Mending Fences

Friday, the wife and I went over to our daughter's new place. It's in the ozarks in Missouri.

The plan was to get up Saturday morning and help mend the fence in the horse pen. BlackBerry, a quarter horse, Bullion, a Welsh pony, and Two Moons, a sheep will be stables here.

They'd gotten snow earlier in the week and the temperature had not been high enough to melt it completely.

There were rows of grass peeking through the cover in the pasture. Whomever had mowed last had not done a very thorough job.

Trudging through the snow and grass was work in and of itself.

There were dog and deer tracks throughout the pasture with the occasional evidence of rabbits and raccoons.

Being in the mid-20s, the morning started off cool, but as the sun rose higher, jackets soon were shed.

The pasture is irregularly shaped as it follows the treeline in the old creek bed.

My son-in-law, Logan, had already done much of the work. The fence posts had all been placed. About two-thirds of the two stands of barbed wire had been run around the quarter mile track.

As he finished running the barbed wire, I lashed the two stands to the t-posts that he'd set earlier.

Parts of this run was through briars and wild roses.

Logan set a cross tie as the corner post on which the gate would be placed. Barbed wire was lashed to the upright and ran to join the other section.

We used a ratcheting tensioner to join the sections and pull them taut.

After hanging the gate, we left the pasture behind. The only thing left to do is to trick the animals out and that will be next weekend.