This and That--Fencing and Tai (Tuesday, March 1)

It's time for an update on the new fence, since Herb has been making good progress during this warm, sunny weather.  This picture shows how he gets the fence-line straight, by tying a pink string (hard to see in this down-sized photo) from one corner post to the next one.  Then he drives metal T-posts into the ground along the line at approximately 10-foot intervals.

This photo shows a braced corner post, ready to be wired together. (I'll take a close-up of the wiring for a future post.)  The fencing needs to be strung in straight lines, not curved.  Along the driveway, Herb was able to follow a straight line from corner to gate to corner.  At every corner and gate-post and every place where the fence needs to go off a straight line, Herb puts in three wood posts 6' apart with cross braces that he wires together.  This is in order to adequately brace the fence against the pull of the wire and prevent it from leaning under the strain.

Once the posts are in place, he uses a long crow-bar to tamp the dirt back solidly in the hole.  If he had to use water to soften the dirt, then he has to wait till it dries to adequately tamp it down.

Occasionally he hits a spot that is too rocky for the post-hole digger to work, and then he has to dig the hole by hand.  Or sometimes the post-hole digger goes slightly off the vertical, and then he has to hand-dig the hole to straighten it out so the post fits in.  Here Charis is watching him while he explains how it's done.

Besides watching Herb dig post-holes, Tai went for a walk in the woods with Jenny, Zephyr, and me to help us look for eggs.  Gypsy has not been laying for going on two weeks, and I suspect she's been hiding her eggs somewhere else.  Since our property abuts a 400-acre hunting preserve, it was kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack!

Tai made another visit to the barnyard with Jenny where he met Siobhan.  They were both interested in each other and a little cautious, but surprisingly unafraid.

Here Tai gets a kiss from his grandma!

Now this is something he'll miss when he goes home to VA--nice, fresh manure cookies!

Nothing like that fresh-from-the-oven flavor!