Fencing

This was a busy week.  After going to the Crescent City Farmers Market on June 19th, I awoke the next day to find that all of my lettuce had been eaten, either by deer or bear, not sure.  So, the fence project that had only reached the stage of being a ring of wooden and steel posts was picked up again in earnest.A big boost of support came this week when my Dad, fresh off another year of teaching middle school wood shop, arrived to help.

I had decided to go with an electric fence with solar power.  By stringing lines of wire and electrifying them we would spend about $500 to create a seven foot high fence instead of spending $2000+ on hog wire fencing of equivalent height.  Now, I am doing this with fingers crossed that parties interested in sampling our wares will be deterred by the threat of receiving a shock.  The thing about an electric fence is that it is not a physical boundary, the animals can get thru it, and the fence is only effective if the animal thinks the shock is not worth messing with.  Bears are probably the hardest to keep out with this method due their heavy insulation of fur.  We have yet to energize the lines, but when we do we will bait them with peanut butter so the bear will use his/her most vulnerable part to touch the fence—their tongue—zap!

I purchased more t-posts than necessary so I could get a bulk discount.  I justified the excess by reminding myself that there are 15 more acres to expand this farm into over the next few years, and that steel doesn’t seem to ever go down in price but only gets more and more expensive.  The fence uses a wood post every 100 feet, and we harvested these on site from a stand of locust trees adjacent to the pole barn.

All together, a fence enclosing six acres has cost around $3500.

pictures and more reports of our exploits to come later on down the trail.

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