Building Fences and Fires

It's been a hectic week, so I'm behind in reporting weekend activities in Carmine. First of all, our gate was completed last week. One of our country neighbors sent me this picture, and what a relief. Dragging cattle panels across the gap every time we drove through the gap was getting tiresome.

Now, I've got to track down the fence builder to pay him. These guys are so laid back. As I've written in earlier posts, don't get in a big hurry in the country.

Now that one fence is built, Tammy and I spent the weekend starting another fence. We need to keep cows away from the cabin, and dogs away from the cows, so I started digging post holes for the corners.  We're using cedar logs from the property for the corner posts.

This is ridiculously hard work, and if I did this for a living, I'd have the traps of an Olympic swimmer.

We're fencing about 8100 square feet so that the dogs have plenty of running room. Once again, I'm digging deep into my memory to pull out high school geometry to get this fence line straight. By the end of the weekend, We had the back line plummed, and t-post driven.

You can see the bright pink string that stretches from corner post to corner post.  It gives us an easy visual for driving the metal t-posts.  It also gives me a solid reference for squaring the corner to start running the next line of fence. Again the 3,4,5 method of squaring got me a nice square corner.

                

I was actually surprised that Tammy eyeballed the turn almost perfectly before I ever started digging holes.  She helped me dig that corner post, too. Because I was so tired, I just didn't have much left. Each post is 6 feet long, and it has to be set 2 feet into the ground. That's a long way when you're digging through clay.

**PHOTO DELETED PENDING THREAT OF DIVORCE PAPERS - I MADE MY WIFE LOOK FAT. SORRY, HONEY.**

Besides working on the new fence, Tammy and Elizabeth started building a big barbecue pit out of cinder blocks.  We still need to locate the right gauge metal for the grates, but once it's done, it will be a nice solid fire pit/smoker/barbecue pit.

It doesn't seem like a lot of work, but it was because it was heavy, back breaking labor. 22 cinder blocks get very heavy at about number 10 when you've moved them for the third time. Once that pit is done, it better never have to be moved.

If it stops raining, we'll try to get back out to the cabin this weekend and finish the pit, and run another line of fence.

It's getting there, y'all.