Fence Progress and Farm Update!

Well I was originally planning to post about all the great fence progress we were making, but the llama transport plans fell through last week (long story...), so the fence building has slowed down.  Still lots of pictures to share though!

The first step in putting up the fence was to measure and stake where posts would go.  I decided to do 2/3 T-posts (steel), and 1/3 wood posts, with wood braced corners.  The corner brace posts are 8ft apart (the brace posts are 8ft long), and the line posts are 16ft apart.

One corner of the pasture, where the gate will be going.

Such beautiful grass!

We also worked on removing the stanchions in the barn.  It is hard to see here, but one section has been un-bolted, and is leaning on the barn supports.  It's going to take more than me to move it, so it is still in this state, waiting for two stronger men to help!

Dirty dirty barn...but slowly making progress!

Speaking of the two stronger men, they along with their handy tractor managed to move one of the lawn rollers that was in the field.  We hauled it off to the scrap yard and got $40 for it!  There's still one more to move...

Loading the lawn roller into the truck bed with the tractor's front loader.

$40 worth of rusted steel!

Then came moving the huge telephone/power line poles that were lying in the pasture!  No idea why they were there, but they were in the way!  The tractor also came in handy for this.

Using the front-loader to roll the poles off the pile for better access.

Dragging poles with the tractor and a chain.

"After" moving all the poles.

Now we can finally bush-hog all that grass!

The new pile of poles!  At least they are out of the way now...

And finally it came time to start digging posts!

Digging the first post hole!

Of course the first one that we dug...we hit electric cable and barely missed the water line!  So that day was shot, spent the rest of it fixing the cable, and the next day burying it.

Look close...there are 4 electric cables in there!

Close-up shot.  We had to dig a lot more to find the second half of the fourth wire...it was buried under the water line somehow!

After we widened the hole to search for the second half of the fourth wire.

Then we started again...  We quickly realized that the 36" auger wasn't going to dig the 42" hole that I originally had planned, but we tried to see how far we could get it in...and broke the shear bolt that connects the auger to the motor!  Luckily that was an easy fix...

Broken shear bolt.

And FINALLY we got the first post completely set!  We're using concrete to anchor the corner posts, so after digging the hole, we stuck the post in, and then poured about 20lbs of dry pre-mix concrete into the hole, added some water, and then repeated for another 20lbs of concrete.  We filled the remaining hole with dirt, and then used a post level to make sure that the post was straight.

Finally a good straight hole!

Our first post!

We now have 1 post completely set, and 3 more dug and in the holes (without concrete).  Now the setback is getting a new drill that is strong enough to drill a hole all the way through a 6-7" post for the brace pins.  Once we get that we'll be back in business!