Hanging Fence!!

We're finally hanging fence!

I set up the wires for the braces a few days ago (well, all but one), so today we set out to start hanging the fence.

First we had to build our fence stretcher.  It is 2 pieces of 2x4, cut to 4.5'.  We drilled 2 holes and added 2 bolts.  The fence gets sandwiched between the pieces of wood, and the nuts on the bolts tightened as much as possible.

Next we had to strip the vertical wires from the end of the fence roll, and tie the end of the fence around the gate post.  Just stripping those wires took an hour!

Then we unrolled the fence along the fence row, and attached the stretcher.  We wrapped a chain around the top and bottom of the stretcher, and attached a come-along between the chain and the tractor.  We had a lot of extra slack in the fence, so we backed the tractor up before tightening with the come-along.

Once the fence was tight enough, we stapled it at the corner.  Tomorrow we'll stretch the next length of fence (and splice the next roll in between).

We didn't get much done in all reality, but hopefully it will go faster in the future!