Going Vertical

Who needs extreme sports when you can go build fence?

Every spring, the routine is the same. You have to check the fence for holes — those both in existence and those that can become one real fast — before you turn your animals onto pasture. Winter and wild animals take a terrible toll on fences. Trees that died during the summer often fall from rot or the weight of snow with uncanny precision onto your fence. Elk and other wild animals on the run can tear out a fence without even noticing it's there, stringing the pieces out for several yards and leaving broken and bent posts in their wake.

These are just a few of the issues we deal with every year in addition to the normal wear and tear a fence goes through.

Your gear for a day of fence fixing includes everything you might need: a replacement coil of wire, staples (for wood posts) and clippies (for metal T posts), pliers, hammer, chainsaw, posts (metal or wood or both), post driver (for metal), and post-hole diggers (for wood). If you can manage to carry it, water and a snack make the trip as well. You want to have as much of everything with you as physically possible, because even a single trip back to the house can eat up precious hours of time and energy.

The fun part comes when only part of your fence is accessible by ATV, and you have to — quite literally — carry your gear on foot the rest of the way.

Today, Hubby and I logged somewhere between 3 and 4 miles on foot with all our gear minus posts in tow. A lot of the terrain was very near totally vertical, and tonight my knees and feet shake with stress when I go up and down the stairs in the house. It was a good days' work, though, and well-worth the peace of mind we'll have when our girls are all on the same side of the fence.