"Very Fenciferous"

Remember this? :)

The fence looks awful different now than in that picture! After setting all 5 corner posts and 8 brace posts, Mick built the H braces, two per corner.

The H braces prevent the tension of the wires from collapsing the corner posts. When the wires pull the corner post, the corner post pushes the horizontal brace beam into the brace post. However, the diagonal loop of wire connects the brace post to the base of the corner post. This wire is tensioned with a twitch stick.

Mick split an extra locust pole for sturdy, durable twitch sticks. He inserted the twitch stick into the loop of the diagonal wire and twisted the wire until tight. The twitch stick rests against the brace beam, and another loop of wire attaches the top of the twitch stick to the brace beam. The brace beam keeps the twitch stick from allowing the wire to unwind.

After setting the H braces, Mick set the 19 line posts and tamped and backfilled all the posts. We then set to stringing 3 strands of barbed wire (beginning at 2" above the ground), 6 strands of smooth high-tensile wire, and 2 strands of barbed wire (ending at 50" above the ground).

Through trial and error (he told me it took 5 tries) Mick found a great position for the spinning jenny, and this made unwinding the smooth wire a piece-of-cake one-person job.

For each strand, we started at the northeast corner and headed east. One of us unwound the wire halfway around the fence, where Mick tied it to an inline strainer. Back at the starting point, he cut the wire and stapled and tied it to the corner post. Then one of us unwound the wire around the other half of the fence, where Mick tied it to a tension spring attached to the inline strainer. Before stapling and tying this wire to the corner post, Mick tensioned it. He wrapped a chain around the corner post, attached the come-along to the chain, and hooked the wire up to the come-along.

Our handy-dandy wire-gripper tool attaches the wire to the come-along.

After tensioning the wire, Mick stapled and tied it to the corner post. The knots are a lot harder to tie than you might think! The wire takes a lot of convincing.

I was really impressed by how good many of Mick's knots turned out.

He stapled the wire to the remaining corner posts, and tensioned the wires from the inline strainers.

Staying hydrated!

During one water break, Mick spotted a Monarch butterfly and was able to get close enough to get a great picture!

Stringing the barbed wire took considerably more time (not to mention risk of physical harm) than stringing the smooth wire. Mick stapled the wire to the corner post.

Then he tied a knot (note the gloves).

Alas, no spinning jenny for barbed wire, so that was not a piece-of-cake one-person job. But the system Mick rigged up for unwinding that worked out pretty well, especially once we (mostly, Sarah) got the knack of how to carry it.

Our poor carrying-stick took quite the beating after unwinding five lines of barbed wire - all scratched up and a mere shadow of its former thickness.

Unlike the smooth wire, Mick tensioned the barbed wire as we unwound the wire, setting up the chain, come-along, and wire gripper at each corner to tension the wire before stapling it to the corner post.

Each wire, smooth and barbed, got two staples per corner post. Mick stapled the barbed wire tight, to maintain the tension. The staples for the smooth wire, on the other hand, simply hold the wire in place but allow the wire to move freely as the tension is adjusted on the wire. Mick inserted makeshift "staples" between the wire and the corner post to reduce friction between the wire and the post as the wire slides. That friction adds an incredible amount of force! I noticed as I was unwinding the wire around the posts.

We were thankful that our fence wasn't even a foot longer than it is when we neared the end of a barbed wire spool! A spool starts out looking like this.

After two rounds around the fence, this is all that's left.

Our second spool didn't even have that much left over -- we didn't have to use the wire cutters for this one!

Roscoe's job through all of this was keeping cool. Once the fence reached 16", we quite happily discovered that it was perfectly effective at keeping him in! No more worrying about him disappearing to visit the neighbors.

After each line was stapled at the corners and tensioned, Mick stapled it to the line posts. As we made our rounds around the fence, staples in hand, we stopped at least daily at the fruit stand (Mick called it the gut truck) located very conveniently along the west line of the fence.

The staples are pretty impressive. The two points of each staple are sliced in opposite directions, so that as they are hammered into the wood they twist in opposite directions and help to keep the staple embedded in the wood. Also, each leg of the staple has a barb that serves the same purpose.

Mick's handy-dandy staple setting tool helped him to get a good, straight start on each staple and minimized thumb-hammering.

Black locust is exceptionally hard, especially compared to pressure-treated posts -- good for fence longevity, bad for Mick's stapling tool.

After what I estimated to be at least 407 staples, Mick's shoulder was shot and so was his tool. The bottom now has a nice hammered finish, and it has split and mushroomed.

By the end of the stapling, Mick had to hammer the top of the tool back into place between line posts.

But at last, the fence was complete!

This picture is a couple strands from the end - but doesn't it look fencish? :)

Mick rigged up a gate diagonally between the two northeast corner posts. Eventually, each of these two sides of the fence will have a gate, and the gates will form the corner of the fence.

Mick estimates the fenced-in area is .55 acres. It includes some wild cherry trees in the southwest corner.

It also includes a lovely wild apple tree along the southern line.

The fruit looks great!

It also includes some honeysuckle. Apparently, some varieties of honeysuckle produce delicious fruit. After several experiments at varying stages of ripeness, I can attest that this is not one of those honeysuckles! Judging by the number of ripe berries left on the bushes, even the birds seem to agree with me on this one.

Some of the black locusts that Mick transplanted from his folks are located just inside the eastern fence line -- eventually to be replacement fence posts, perhaps?

And six of the honey locusts he planted from seeds and nursed through the winter are just on the outside of the eastern fence line.

Hopefully the video won't make you seasick, but it starts with our gate in the northeast corner and shows you (mostly) the fence all the way around. I tried to pause at the corners to stay oriented. The gate is at the north (uphill) side of the grove of poplars. The northern fence line cuts across the field. The western fence line runs along the property line (on the side towards Cortland), the southern fence line also runs along the property line (you can see the yellow house and their shed in the background), and the eastern line runs a safe distance from the orchard.

Very fenciferous indeed!