Middle fence

Time to move the cattle to another pasture.

First I needed to ensure the fences in the middle pasture were good. After each winter I find a few more fence posts have rotted and are loose or broken. This winter was no different. Plus I had a couple of posts last year's cattle had abused. I also replaced the last of the tree branches in these fences that I had used as fence posts 5 years ago when I had no replacement fence posts.

I ended up replacing over a dozen fence posts on the middle pasture/hayfield and middle pasture/south pasture fences.

I also beefed up the middle/south pasture gate. The gate is just four strands of barb wire, and drooping wire at that even though the gate is hard to close as at least one strand is tight. I added a square made out of extra boards to the middle half of the gate and redid some of the barb wire stands. Now no more drooping. And the gate looks a little more substantial.

I also reattached a few strands of barb wire that were broken. Darn deer!

Then I turned my attention to the two fenced areas along the river. Some more fence posts were leaning or in danger of slipping into the river due to bank erosion. I moved parts of the fence back from the river.

I beefed up a fence section to keep the cattle away from some trees on the river bank. I had put up boards and barb wire last year but that didn't stand up over the long run against pushy cattle. Since I had some extra steel fence posts I made a sturdy fence to keep the cattle out.

I had some extra boards that I could use as posts and I pounded them into the ground to act as protectors for some small trees growing down close to the river. As I type this I realize I forgot to wrap the trees to the boards to prevent the cattle from eating the trees.

By the time I finished the fence work, and checked all the gopher and pocket gopher traps, it was getting dark. I never got started today until after noon as it rained several times in the morning.

Tomorrow, once I remove the gopher traps from the middle pasture, I'll let the cattle in.