Fencing and wood stove

Another wet day Wednesday, though no snow fell. By the end of the day all the snow - except for the snow that slid off roofs - melted as the temperatures got into the lows 40s F. By evening the clouds lifted so I could see much of the mountains.

I stayed in all day and did stuff inside. I also made a cake and pumpkin bread and muffins. So I will be ready to be outside for work Thursday once the weather improves.

Monday I had been working on protecting my fruit trees and bushes in my garden area as I plan to let the cattle in there to eat the grass down. I am trying to get it so in the future I will only need 15 minutes or so of protection before letting the cattle in as I already have some sort of permanent fencing around the trees and many bushes to protect them from the deer. But while a flimsy fence will stop a deer, the cattle will push and break weak fencing. Time to upgrade.

Years ago when I first built fences around my young fruit trees I didn't have any fence posts so I used pine tree branches for posts. Four or five years later the 'posts' are not so strong anymore. Each year I replace the posts with metal posts when the cattle break the branch posts. This year I decided to replace three fences that are still all branch posts to get ahead of the cattle. And I replaced a few other posts in other fences as I didn't want to get into rebuilding all nine fences at this time. I keep meaning to fix all fruit tree fences for good during the summer when I have more time, but that never happens. I never seem to have time. In my defense, I have only gotten more chicken wire and other small fencing material at auctions this past year.

So I spent most of Monday working on my fruit tree and bush fencing. If it hadn't started to seriously rain Monday evening I would have finished all the protection work.

I have one more fence to completely rebuild. I wanted to complete this fence before letting the cattle in, but this morning I found the cattle have mowed the NE pasture down pretty good once the snow melted, and some of the cattle were working on reaching the small bushes and trees protected by a fence I built last year. I found they pushed on that field fence and worked their tongues through the larger openings and seemed to have eaten my small Caragana trees and were working on reaching the small arborvitae trees. *argh*

The cattle gathered around me and some bellowed at me: "I'm hungry. I want easier to eat food. I'm tired of nipping the grass shorter and I want longer grass." Okay, okay. So I quickly wrapped a last few trees and bushes and then let the cattle in my fruit tree and garden area hoping they will concentrate on the grass and leave the trees alone for now.

After I finish my breakfast I will rebuild the final fence.

I again had my wood stove going the past few days to heat my house. Here a few photos I took a few days ago when I had the stove going. The stove puts out lots of heat. Sometimes when I am tired I act like a cat and curl up in front of the stove to be warm.