Hayfield gate

Now that my hay is in the barn, and I am on the count down to letting the cattle into the hayfield, it was time to finally finish my work on the hayfield fence by the road. If you remember back in January a semi truck went off the road and flattened about 100 ft of my hayfield fence.

The photo shows the gap in the fence caused by the semi.

Earlier this Spring I rebuilt the section that was flattened. And more. Since the fence was very old and in bad condition I ended up rebuilding the fence starting from my yard all the way to the gate. 400 ft of fence. I hadn't blogged about it as I hadn't completely finished the fence rebuild. I still had stays to add to the fence and also rebuild the gate.

Thursday and Friday I worked on the fence. Thursday I rebuilt the gate. Friday I fixed the corner where the fence meets the yard fence.

The gate rebuild took longer than expected. I made the mistake of rebuilding the gate before replacing the post on the south side. (I had already replaced the post on the north side when I rebuilt that section of fence).

Initially I thought I could reuse the old railroad tie as it was tall. But then I dug it out from the ground I found that the part of the post that was in the ground had completely rotted. What was left (the above ground part) was too short for a gate post.

Hmmm... what to do. By coincidence just before I began the gate rebuild I had ridden my bicycle past an area where an old railroad tie was removed from the ground in order to put up a large "Development For Sale" sign. The railroad tie was old and not perfect but would work for my gate post.

And it did work fine for me. The problem was that once I got the new post in the ground I found my gate was two inches wider. I couldn't close my gate. So I had to take my gate apart and lengthen it by those two inches.

I am pleased with my new gate. The old gate had been patched and patched, was hard to open and close, and was ugly. The new gate is simpler and has a cleaner look.

(Note, in the 'before' photo the open area is not the gate. I was in the middle of rebuilding the fence when I took the photo.)

Friday's work was to fix the corner. When I rebuilt the fence I used a wire stretcher to hang the wire. It makes a nice and tight fence. The downside was that I had kept the corner post and did not do any extra bracing of it. Over the past few months the tight fence had pulled the corner post in and away from my yard fence.

I used my wire stretcher to straighten the post and close the gap as much as I could then nailed a few boards to prevent the post from getting pulled away again.

Here is what the wire stretcher looks like. I don't remember where I got this; either I found it among dad's stuff else I got it with a bunch of stuff at an auction. But I do know that having used it I won't go without one ever again when working on my fence. This is tightens up the wire faster and tighter than I could ever do before. And it is great when repairing a broken wire as it can grab both ended and pull them together easily.

Thursday and Friday nights I took a few minutes before it got too dark to see well and added more stays to the fence. Even though my posts are only 8 ft apart I am adding the stays between the posts to further reinforce the fence along the road. When it comes to cattle it doesn't hurt to over build one's fences.

I have twenty stays left to add to the fence.