Life among the Tall Pines: South pasture gate

Last week I rebuilt the gate for my south pasture. I had to do this before I let the cattle into this pasture as the broken gate would not hold them in.

Here is what the gate looked like before I rebuilt it.

Yup, it needed fixing. Both posts holding the gate had rotted and once the ground thawed this Spring the posts and gate fell over. This is also an example of my pasture gates. They are strands of barb wire held in place by boards, or for this particular gate the two squares I had built and nailed to the wires.

My goal was to replace this gate with one of my metal gates. I thought I would be using one of my 14 ft gates but when I measured this broken gate I found it to be 16 ft wide. Oh. I then realized that I wanted at least one gate in each pasture to be a minimum of 16 ft wide and this was one of those gates.

I went back and took inventory of all my gates and what sizes they were. Not counting gates on the perimeter of the ranch (i.e. gates to the neighbors properties) I planned to have 15 gates. I had 17 gates. But with my 16 ft rule, and my corral which will have 16 ft gates on three sides, I need seven 16 ft gates. I have four.

To solve this dilemma I decided to pair two 12 ft gates with two 8 ft gates. A 20 ft gate opening exceeds 16 ft. Since it not symmetrically pleasing I decided to make one of those 20 ft gates the gate I was rebuilding in the south pasture and far from the house.

I know this adds up to six 16 ft (or greater) gates and not seven, but I'll solve that in the future when I find two 8 ft gates to be used for one of my corral gates.

Now that I finally figured the gate configurations out, now to assemble the tools and stuff I need. That took a while as some gates and posts were not easily accessible.

Finally I loaded up my wheelbarrow and headed out. I am loath to drive my pickup in my hayfield so as not to smash the grass down. And to go through the pasture meant I had to pass through the middle pasture where all the cattle are. Since Tammy, my rancher girl and gate handler is back in Minnesota, I decided to use my wheelbarrow.

I decided to use one of my old 8 1/2 ft railroad ties for the 12 ft gate. For the 8 ft gate I decided to use a large post. That didn't work as once I dug the hole for the post I discovered that the post was 6 inches too short for this gate as the lag bolt placement was at the top of the 8 ft gate.

Back to get another railroad tie. I found a tie that was a half a tie. Why it was half a tie? I don't know. The tie came that way in the pile of ties I had gotten at an auction.

The extra railroad tie was one of many things I needed to get or exchange back at the tool shed or hay shed. I went back and forth between the gate and my buildings so many times I tried not to take the same route so as not to smash the grass down to create a trail. I estimate the distance as a 1/5 of a mile, and as many times I had to get or exchange something, I walked many miles while rebuilding the gate.

The next wrinkle. I didn't care for the gate location. My original plan was to replace the gate when I got around to rebuilding the entire fence. Then it would be easy to move the gate. Even though I wasn't rebuilding the entire fence, well... that didn't stop me from doing what was right even if it meant more work, which wouldn't be a surprise to my Uncle Curt as he had learned when he planned to help me move my head gate in the corral. He just shook his head when I decided to dig out and replace several railroad ties with shorter ties instead of taking a chainsaw to the 10 ft ties and making them shorter.

I move the gate's location about 60 ft to the south. This new location is closer to the middle of the pasture than the old location. I couldn't move the gate any further south to the true middle as the land dropped down in a very big dip and I didn't want the gate on a slope or at the bottom of such a large a dip.

The photo shows has the gates at the new location and to the right of the wheelbarrow is the old gate location.

Instead of 'patching' the old gate location with barb wire, I rebuilt the fence to my new standards between the new and old gate locations. This meant five strands of barb wire instead of four. All wooden posts were replaced. The following photo shows why.

When I first took over the ranch for dad, he had no extra posts. To help the posts that were weak and rotted I used tree branches. I guess it wasn't a bad decision as the branches lasted seven to nine years - longer than I expected.

I worked long hours on these gates, especially since on the first day I spent so much time getting ready. I started on Tuesday and the forecast was rain to arrive Wednesday and last to the weekend. By the end of Tuesday I had only the 12 ft gate hung. I am pretty proud of this gate as it is the best gate I have hung. The gate is level and doesn't touch the ground in any part of its arc. The gate also stays in position wherever it is in the arc.

Wednesday had no rain until after dark. I got the second gate hung, replaced all the posts and got four of the five barb wire strands in place. It was too dark to hang the fifth strand. Barb wire is a pain to work with when you can see the barbs. Handling barb wire in the dark... ouch!

It rained most all day Thursday.

Friday, between the rain, I got the fifth barb wire strand in place and threaded the stays on the rebuilt fence sections. While I used a wire stretcher to hang the barb wire and make it tight, it is eight ft between posts and stays are an added insurance against cattle breaking through the fence.

When done with everything I found a problem. I was a little too strong in stretching the barb wire, and in twisting diagonal wire supporting the railroad ties. The tie for the eight foot gate was leaning back and the distance between the two gates had increased. While the distance was till acceptable, I was worried that the railroad tie over time would continue to pull away from the opening.

My solution was use the wire stretcher to pull the top of the tie back and then place a diagonal board to help support the tie. I did this on Saturday. It helped, but I found the tie still sprang back somewhat when I released the wire stretcher after placing the extra board. I had stretched the barb wire between the ties pretty tight as it took four attempts of stretching the wire as the wire either broke or my 'tieing' the two pieces of wire together would come undone under the pressure.

This photo shows the stretching of the tie before I placed the diagonal board. The yellow at the top of the left tie is the wire stretcher with the wire going down to the bottom of the right tie as I didn't want the right tie to bend under the pressure.