90 fence rails

I bought 90 fence rails from a local fencing company.  They had this bundle marked down a lot as they said the rails looked weathered.   They look fine to me.  I hemmed and hawed on getting the rails.  If you remember last year I rebuilt a section of my yard / hayfield fence by the house and used old rails for the new fence.  I think it looks good.  This year I had no problems with the cattle with this section of the fence.  But rebuilding the rest of the yard / hayfield fence is a big project.  Eventually I want to rebuild this fence but it is not at the top of the list of fence rebuilds.

I have 31 sections of fence to rebuild,  Each section is 8 feet long.  When I saw the fence company's Craigslist ad I started thinking about getting some rails.  They only wanted $5 for each rail.  Initially I thought "too good to be true".  But it was.  The fencing company occasionally sells material marked down on Craigslist, but I never saw them sell fence rails before.  I asked them, and they said no, they hadn't sold marked down rails before.

I had enough cash in my pocket to buy 21 rails.  The rails are 16 feet long.  3 rails for each fence section makes 7 fence sections (or in other words I can replace 14 old fence sections).  The rails are 3 inches thick.  Strong enough so the cattle would have trouble breaking.  They can, as I have had cattle break old rails in the past.  That is why I now add wire to the rails so the cattle can't stick their head through the opening and push on the rails.

Then I thought.  31 old fence sections means I would need about 16 new fence sections, or 48 rails.  Should I?  Most likely I wouldn't end up rebuilding all those sections this year as that is how things go for me when the cattle change my plans.  I figure I would look at the rails and then decide.

The rails looked very good.  The fence company said they had about 10 email responses to their ad.  People said they would buy the whole bunch, but then would not show up the next day.  There were 90 in the bundle.  Let me think.  I could also rebuild the yard / fruit tree area fence and make that a rail fence.  Then whenever we had a winter storm with lots of snow and wind I would no longer have a snow drift across my driveway as the current fence slows the wind down and causes a snow drift to form.

I didn't have the cash in my pocket.  Who carries $450 in their pocket?  Not me.  And how would I get the bundle home?  Not in my pickup.  I asked the fence company to hold the rails for a few hours while I went to ask my neighbor Curtis if he would haul the bundle for me in his flatbed truck. And to get money from the bank.

Curtis said yes.  I got the money and bought the bundle yesterday.  Today, after I helped Curtis on a project he was doing on a house, he and I got the bundle (the fence company has a big forklift that loaded the bundle), and hauled the bundle to my NE pasture.  I won't use all the rails this year (most likely), so I used some of my short railroad ties to place the bundle on to keep the bundle off the ground.

Curtis' flatbed truck's bed tilts.  With the end of the bundle on the ground he could drive off slowly and the bundle slid off the truck and on to the railroad ties.

Now I need to get around to rebuilding fence.

90 rails.  I counted.