Corner fence rebuild

Over the past few weeks I have been working on rebuilding the corner fence between the hayfield and south pasture where it meets my two southern neighbors' properties.  This was a little complicated as it was four fences, a new gate, and coordinating the work to be when the cattle were rotated out of the south pasture.

I first replaced the old rotted corner post with a railroad tie.  When I unhooked all the barb wires from the old corner post it fell over.  I used a railroad tie because of the post's strategic position, but also because I was adding a gate and needed a solid post to hold a 16 ft gate.  The reason for the gate is two fold:

1. the few times the cattle got out of the pasture, the small four foot opening when I unhooked the barb wire made herding the cattle difficult when they didn't want to go through the opening back to the pasture,

and more importantly

2. a larger and easier to open gate will allow Wyatt to be able to drive directly from his field to my pastures and barn when he delivers hay bales to me.

Before I had to rotate the cattle back into the south pasture I got the corner railroad tie in place and the north fence between the hayfield and south pasture upgraded for about 15 feet.  Of the four fences this was in the best condition to begin with.

Then other things intervened and I didn't get back to the fence until the cattle were again rotated out of the south pasture.

First, I rebuilt about 30 feet of fence east of the corner post.

Second, I reattached the fence dividing the two southern neighbor's properties.

Lastly was the biggest part:  I hung the gate and rebuilt and additional 102 feet of the southern pasture fence.  I wanted to rebuild more of the southern pasture fence but ran out of time before the cattle had to be rotated back into the south pasture.  As it is I delayed their return by a day or two as the last bit of fence work took longer than expected.

Start...

Finish...

Start...

Finish...

While the gate between the hayfield and south pasture is a distance away, I didn't want to add another gate here between the hayfield and south pastures, especially as I needed a second railroad tie to make a solid anchor for the hayfield/south pasture fence.  Instead of my usual two to three boards and wire to tie two railroad ties together as an anchor post, I made a ladder of boards to tie the two ties together.  I can climb up and over that part of the fence.

The rebuild looks like it will last my lifetime.

Once the cattle  were let back into the south pasture they had to immediately check out the new fence work.

The rebuilt fence has posts on 8 ft intervals instead of the uneven intervals of the patched fence from before.   To further strengthen the fence I twisted "stays" on the barb wire to connect them in the middle between the fence posts.

Whoever originally built my fence 'bent' it so the end came to meet the two neighbor's boundary.   I found the survey marker next to the original corner post.

I removed all of the old posts in the south pasture fence.  The old posts were a combination of rotted wooden posts barely hanging on, short 5 1/2 ft metal T posts, and these four bent railroad rails.  They look to have been from a small gauge railroad.  I think the rails were bent when the previous owners got them and they buried them in the ground like that.  They must have been hard up for fence posts.

The old fence had four strands of barb wire.  With T posts of only 5 1/2 ft the fence was not high.  I put in a combination of wood posts and 6 and 1/2 ft metal T posts to make a higher fence.  I restrung the original four strands of barb wire even though the wire is very old and a little brittle.  It was too much of a hassle to replace the old strands when I wasn't replacing the entire fence.  I added two more strands of new barb wire interspersed among the old four strands.  I used a fence (wire) stretcher to make sure the sections I rebuilt has tight wire.  The old barb wire was better than it looked as none of broke when I stretched it tight.