Broken lopper and fence work

When checking for weeds on the island I noticed the fence on the west end has been going downhill.  The fence is a couple strands of barb wire on wooden posts.  While in poor condition it still will keep the cattle from getting the idea to cross the river channel over to the "thumb" piece of my property.  But one spot looked like there was a path where most likely deer had crossed and ruined the fence in that spot.  Today, before the cattle could get an idea, I put in a metal post there and pulled up a strand of barbed wire to the metal post.  That should do the trick until one day I spend time re-doing / fixing the fence.

While on the island, which is mostly trees, I brought a lopper along.  I am tired of having to bend down a bit in one spot on the path the cattle made.  Especially since the trees have nasty thorns on them.

Black Hawthorn.

Black hawthorn is usually a shrub but under favorable conditions it can become a small tree. It rarely gets more than 35 feet tall. It has a round topped crown with spreading branches that slant upward. Usually, it has thorns 1/3-1 inch long on the branchlets.

Although the wood is hard and strong, it has no commercial value except for tool handles and other small items.

I don't have any photos of the trees.  It is an ok looking tree.  But the problem is that it has numerous thorns everywhere on the tree.  And the thorns are sharp and hard.  And even if the branch dies, the wood and thorns stay hard.

So I brought one of my two loppers along to trim part of the tree on the path.   Well... the wood is hard.  I thought I was not as strong as I get older.  Maybe that's not the case.  I had a little larger branch so I squeezed harder on the lopper handles to get through the branch.  Snap!  Not the branch, but the metal broke on one of the lopper's handles.  Metal.  Strong metal.  I was very surprised that it broke.  Now I have a useless lopper.

Last year I re-built the fence along the river where the south and middle pasture meet.  No sense have the cattle go/fall into the river at that location.  To make the fence straighter I left small amounts of land on the other side of the fence.  While the grass is not the best at that location the cattle still wanted to eat it.  A number walked in the south pasture to the river then went here and there just to get over to the small area with grass.  *sigh*

Yesterday a few of the cows decided they wanted back into the middle pasture and walked the river.  Late afternoon when I went to fix the fence on the island I found additional calves with the cows in the middle pasture.  I discovered the calves went to the grassy area and then pushed on the simple fence and broke off a few metal fasteners.  Since the middle wires dropped loose the calves went through the fence.

*sigh*

I thought I had rebuilt that fence well last year.  I guess not.  After I fixed the island fence I worked on re-building a section of this fence.  I decided to move a half dozen posts out and add a few more posts to eliminate the grassy area on the other side of the fence.  Now maybe the cattle won't walk upstream at least to this area.  I have a little left to finish tomorrow and then I can get to the projects I've been trying to get back to doing.