South patio and hayfield fence rebuild

Since I had recently completed the backyard and hayfield fence rebuild, and the patio fence add-on, I decided to rebuild a little bit of the yard and hayfield fence just south of the patio.  Now was the time to do the rebuild, before the cattle are let into the hayfield.  Also this part of the fence needed a rebuild as some years ago I had taken down this section as the old fence was falling apart, and I had put up a patchy fix.  Whenever I had cattle in the yard or hayfield I would place a corral panel at this location to better support this section of the fence.

This was a small section of the fence to rebuild, so it should be quick.  Well...  no.  I wanted all the fence boards in this section to match.  I had some rails left so I wanted to use most of them.  I also wanted to angle the corner of the fence so it would be easier to turn when cutting the hayfield.  So I had an ideal length for this west part of the fence. 27 feet.  Were the rails the right length to add up to be 27?  No.  Do I have any more rails?  Well.. maybe.

So I spent some time looking through the other stacks of boards and wood I have. Over the years I had added boards and wood to various stacks. For more than 10 years whenever I had to quickly unload some boards.  What was in those stacks now?

I spent three and a half hours one afternoon unstacking a lot of the boards and wood from the last large stack to look through.  But I found a few rails close to the length I wanted.  Just enough rails for one fence section.  I had three rails a little over 16 feet. I also found in this last stack of boards three rails a little over 9 feet.  26 feet was the closest I could get to 27 feet, almost just long enough.

Then I had the angled fence section. I needed a 13 foot length of rails and thought I had the right length.  But since one side was 26 instead of 27 feet I now need a little over a 13 foot length. The rails were just under 13 feet.  So I was almost one foot short. To make these under 13 foot rails work I had to move the west side and the south side over closer to one another. I hadn't planned on rebuilding any of the south part of the fence but I had to rebuild one section in order to move part of the section over a little bit. Moving the west part of the fence was annoying as a few days prior I had finished rebuilding that section and now I had to change what I had just done.  But I got the under 13 foot rails to work.

I was able to reuse most of the older fence posts.  While top parts of these fence posts were weathering and some starting to decay, all the sections in the ground were solid.  Amazingly the underground posts sections looked almost brand new.

The posts were over 7 feet tall.  But for whatever reason the person who originally built this fence put these posts around 30 inches in the ground.  For railroad ties... yes, 30 inches in the ground is good.  But for these sized posts, 30 inches is deeper that what was needed for these posts.

Look at how deep these posts were in the ground, and how the bottom looks better than the top.

Too long and too short

I didn't want to take apart the fence I had just rebuilt. So, to move the post over I dug next to the post and slid the post over.

I'm not all that fond of this bush. So I had no problem trimming the bush to be narrower in order to have the fence moved over.

For fence sections that are longer than 8 feet, I placed an extra fence post to make that fence section be stronger to keep the cattle from breaking them.  I also added wire to each of the rebuilt sections so the cattle can't get their head through the fence.

Before the fence was rebuilt.

After the fence was rebuilt