Six foot gate

Monday evening I bought a six-foot gate.  Rather than fixing the wooden gate in part of the loading corral, I decided to replace it with a metal gate.  I've been meaning to fix the wooden gate for a few years now but never got around to doing so.

The guy down the road from Donna's place is working on selling his deceased dad's stuff.  I had him look for a six-foot gate but we couldn't find any.  I bought a four-foot gate and a heavy metal ten-foot gate from him.

This past weekend I saw that the Monday auction listed five five-foot gates for sale.  Five-foot?   The only metal gates I know are in even numbered lengths.   Monday afternoon I rode my bicycle to the auction place south of town to look at and measure the gates.  The gates are six-foot gates.   A six-foot gate measures 5 feet and 7 inches.  The other five inches are to hang the gate on one side and hook the gate on the other side.  The auction people apparently are not that smart as they listed the gates as five-foot gates.

The auction is held online Monday night.  Five gates... should be easy and relatively cheap to get one.  I checked at the Murdoch's store and this style of gate sells for $107.    The auction starts to close at 5 pm but one can bid prior to that.  One gate is priced lower than the other four gates.  I was winning that gate at $19.  I was interested in getting a second gate.  I had to bid $52.50 to for the second gate.   The bidding on the gates would close after 9:40 pm so I went outside to do work.  When I came back in before 9:30 pm I found my bids were no longer the highest bids.  The gates were at $55.  So I had to bid.  On this gate and that gate.  Over and over my bid was not the highest bid.   The highest bid was at $67.50 on several gates.  I wasn't keen on making a $67.50 bid for a used gate - though it was in nice condition.  And $67.50 is not the final price.  The auction house also charges a 15% commission.  So a $67.50 bid costs $77.62.  I hemmed and hawed but I really wanted a six-foot gate.  The next gate I topped the $65 bid with my bid of $67.50 and I won.

So I got one gate.  Things are crazy-expensive these days.   I picked up the gate this afternoon.

Yesterday when I rode my bicycle to look at the gates it ended up being a 30 mile ride.  Riding to the auction place was against a strong wind.   Okay then, a least I'll have the wind pushing me back home.  Well.... halfway home the wind quit and the road was wet from a prior raincloud.  Four miles from home it started to rain again.  I was very wet when I got home and had to take off all my clothes to dry.   What a day.

It will be work to replace the wooden gate.  The wooden gate is actually five feet long.   So a four-foot or a six-foot metal gate means I have to move the one railroad tie over a little bit and shorten one wooden fence section.  I'll do this after I let the cattle out of the corral on June 1.

The other side of the wooden gate.   Also you can see how the cattle push against the extra corral panels.  I have twine holding the tops of the corral panels together.  That is why the outside two panels are not laying on the ground.