Fence repair and weed spraying

Yesterday, after my weed spray was done, I had a little time before dark and I started fixing the corral fence.  This break was done by Haynes back in May.

The board length is 11 feet so I had to look for a replacement board long enough.  I found one a little longer and trimmed it down to size.  I removed the broken board which was difficult as the nails in the right railroad tie did not want to come out of the tie.  I had to use a crowbar to remove the nails.  I was able to put a couple nails in the board to hold it in place and then it was too dark to work.   Today I finished nailing the board to the railroad ties.  Hard to do on the right railroad tie as that tie is so dense the nails don't want to come out or go in.

This is a board I got from Curtis last year when he was using his sawmill to cut logs into boards.  He gave me the outer boards as they vary in width and thickness.  Because the right end of the board is thinner, I put two old short posts in the ground to help the board in case Haynes decides to push on the board next year when he is in the south corral until it is time to breed the cows.  I have the board a little high as this is a section where I place an irrigation pipe when irrigating.

With this fence fixed I took time to fix the metal pipes that I had placed on the opposite side of the fence.  The pipes were suppose to prevent the cattle from pushing on the fence boards.  Instead the calves and the bull liked to rub against the pipe.  They bent the pipe and also broke it off the fence.

I have several pipes.  First off I had to separate two pipes. I had one pipe a little into another pipe as the pipes were of a different size and could not be screwed together.  The bull had pushed one pipe way into the other pipe and it was now stuck.  I had to use two pipes wrenches so I could turn the pipes and eventually pull them apart.  The light brown of one pipe shows how far the bull pushed that pipe into the other pipe.

I had to use new metal pieces to hold the pipe onto the railroad ties.  I have a little more work to do tomorrow as my drill's battery needed to be charged some more.  Due to the hardness of the one railroad tie I had to use the drill to start holes so I could screw screws into the railroad tie.  That done, I ran out of battery power for my next drilling project.

Here you can see how one pipe fits into another pipe.  The smaller pipe had been bent by the calves and bull.  I had planned to install this pipe another day, but I decided to see if I could straighten the pipe and I was able to.

I installed the smaller pipe.  The pipe now covers the five railroad ties on the left.  I have another pipe that the cattle had bent the previous year.  That pipe is more bent.  I haven't straightened that pipe.  When I do it will be installed on the 3 railroad ties on the right.

This used to support a pipe.  The cattle had broken off the boards.  The nails were left.  You can see the cattle rubbed against the nails to... scratch an itch?

The fence / pipe repair took longer than expected. Now on to other things. First I went across the road and gathered the thistle seeds from the thistle I had sprayed Friday. I saw the herbicide was taking effect as some thistles were starting to droop.   Then I went back to spraying weeds.  I didn't think it would take as long to go through one tank of herbicide, as once I finished spraying the north pasture, I would go to the middle pasture, which wasn't sprayed last year.  But there weren't many weeds there. Some of the yarrow I had pulled in July hadn't come back yet.  I ended up spraying half the middle pasture.  Spraying took me 3 hours 40 minutes; 20 minutes longer than yesterday.