Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement: The End of the Fence

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

The End of the Fence

Jason and I had a small moment of unsatisfying joy on Saturday. We were finished rebuilding the fence and tearing down the old fence. For those who have missed this story you can click here for the background. To make a long story short we have six miles of fence on the farm. Maury Fence Company in Columbia, Tennessee built the first mile. I am thankful every day they only built the first mile. Within fours years of it being built, the mile of fence built by Maury Fence Company started falling over. I don't mean a few sagging sections, I mean the fence was literally falling over. So we've been rebuilding it in sections.

We actually finished rebuilding the fence a couple of weeks ago. When we nailed up the last board I naively thought, "yay, we're almost done. We only have to cut and nail on the face boards and cut the posts off." I knew we still had to tear down the fence behind it, but didn't realize that would be as miserable, if not more so, than building the fence. First we had to cut the hot-wire off the top board of the fence. Then Jason had to put in hours with the chainsaw cutting off the boards. Most of the posts fell to the ground as soon as the boards were cut (the boards were holding the fence up as the posts were rotted) so he didn't have to cut all of the posts, just the occasional non-rotted post.

Then we had to load up the boards and put them in a burn pile. We cut up 1,300 feet of fence. Since this is a four board fence we carted off 5,200 feet worth of boards. Then we had to load up all the posts (more than 250) and put them into a big dumpster because the posts were full of nails. We went through two of the big dumpsters. Then we had to pull out all of the t-posts that had been propping up the fence. We had to remove the gates from the old fence and rehang them on the new fence. It seemed like it would never end. Then it finally ended on Saturday afternoon.

We're not completely done with this stupid Maury Fence Company fence. There are still areas where we haven't removed the fence but had already built a new fence. Eventually we'll get to that, but the important part is done.

I will end this post by saying one more time, if you are looking for a fence builder in middle Tennessee, do not ever work with Maury Fence Company. They will not stand behind their work. They will use cheap materials. We are not the only people in our area rebuilding a fence that is only a few years old because they have no choice but to replace a fence that Maury Fence Company built. When a fence falls to the ground it is a pretty useless fence. Thanks to Maury Fence Company we now own our post pounder, have now spent the money to have this mile of fence built a second time (it was $38,000 the FIRST time) and have more experience than we would like building fences.

The early stages; posts laid out and ready to be driven

Almost finished with the boards. The next steps were cutting and nailing on the face boards, and then cutting the tops of the posts off.

Carter made lots of fun things out of the board scraps

Carter thought it was great fun to play with the wood scraps. I can assure you that Jason and I felt zero joyful emotions about anything to do with rebuilding this fence. Well, there was some unsatisfying joy when we were finished. It's hard to be happy about rebuilding $38,000 worth of fence only a few years after spending it the first time on the first fence.

Tearing down the old fence. Jason had the unenviable job of running the chainsaw for hours.

Getting rid of the old fence one board at a time. Then we had to remove the posts, then we had to pull out the t-posts that had been propping up the old fence. And then, and then . . . .

I am so sick of this f&@*ing fence I haven't taken any completion pictures. I did take a pretty morning sky picture and the new fence is featured on the left. Doesn't it look nice? No, it just looks like any old fence. But it's there, the old fence is gone, and this one will hopefully not need to be replaced in five years.