Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement: If You Want It Done Right Part 2

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

If You Want It Done Right Part 2

In case you missed it, I wrote about our saga with local fence builder Maury Fence Company back in August. Maury Fence Company thankfully only built about one mile of our six miles of fence. I cannot imagine having to face rebuilding all six miles of fence. You can read my original post about our fence saga here.

After purchasing and then using our new post driver to rebuild a short section of fence this summer, Jason decided the first order of business before we rebuilt more fence was getting the post driver where it could be mounted on the front of one of the tractors instead of on the three point hitch at the back. After spending tons of time making his neck sore looking backwards it became quickly obvious to us why most of the fencing companies found a way to mount their post drivers on the front of the tractor. Jason worked with a local welder to have a plate custom made for the front of one of our tractors. Once the plate was ready he removed the front end loader and used the plate to mount the post driver on the front of the tractor.

He accomplished all of this in early October. We then proceeded to find every excuse possible to avoid rebuilding this fence. Given that we're always non-stop busy we did not struggle to find reasons to avoid building a new fence. A few days ago Jason said we had to stop avoiding the fence project. The weather has been consistently gorgeous with days in the mid 60's, and we needed to take advantage of these days before they finally come to an end.

I refer to all of these time consuming, frustrating farm projects that require to be in each other's faces for hours on end while we work together "marriage building projects." For the last five days we've spent a couple of hours a day working on our marriage building project. The first two days were rough. I was running the tractor while Jason operated the post driver. With two cooks in the kitchen it should come as no surprise that things were getting a bit testy at times. Finally on day three I started largely ignoring Jason's instructions and he did the same to me. Unsurprisingly, we've worked in relatively nice harmony since then and we've gotten much more efficient.

Since we only have an our or two per day to devote to this we're not setting any records. We've set 120 posts so far. We are about 30 posts away from reaching a corner. The plan is to start nailing up the boards on that section of the fence, then we will start again on a new section. Part of me wants the weather to get cold and wet so we can stop. The other part of me wants the weather to stay nice so we can get this done and hopefully never do it again. My nightmare is that it gets cold and wet and I still find myself on the tractor pounding fence posts. I guess time will tell which scenario plays out.

Watching Jason drive a post