Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Fencing, Fire Ants and Boxer Shorts

Jason and I are once again working one of our least favorite projects, rebuilding the mile of fence that Maury Fence Company built for us. For those who have missed my many posts complaining about this problem here is the short version. We have six miles of fencing on the farm, the majority of it four board wood fence. Maury Fence Company built the first mile, and thankfully ONLY the first mile. Only four years after they built the fence a majority of the posts started to fail. The boards were fine, the posts were rotting, some had already completely rotted. Our trusted fence builders who built the other five miles of fence rebuilt the half mile of perimeter fencing and we propped up the two sections of interior fencing with t-posts.


When it was time to start rebuilding the interior sections of the fence last year our trusted fence builders had retired. Rather than trust anyone else and have another Maury Fence company type of disaster, Jason declared we were going to rebuild the remaining fence ourselves. We bought a post pounder, Jason had some retrofitting done so we could front mount it on the front of our old tractor as opposed to putting it on the 3-point PTO hitch on the back. We rebuilt about 1300 feet of the 2600 feet of fence that still needed to be redone. We did a cross fence so we could practice before doing the 1,300 feet of fence along the driveway. We disliked building the fence so much we have pushed off rebuilding the final section of fence for another 18 months. It was easy to put off since we're already work 12-14 hours every day and aren't looking for extra work.  Plus, rebuilding the fence requires us to work right next to each other for long stretches at a time instead of being on opposite points of a couple hundred acres.

Last week Jason announced that we could no longer delay rebuilding the 1,300 feet of fence along the driveway. The next day Jason had 250 posts delivered and the
torturefence building began. Since we had practiced on the other 1,300 feet of fence we are a little better, and quicker, than we were 18 months ago.  We put in a couple of extra hours of work each day for four days and set a little over 200 posts. We managed to only break one post in half during the process, in fact of the 500-ish posts we've now set that is the only post we've broken during the process.

we didn't intend to do that

we were able to pull the broken post out without too much trouble

Jason's one concern was we were going to be setting posts within the vicinity of one of our water lines. Since we installed those ourselves we generally know where they are located and we were careful in that area. After getting the posts in that area set Jason went to inspect the ground and make sure it wasn't too wet. He picked up a shovel, moved a bit of dirt, and stuck  his hand in the ground to feel the soil.

He immediately started running in a circle screaming f**k repeatedly at the top of his lungs. I thought, "wow, we must have really nailed the water line" and that Jason was expressing his frustration. But he didn't stop running, and he continued screaming profanities.

I knew the circling and profanity screaming were not related to our water line when he began stripping off his shoes and clothes while he continued to run in circles screaming f**k f**k f**k. I was stunned into silence as he stripped down to his t-shirt and boxer shorts and continued running in a circle screaming f**k. I threw myself into his path to ask him what was wrong,  because simply screaming, "Jason, what's wrong?" wasn't getting me any responses.

Jason, running around in his boxer shorts and t-shirt on our driveway, screamed "I stuck my hand into some f**cking fire ants." If you've never been bitten by a fire ant, take my word for it that it hurts. If you get a bunch of them crawling on you and stinging you, you too will run around in your driveway in your underwear screaming f**k, trust me on this. Jason's behavior now made perfect sense to me. To preserver what little dignity Jason has left, there will be no pictures or videos of him franticly running in circles on our driveway in his boxer shorts screaming f**k.

All of the boards were delivered yesterday, so we still have plenty of fun fence building left. This mile of fence from Maury Fence Company has been the awful gift that keeps on giving. Word to the wise, never have Maury Fence Company build you a fence.

the boards being delivered

Convey rolling, Chance and Baby grazing


Walon and Sushi

Rubrico and Ripley

Squirrel and Gus

Rocky, Toledo and Roho

Wilson and Ripley

Chance and Baby

Thomas and Levendi

King

Cisco and Hemi

Rey and Faisal

Grand, Hemi and Thomas

Revy, Hemi, Grand, Thomas and Apollo

Rey, Cisco and Homer

Moe, Ricardo and Trigger


Sunday, October 27, 2019

Sunday Stills


Sam and Quigly

Happy and Blu

B-Rad, Ascot and Bear

Mick, Sam and Quigly

Silver and Gibson

Indy and B-Rad

B-Rad and Sebastian

Moses and Donneur

Cocomo, Ralph, George and Gibson

Ralph and Gus being silly

Digby and Paramount

Johnny, Lighty and Sam

Taco

Fendi and Flyer

Romeo and Lotus

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Amish Visitor

When I came rushing out of the house Monday afternoon to pick Carter up from school I stopped dead in my tracks when I realized an Amish buggy was parked behind my truck.  The driver was walking toward me and a very polite Amish man introduced himself and asked if any of our horses were for sale. I attempted to explain to him that all of the horses were retired and were not for sale. I apologized profusely as I explained to him that I was running a few minutes late to pick up my son and that unfortunately I had to go. I told him he was welcome to wait until I got home and I could answer more of his questions. I assumed he would be gone when I got home with Carter 20 minutes later, thus I was very surprised to see his buggy still sitting in our driveway.

We had a nice conversation about some of the horses on our farm. He had a great eye and picked out some specific horses to ask about. His buggy horse, Rex, was in good weight, had excellent hooves, the check rein was loose and overall he looked like a well cared for horse. In talking with him it was clear that he really liked his horses and saw them as both working partners and family members. He was telling me about his working horses, his buggy horse, and his riding horses.  He was looking for another horse that could double as both a riding horse and a back-up to his buggy horse, and was hoping to find one at our farm. We discussed some potential places he could look for a suitable horse. Unfortunately, when your mode of transportation is a horse and buggy, location is everything so I wasn't very helpful.

After about 25 minutes of very pleasant conversation he had to go. He told me it would take him about two hours to drive home. Oh, and the main reason he was near our farm was to drop off his recycling. There is a drop off location for recycling about a mile up the road from our farm and he said he had brought several glass containers they were no longer going to use. When it takes you a four hour round trip to drop off your recycling that is dedication to planet earth. It drives me crazy when people label all Amish as animal abusers and puppy mill factories. Like any other group of people, there are Amish who are great to their animals and those who are not. It was a pleasure to talk horses with him as he clearly was a horse guy and adored his horses.  I of course didn't ask him if I could take his picture, but I did take this stealth picture of his buggy as he was heading down the driveway. I thought since neither his horse nor himself were in the picture it would be ok.

In the meantime, every horse on the farm lost their respective minds as they watched the Amish horse and buggy go down our driveway. Even if they weren't retired, I told him I really didn't think most of our residents had the proper temperament for the job. The horses proved me right as his buggy horse quietly walked down the driveway ignoring the mayhem that followed him.


Missy and Gracie

Charlotte and Dolly

Cody and Renny

Penny, Gracie and Cinnamon

Dawn and Charlotte

Jake and Maggie

Maisie and Lily

Cuffie and Lily

Traveller

Taylor and Alfie

Duesy, Remmy and Baner

Art and Merlin

Dooley, Sport and Renny

Havana and Bruno

Jake and Diamond