We are getting into the final stretch (get it?) of our North Pasture fencing project. Our friend Vincent came over to help us stretch it. He has never done any fencing before, but that did not prevent him from learning quickly and being a great help.
We anchored section one at the west end and then rolled it out to the middle gate. There Adam and Vincent fastened the stretcher bracket to the fence. This is an essential element to allow us to stretch the fence evenly. You can buy a commercial version for about 100 bucks from the farm store, but we built this one for about $5 of hardware and two scrap 2×4’s and it worked great.
Also, Winnie wants you to know she carried that rock all the way out to the field all by herself.
We had a come-along ready to stretch the fence, but found out we didn’t actually need it. Because there was room enough to drive the truck, unlike when we stretched the fence at the east end of the pasture, we simply chained the fence to the hitch on the truck and carefully drove until the fence stood up all by itself. Then we attached it to the anchor with staples on the fence side, cut it to length, and wrapped it around the anchor post, and stapled the wrap securely up the inside of the post.
Daddy reset the tools and truck while Uncle Adam and Mr. Vincent attached the wire ties to each T-post down the length of the field.
Mommy dropped off the rest of the kids after swimming lessons and we had a little picnic on the back of the truck.
Meanwhile, Daddy went to the east end and attached the second role to the east anchor. Uncle Adam rolled the wire back to the center gate, and we attached the stretching bracket and hooked it up to the truck. We drove just until the fence was standing at about a 60 degree angle.
You want the fence tight, but not too tight. We were stretching it on a 60-70 degree day, which is tolerably warm. As the weather cools in the winter, the metal will begin to contract, and the fence will shrink a bit. If it is too tight in the summer, it could begin to put undue stress on the staples and anchors when it gets even tighter in the winter.
Once all the wire brackets were in place we detached the stretching bracket.
And tacked on the fence to the ends of the fence anchors.
Evie and Mr. Vincent laughing over a staple that they both tried to tap in, but only ended up bending it. No worries, we were able to salvage it. This led to an interesting conversation about developing eye-hand coordination and basic skills at a young age (Mr. Vincent is a teacher, so he has a depth of understanding about this sort of thing). Also, Evie is almost as tall as he is. That’s crazy!
All in all, it was a nice, friendly, relaxing work day. When I say relaxing, I mean we got the work done, but we also had time to break for lunch, and get all our tools and spare materials put away well in time for chores. It is important for me on days like this not to try to push harder and squeeze another job into those relaxing spaces. Days like this are a gift. The proper response is gratitude, not greed.
Little Farm in the Big City 