Marking The Day

It was a good job for the rather cold but sunny day. I'd noticed a leaning corner post North of the barn. Closer inspection revealed it had rotted off just below ground level as they often do. So I sawed (by hand) an old telephone pole in half to make two good long posts for the fence.
Augering a hole in the ground was a real challenge. A summer of almost no rain has left the ground hard and dry. Add to that it was one of the stoniest spots on the farm and it turned into an almost all day job. Soil too dry for the hand auger to pick up so I pulled most of the powder dry dirt out of the hole by hand. One big rock was too big to loosen up and remove so I had to expand the post hole a bit to the side of the rock so I could get the post in position.
At the end of the day the new posts are in, not as deep as I hoped, rails re-attached and standing almost straight. They will keep the cattle in for a few more years.
Its not real pretty but I can look at it every day now and remember what I did on my 64th birthday.

The Fab Four. Not the Beatles but they do a pretty good rendition of this old tune. 

Good Fences

Make good neighbours , quoting from an old Robert Frost poem. And it is true. Sometimes it seems I spend as much time fencing things out of my property as I do fencing my own cattle in. Funny how big farmers sometimes want to get bigger by working up the borders right up to the fence line to the point of  breaking off posts. Fence posts cost money and time to set up. Maybe it is an outdated concept about having to leave an eight foot uncultivated border along the fence line.
The latest annoyance is irresponsible "@$##s" who treat some of our property as a public amusement park/hunting range/mud bog to play with their four wheel drive trucks. What used to be a reasonably good prairie trail was recently turned into a rutted, torn up mud patch in places. The recent wet weather co-incided with a whole lot of unauthorized traffic on this trail and , big surprise folks, the trail is trashed in places. Barely passable for a 2 wheel drive pickup anymore. Nothing that a few hundred dollars worth of gravel won't fix, for a while.
So up goes the gate and locked chain. I'm pretty tolerant but I do have my limits.