Goat Fence Finished -- Well almost

Well we finally finished the Goat fence in the lower field except for one gate which we have to make. We have the little buggers down there at this point and hopefully it will hold them in. Otherwise we might have to shoot them (just kidding, well sort of).

As you can see from the pictures it goes on for awhile and in all honesty we are pretty proud. It took a bunch of work but we used mostly trees which were already down, or the upper parts of trees we are using for the "cabin" so it was pretty much found wood. Certainly not all the milling came out super wonderful but the rails look nice and the whole structure feels pretty solid. We have room at the top for another rail if we see reason for it but fully expect they will stay in at the current height.

As I'm writing this seven goats just went by. Obviously our fence isn't perfect. Fortunately they got out through the temporary closure for the gate so hopefully once we have the gate up we'll be golden.

We also think the gate makes the place look a bit classier. though of course we aren't prejudiced.

Goat fence and Log Pile

We started working on the goat fence the other day. Haven't gotten very far but we think it'll keep the little buggers in and also look reasonable. We found that we aren't very good at digging the post holes where they should be based on the length of our rails. We are going to change our routine and measure out a bit shorter than what the rails are and then cut the rails to fit. Hopefully that will work better. We figure we have about 600 feet of fencing to do so we'll be at it for awhile. Of course it always takes longer when you have to mill the posts and boards to make the fence. Having the tractor with post hole digger is making the job much easier though we do shear off bolts from time to time when we hit a big rock. Our post holes vary a bit in length so as you can imagine we need to cut off the tops of the posts to make them all match. I suspect this fence won't slow down the deer much. We also figure a moose will amble through and take out the whole thing just about when we get it done.

We've also started milling a few of the timbers for the "shed" we are hoping to put up in Waterville this summer. To the left you can see some of the logs we'll be working at milling. Some of the larger ones are going to have to wait until we get the backhoe on the tractor to act as a counterweight. We got them down to the pile by skidding them down the driveway while there was still some snow. Yesterday I brought down one that was about the same size and the tractor was not happy. It picked it up but was very tippy. the shed plan we have requires six 8 x 8 beams that are 16 feet long in addition to a bunch of 12 footers. I think we have the logs for the 16 footers but will need lots of 12 and 10 footers. I suspect more trees will need to volunteer to be a building. We have a couple of more reasonable sized pines which lost their tops this winter. We'll hopefully get them down soon.