The Fence Saga

As expected, nothing ever goes as planned at Onn-A-Wym Farms, and the fence is no exception.
The first dilemna was one of equipment---the Skidder we were going to use did not work. Surprise, surprise. So we had to rent a Bobcat, for an un-Godly sum, the details of which I do not even want to know.

The next hangup came with the railroad ties themselves. We had a wonderful generous offer from friends, and it certainly helped, but unfortunately there were not enough to get the job done. I am sure not complaining about that though--every little bit helps. Those were collected Friday nite.

Saturday morning, the Bobcat was obtained, and the hole digging began. Just 50 holes into it, it was obvious that there was a huge defect in our game plan--we either cannot count, cannot add or cannot multiply, as our fence that we thought was about 1440 feet long is actually right at 2000 feet long. You can imagine what that does to the budget. Also, our help was already petering out--I think he may have a new appreciation for how hard we work down here, though, which is HARD. I always feel like Barry's family thinks we are playing all the time, and they just do not have a complete understanding of what our life is really like. I bet they will have a better idea now.

Saturday afternoon, we went after our other railroad ties about 30 minutes away. The man who sold him to us was wonderful, a typical southern Illinois good ol boy, and he gave us a few for free. We knew we would have to make two trips down there, but had no idea that it would be because we needed so dang many! Another load was had today, as well.

Here it is Sunday night, and there are 195 posts at least sitting in holes. Not packed in yet, not mashed down, nada--but we still have one small section to do--probably 200 feet more.

This is going to be one fierce fence though, no doubt about it. No donkeys will be escaping this again, although I hear that Miss Pixie (who is being held in detention until the fence is done, so she will stay off the neighbor's corn field--she and her father Marvin are the cause of this whole mess anyway), actually JUMPED a four foot fence to get out to the pasture today. She is only 41 inches tall for Pete's sake, so I sure wish I had seen that. She had to be captured and hauled back to jail this afternoon. Note her displeasure. Evidently this is not a one weekend event as anticipated, partly due to the failure of our help to show up to actually help, and partly because the job is much bigger than we realized.

Stay tuned for the next installment, of "As the Fence is Re-Built"