Tag Archives: fencing

It Feels Like Home

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The rain is settling in again on the farm this Sunday morning. We have a full lineup of work ahead, and some of that will need to be postponed. Completing the predator-proof fencing for the lower pasture will need to wait for drier days; rolling out and stretching field fence in the rain would be no one’s idea of fun. But cutting firewood can be done with relative comfort and safety while deep in the woods. And this could be a good day to work on my bowl carving technique (currently just about nil).

Regardless of the task at hand, it must be said that living on a farm is endlessly challenging, rewarding, and stimulating. Living on and with the land, learning the strengths and weaknesses of this particular piece of landscape, watching the seasons come and go—all make it more of a home than anything I have experienced as an adult.

There are many who live in the country for the isolation or as a retreat, or as a place of recreation to ride horses or four-wheelers, or to hunt. And I would not dispute their assertion that their house is their home. But there is a tangible satisfaction in the process of working with the land to produce for oneself and those one loves, or for people in town or the city. It ties one to the land in ways that are still revealing themselves to me.

For me, the simplest way to describe it is that it feels like, it is, home.

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This blog began 15 years ago as an occasional letter to friends and family. Three hundred and eight letters later, in January 2012, it emerged as a weekly post to observe that journey. In these posts, I’ve tried to document that process of “coming home”—of learning skills, enjoying exhilarating successes, and enduring spectacular failures—all while still leaving room for plenty of rants and observations.

This is a weekly exercise in which I seldom know what I’m going to write about until I open the laptop on Sunday morning. But like carrying out the work on the farm and producing the food for the table, I find the process and the sharing satisfying. They too feel like home. And, since you are part of that process, I welcome your input and ideas for the future of this exercise. You can reply here or email me at bmiller@wingedelmfarm.com.

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Reading this week: Just Enough: lessons in living green from traditional Japan, by Azby Brown. An informative study of the sustainable cultural practices of the Edo Period in Japanese history. I have found it well worth the time spent reading it.

 

What Have We Learned

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The clouds yesterday, on the winter’s solstice, gave way just minutes before sunset allowing the light of the sun to give his farewell nod. We won’t notice the difference immediately but the days will begin to lengthen. So as a day, a week and a year ends, what have we learned?

  • That long about mid-February, here in our East Tennessee valley, the light will be long enough to germinate seeds.
  • That seed catalogs eventually give way to a garden plan that is part absolution and part salvation.
  • That not all timber is easy to cut on a portable sawmill. Black Walnut is too dense as Tim, Russ and I found out.
  • That leftover roasted Cornish hen can be turned into enough chicken salad to feed three hungry men in just a few minutes.
  • That log dogs can be moved on the lumber deck in the same amount of time it takes to fix a salad.
  • That some men who have experienced war know torture when they see or hear about it. And other men who received questionable deferments think it is ok.
  • That the rate of unemployment for men is three times the rate reported in the monthly jobs report. And that 33 percent of the adult men in our valley are unemployed.
  • That the stock market is at an all-time high.
  • That the Arctic is warming at three times the rate of the rest of the planet.
  • That my homeland of Louisiana will lose 30 percent of its southern parishes this century to the sea.
  • That I agree with Prince Charles, much to the chagrin of my ancestors, he is right, mutton tastes terrific.
  • That an adopted cousin who connected with his own biological family will remain my cousin.
  • That as older family passes away they remain present in our memories and our own flesh and blood.
  • That at least for the foreseeable future of the next few billion years, regardless of what we do, the sun will continue its journey.

And, I’ve also learned anew that fencing will remain on my to-do list as long as I remain above ground.

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Reading this weekend: I’m rereading selected bits from William Targ’s three great anthologies for bibliophiles: Carrousel for Bibliophiles, Bouillabaisse for Bibliophiles and Bibliophile in the Nursery.

A Farm Toolbox: Fence Pliers

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Equipped with a beak like something evolved in the Mesozoic, the fence pliers are an essential tool in our toolbox. Never lonely for long, they are brought out several times a week. Even on a casual walk in the back forty to hunt rabbit, I’ll make room for a pair in a back pocket: sometimes, even the casual walk entails an unexpected spot of fence repair.

Fence Pliers in the Library, with....

Fence Pliers in the Library, with….

A classic tool designed for multiple uses, the fence pliers have beauty built into their design. The hinged head includes the beak on one side and a flat face on the other. The beak is perfect, using a hammer to strike the opposite face, for digging fence staples out of old wooden posts. The curvature allows the user to rock the pliers against the wood and ease out even the most stubborn of staples.

The toothed jaws are handy for crimping the wire in an old fence line. A crimp every couple of feet will tighten up the most sagging line. And that opposite end to the beak, the flat face, serves as a nifty hammer.

The handles, when pulled apart, expose a guillotine on the head that cuts barbed wire easily … if the user has purchased the correct pair. In the world of fence pliers, a standard cheap pair will cost about $12 and a lifetime of frustration. Splurge a little for a pair made by Diamond and you will thank me.

As our British cousins might say, fence pliers are a dead useful addition to any farm toolbox.

Priorities and Validation

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It is not that we do not have any interesting projects to occupy our time;
We have new electric fencing to string for the sheep,
And hooves to treat to prevent the spread of hoof rot.

There are trees to harvest for firewood and lumber,
And that new small barn to house the new draft horses
will not build itself.

We have a barn full of winter squash to bake and preserve,
Fencing the lower pasture in woven wire,
And another cattle barn, small, to be designed and built in that pasture.

Yet, on a day where the temperature has not yet budged above forty,
And a cold drizzle pours down, our day has been spent inside,
Drinking hot tea and taking naps.

And… and wondering why Google Maps has not updated the satellite picture
Of our small farm.

 

As seen from space

As seen from space

Miserable Weather and Work

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The temperature today rose to a chilly 40 degrees, made much colder by a strong wind and overcast skies—reminding me that the hornets this past summer made many more nests than we have ever before witnessed, the majority of them on the ground, which may turn out to be the best barometer of the winter ahead. We hope that neither hornets nor frigid temps are a harbinger of what’s to come, and we pushed on with some major projects regardless.

A sign of things to come?

A sign of things to come?

Over the past week we have begun clearing a couple of hundred yards of an old fence line along the front of our farm. This is in preparation for putting up woven wire around the perimeter of the hayfield. Having that 5-7 acres fully enclosed in field fence will allow us to graze cattle and sheep more securely, and both will help increase the soil fertility and the hay yields in summer.

Installing woven wire is part of a larger pasture rotation system in the works for the past couple of years. Implementing the master plan started with new fencing for the back 40 acres, a project that is 75 percent complete. The lower 30 is primarily home, gardens, orchards, hayfield, barnyard, and pastures. Although reasonably well fenced, it previously lacked enough cross-fencing to allow us to rotate our cattle and sheep more intensively.

So we have invested, with a grant from the National Resources Conservation Service, in a substantial electric fencing system that will allow us to subdivide the farm into multiple paddocks of either electric wire or netting. Tomorrow, with the temperature projected to reach 50, we will install the charger and first cross-fence in one of the larger sheep paddocks.

As a compliment to that fencing, and with other NRCS funding, we are finishing up a 1,500-foot field watering system tied into our well that, when complete, will give us seven watering stations across the 12-acre pasture behind the house and the four-acre pasture north of the barn. The process involves first using a riding trencher to dig a two-foot-deep channel, then going back and installing PVC water lines. The trenching is now complete. Tomorrow, with the help of a neighbor, the lines will be installed. Another 24 hours to “cure” the connections and we will turn on the water.

If all is successful, what remains is the fun job of back-filling the 1,500-foot-long trench. Fortunately, we have an 18-year-old neighbor with a strong back, time on his unemployed hands, and an eagerness to earn some cold, hard cash.

This evening, as I write, the wind is still blowing hard and the temperature has begun to drop. And, with what I hope is a far better barometer of things to come than hornets or cold blustery days, Cindy is in the kitchen baking more shortbread cookies.

Cold winter, be damned.