Lower Pasture Fence: Beginning

Since the cows have just about finished the upper pasture, Phil is ready to fence in the lower pasture, near the creek. (Really, right now it's more like forest, but it WILL be pasture eventually.) He had helped Martin Bush with some engineering calculations, so Martin came this afternoon to help clear the fence line.

First, they loaded dozens of cattle panels into the truck, and drove it down to the lower pasture. In the background of the above photo, you can see the area he cleared with the bucket last year: the more fertile bottomland has grown grass well.

They wanted to clear about a 5' swath, for ease of access and workspace. Back at the homestead, I could hear the whine of the chainsaw periodically: they would cut, then push debris into the clearing area; cut some more, and drag some more.

Some sections required massive materials handling. They cut through dense underbrush, and moved the downed material into the future pen, creating, in spots, walls of timber and brush five feet high.

It was a good afternoon's work. I loved the look of the future fencerow, set up and ready to go.

While Abraham was showing me the cleared areas, he was running downslope and took a hard spill. The sharp edge of a newly cut sapling avoided his head by fractions of an inch, and he came up, bawling, with a tiny scratch on his throat. Yet another protection.

Earlier in the day, piglet Fox escaped from his pen, burrowing under two fence lines in order to get to my garden. He rooted up some lima beans and some sweet corn, before I grabbed him by his hind legs and pulled him up. I wasn't sure I could swing him over the six foot high fence, to return him to his proper home, so Phil helped.

That little rascal immediately tried to rediscover his original exit point. He was shocked about 15 times before he gave up, and burrowed under a weed pile, with his two fellow piglets, for an afternoon rest.

The piglets make me laugh. Their previous owner really liked them, so they are fairly used to handling already. We can give them food scraps, and rub them all over while they eat, and their tales don't even uncurl (or at least, not all the time).

On Friday, Phil and I were moving their pen. Two piglets hopped out from their weedy haven right away, but I almost stepped on Fox. I wasn't sure he was still alive, he was so still. Then his nose twitched, and I felt him all over: "Are you sick?"

Suddenly he hopped up, and Phil laughed. "Not sick, just really, really asleep."