A blog POST about POSTS!

Hey there!

Get ready for a photo heavy blog post... about, well POSTS!

Years ago, Derek and I had built a horse paddock when we lived in Southwestern Ontario.  Soft sandy soil, flat level ground.  We augured those holes and swore we would never do it again!  :)  Living now on the escarpment and KNOWING we do not have soft sandy level ground Derek looked into other ways to put in fence posts... much to his delight he found a rentable hydraulic post pounder that is towed along behind a truck or tractor.. it screams MAN-GADGET!!!

So, paddocks were planned on paper, wood requirements calculated and purchased and "post pounder" rented.  Yup, even the name is fun to say and chortle at.. "Post Pounder".. Ok, I regress...

Beautiful week of rain leading up to the big day(s) made us happy thinking if the little soil on top of the rock is softened that'll make things easier.  The Thursday morning before Thanksgiving was sunny and warm and perfect for making trips to pick up our orders of posts and rails.

Load... drive 8km...unload...repeat!  

We made five trips and the only trip that had me really white knuckling was trip number four that included the majority of our sixteen foot fence rails.  Yes.  Derek loaded sixteen foot, one inch thick cedar fence rails into his truck... and it handled them great - with the exception of just one SCHNICKism.  

Although not entirely a SCHNICK doing, the boards that were meant to take the weight of the rails were put onto the tailgate and not the truck bed and we ended with a crumpled tailgate.  Derek will tell you it needed replacing anyways.  But, boards made it safely and we were ready to go.

We had marked our fence lines the evening before and carried on well until Derek's question of "Honey am I straight?" had me giggling but when he next called out, "Jeanette, AM I SQUARE?"  I was in tears and it was definitely time to call it a night.  

Derek and I had a lot of help on this project.  I love how curious our chickens are.

But the real hero was my father in law that came down to help with the posts.  Friday was a holiday from school and I just don't know that Derek and I could have gotten the job done without Steve's help.

 

They got a real rhythm going.  Position and level the post, pull the lever.  Repeat.  I was expecting this machine to put a constant downward pressure onto the post to force it into the ground but it actually does what it says.. it POUNDS!  The heavy hydraulic weight moves to the top and then comes crashing down onto the post moving it down into the earth!  I had a slight case of MAN-GADGET envy at times.

So here is the back field all posted.  We had planned to have one acre fenced divided into two pastures for animal grazing rotation.  At about 6pm on the Friday evening, Derek and Steve found a vein of ROCK just eighteen inches under the surface.  Soooo... fence lines got moved out eight feet... and then another eight feet until they found the edge of the rock run and earth deep enough to sink posts.  What a job.

There were also some large rock beds in the front paddock that needed to be worked around.  This front paddock will have the fence rails and sand and be used for horse jumps and flat work.  Looking to get the couple of posts in the rock area deep enough, Derek rented a jackhammer and fired up the generator.  The rocks might have been a ploy to get out and play with more MAN-GADGETS... I'm not sure - after overhearing the word 'DYNAMITE" in the men's conversation, I'm not questioning the jackhammer.

And by Sunday we had posts in holes and turkey in our tummies.

No rest for the wicked as they say.  On Monday we began boarding the fence around the work-ring/front paddock.  Measuring 54inches the top rails were hung.  Sixteen foot boards really do help you feel muscles you forgot you had.

To do the second and third rails eighteen inches apart, Derek constructed a Schnick-Jig that would hang on the board above and hold the rail at the proper height!  

After a slight tweak to make it possible to remove the jig after the board was in place, the SCHNICK-jig was a lifesaver and we had the complete 100 x 70 ring boarded by nightfall!

The back pastures will be run with wire and electric fencing at a later time and the last thing to be done to the front paddock fence will be cutting the tops off the posts.  Last we time we did that, Derek stood with a chainsaw in the back of a pick up, bouncing up and down while I drove through the field to each post.  We were young and silly then... I'm sure we will find a  safer way to do it this time around...

 ...we've grown up a bit you see.  ;)

Thanks for following along,
Jeanette