Do Fence Me In

When I first saw this beast, I'm not sure why, but I felt it presaged something ominous, an omen of sorts, a foreshadowing of portents that wouldn't bode well. (Sorry for that. Wrong spelling anyway, just low-brow homophonic punnery.)

Getting the augur (er, auger) started and vertical was the first challenge.

It really starts to bite when it cuts into the clay about two feet down. Then it can spin you around like a slo-mo top. After this three-foot hole, only seventeen more to go.

Then all we had to do was pop in eighteen posts, an eighty-pound bag of Quickrete concrete mix around each post, and back fill with gravel and dirt.

Before we add the fencing, each post will be cut to four feet.

The plan was to run river rock around the perimeter of the fence line to minimize maintenance.

By the way, this really is no country for old men.

After digging the trenches, we lined them with landscape fabric and plastic edging.

Then it's simply a matter of filling in the trenches (or trench, since they're all connected) with river rock. This first bit is the low hanging fruit due to it's proximity to the rock pile. The rest will require filling wheel burrows and schlepping about.

Ta da!

Each post then had to be cut to four feet above ground, an angle cut that took two passes with a circular saw.

The penultimate step to adding the fencing was to install horizontal supports at each corner and at the end of each run of posts. Next blog post, an introduction to beautiful and retro ornamental double-loop fencing.