Crossroads Paddock and Next Fence Step

The South side of the crossroads paddock is now officially finished. I hung the last two gates yesterday. Of course the posts are going to take another year to settle properly at which point I will need to adjust the gates again. It will be sag city for the long gates until then but that is a small price to pay.

You can see four of the five gates in the top picture and the front of the outbuilding. This little paddock will allow access into the horse pasture, small East pasture when I get it fenced and the South pasture when it is fenced too. Right now the East pasture is still part of the horse pasture and th South pasture is being used as a small hay field.

The North side is still in a temporary fence bordering Frazier's (the terminal ram) paddock. However I have a temporary gate set in so I can start letting Frazier out into the crossroads to eat the weeds and grass.

This was Frazier's first venture into the new area this afternoon. The old falling down wooden fence is the main reason I enclosed this area. There is a small retaining wall and those posts were set in concrete and are now rotting off. No way to fix it so the only thing I could do was make the Crossroads and now that it is finished tear all that old board fence out.

This will also allow me a paddock to move Frazier into while I continue on to the next step of the fencing project which includes the West fence line of Frazier's paddock and the gate from the barn lot into the crossroads. The first step of which is to make Frazier a shelter since I will be cutting him off from barn access when this is all done.

I was checking the swarm trap I have over at my Dad's place this afternoon thinking about what type of roof to use for Frazier's shelter when this old guy drove by me on a Massey 230 tractor pulling the roof section of small deck behind him. I asked him what he was going to do with it and he said "Burn it".

Well the perfectly good metal roof sheets are now setting on my woodchip parking lot :)

Should be more than enough of them for the shelter I have in mind. Probably saved me around 70 bucks or so maybe.

Then I started measuring and counting posts for the next step of fencing.... The situation did not look good. I have harvested, salvaged, begged and scavenged over 40 some-odd wooden fence and corner posts so far since I started this project last year. To date I have not been forced to actually buy a post until today. I just have no where left to get any posts quickly and cutting em on my own is about done for the season. Last week while cutting a small Oak tree I had a run in with a Copperhead and that usually tells me it's time to stop wood cutting for the Summer. Some areas around here just get too thick with them hanging out during daylight right now.

So for this next stage I am using store bought posts. It's a small paddock with small light gates so the standard 6 inch posts should be fine. I will need to go back and pick up the metal t-posts yet too.

I finished the afternoon by loading up the metal scrap I already cleaned out of the old falling apart fence and will take into the recycling place tomorrow I guess.

Looks like I will start on the next phase of this never ending fence project Sunday weather permitting.

I have been a terrible bee keeper and a horrible lawn mower so far this Spring. I haven't even planted one seed nor done more than plow this year's section of Buckwheat up.  Everything is sliding by the wayside this year as I focus completely on getting this fencing done....

Only 4 more steps to go now.....

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!!