Fencing, Fire Ants and Boxer Shorts

Jason and I are once again working on one of our least favorite projects, rebuilding the mile of fence that Maury Fence Company built for us. For those who have missed my many posts complaining about this problem here is the short version. We have six miles of fencing on the farm, the majority of it being four board wood fence. Maury Fence Company built the first mile, and thankfully ONLY the first mile. Only four years after they built the fence a majority of the posts started to fail. The boards were fine, the posts were rotting, some had already completely rotted. Our trusted fence builders who built the other five miles of fence rebuilt the half mile of perimeter fencing and we propped up the two sections of interior fencing with t-posts.

posts laid out and ready to be set

When it was time to start rebuilding the interior sections of the fence last year our trusted fence builders had retired. Rather than trust anyone else and have another Maury Fence company type of disaster, Jason declared we were going to rebuild the remaining fence ourselves. We bought a post pounder, Jason had some retrofitting done so we could front mount it on the front of a tractor as opposed to putting it on the 3-point PTO hitch on the back. We rebuilt about 1300 feet of the 2600 feet of fence that still needed to be redone. We did a cross fence so we could practice before doing the 1,300 feet of fence along the driveway. We disliked building the fence so much we have pushed off rebuilding the final section of fence for another 18 months. It was easy to put off since we’re already work 12-14 hours every day and aren’t looking for extra work. Plus, rebuilding the fence requires us to work right next to each other for long stretches at a time instead of being on opposite points of a couple hundred acres.

Last week Jason announced that we could no longer delay rebuilding the 1,300 feet of fence along the driveway. The next day Jason had 250 posts delivered and the torture fence building began. Since we had practiced on the other 1,300 feet of fence we are a little better, and quicker, than we were 18 months ago. We put in a couple of extra hours of work each day for four days and set a little over 200 posts. We managed to only break one post in half during the process, in fact of the 500-ish posts we’ve now set that is the only post we’ve broken during the process.

we didn’t intend to do that

we were able to pull the broken post out without too much trouble

Jason’s one concern was we were going to be setting posts within the vicinity of one of our water lines. Since we installed those ourselves we generally know where they are located and we were careful in that area. After getting the posts in that area set Jason went to inspect the ground and make sure it wasn’t too wet. He picked up a shovel, moved a bit of dirt, and stuck his hand in the ground to feel the soil.

He immediately started running in a circle screaming f**k repeatedly at the top of his lungs. I thought, “wow, we must have really nailed the water line” and that Jason was expressing his frustration. But he didn’t stop running, and he continued screaming profanities.

I knew the circling and profanity screaming were not related to our water line when he began stripping off his shoes and clothes while he continued to run in circles screaming f**k f**k f**k. I was stunned into silence as he stripped down to his t-shirt and boxer shorts and continued running in a circle screaming f**k. I finally threw myself into his path to ask him what was wrong, because simply screaming, “Jason, what’s wrong?” wasn’t getting me any responses.

Jason, running around in his boxer shorts and t-shirt on our driveway, screamed “I stuck my hand into some f**cking fire ants.” If you’ve never been bitten by a fire ant, take my word for it that it hurts. If you get a bunch of them crawling on you and stinging you, you too will run around in your driveway in your underwear screaming f**k, trust me on this. Jason’s behavior now made perfect sense to me. To preserver what little dignity Jason has left, there will be no pictures or videos of him running in circles on our driveway in his boxer shorts screaming f**k.

All of the boards were delivered yesterday, so we still have plenty of fun fence building left. This mile of fence from Maury Fence Company has been the awful gift that keeps on giving. Word to the wise, never have Maury Fence Company build you a fence.

the boards being delivered