If You Want it Done Right . . .

Jason and I purchased this farm and began the process of building it out in early 2010. Long time readers of our blog will recall that we built the farm one pasture, one barn, and one run-in shed at a time. When we completed a pasture we would move a group of horses. We moved our first group of horses here in September 2010, and the last group of horses here in September 2011. In total we installed more than a mile of water lines, built six miles of board fence, four barns, six run-in sheds, a farm shop, and our house. Everyone says if your marriage can survive building a house it can survive anything. Hah. If you marriage can survive building a farm it can survive anything. Our house was the last thing we built, it was a piece of cake. Deciding where every fence, gate, barn, shed, etc. was going to be placed generated a lot more discussion.

The very first thing we did was to hire a fence company to build our first mile of four board fence, which happened in May 2010. That first mile of fence was the only section built by Maury Fence Company. The remaining five miles were built by a different company run by two brothers who live very close to our farm. If only that first mile had been built by the same people who built the last five miles, our time would be being spent very differently.

Jason noticed a few rotten fence posts three years ago when the fence was four years old. At first we wrote it off and Jason replaced the posts. Then we found more rotten posts, as in completely rotted through, and Jason replaced the posts. Then we found even more rotted posts, and then we found several sections of fence in a row laying down on the ground because several posts in a row had completely rotted. At that point we repaired the fence, and contacted Maury Fence Company and requested they come look at the fence and offer some suggestions and solutions. That was two years ago. Maury Fence Company, despite our repeated requests, has refused to do anything, or even discuss our rotted fence At one point they did admit that they had bought a bad load of posts, that we weren’t the only clients that had this problem, and that if and when the post manufacturer settled with them they might do something, but until that day they didn’t see our four year old fence laying down on the ground as their problem. Since we paid a little over $35,000 for that first mile of fence, we haven’t been very happy and we’re pursuing other avenues to get remuneration for our failed fence.

That first mile of fence built by Maury Fence Company became so unstable we had no choice but to begin replacing it, despite the fact that we had reached no resolution with the builders about our failing fence. This past winter we had a half mile of the fence, the worst parts that were literally laying on the ground, replaced by the two people who had built all of our other fencing for us. And of course we had the pleasure of paying for this ourselves since we’ve still reached no resolution with Maury Fence Company.

We had planned to contact our trusted fence builders in late summer to see about having them rebuild the other half mile of Maury Fence Company’s failing fence. Since at times it feels like we would have no luck at all if we didn’t have bad luck, our trusted fence builders retired a couple of months ago. After our experience with Maury Fence Company we are, for obvious reasons, not enthusiastic about trusting another fence company. Despite the fact that Jason and I have far too much to do and not enough time to do it, we decided we would rather replace the fence ourselves than work with anyone other than our trusted, but now retired, fence builders.

Jason researched post drivers and we became the proud owners of a new post driver a few weeks ago. Last week Jason and one of our awesome employees began building fence. Jason had one stretch of fence that he wanted replaced immediately as their were several posts that had either completely rotted through or were close to being completely rotted. Despite the fact that they were only able to work at it for a couple of hours each day, they got a couple hundred feet of fence rebuilt in less than a week. Given that the fence is straight and level I was most impressed. Now they only have another 2,500ish feet to go. Thankfully Jason has done enough repair work on the remaining half mile of fence that we don’t have to do it right away, but plan to really concentrate on it in a couple of months.

As the saying goes, if you want something done right then do it yourself. And that is how Paradigm Farms Fence Company got its start. We hope it is short lived.

Jason using our new post driver