Rebuilding Fence

I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago that one of our ongoing projects is replacing all of the damaged fence boards at my parents’ farm. As of today we are at 416 replaced fence boards and counting. I am actually not exactly sure how many posts we have had to replace but I think we are at 12 and counting on the posts. I am confident that Jason is keenly aware of the exact number.

This is a tedious job that doesn’t take any brains or skill, but it takes a lot of physical effort and time. First you have to remove all of the face boards, then you have to take a crow bar and remove the damaged boards. You have to pry out any nails left behind in the post before you can nail a new board up. Of course you have to measure and cut a new board, then nail it up. Then you have to remove the old nails from the face board and then nail the face board back up. Then repeat this process 416 times.

Replacing posts are the worst. You have to completely dismantle two sections of the fence before you can even get to the post. Then the old post has to be removed, and this involves busting out the old concrete that was holding the post in place. Then you have to set a new post, pour concrete around it, wait for it to dry, and then rebuild two sections of fence.

We are more in love than ever with the hot wire that graces the top board of our miles and miles of wood fence at our farm. In fact after this project I think it might be worth nailing up another 5,000 or so insulators and adding another hot wire on the second board down.

The next step after finishing board and post replacement is to repaint all of the fences. At the moment this seems like the project that never ends.

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Face boards removed, new boards laid out