Pasture.

Even though my husband hasn’t been able to get into the field to even start planting corn we have been busy working on lots of other things.

Three different days (or parts of days) this last week we have been working on the fences. We started out with the most simple one first, pulling up the electric fence. Last fall my husband built the electric fence around the corn field at the house. The reason we do this is so the cattle can forage on the corn that didn’t make it into the combine (or managed to make it all the way through the combine) and the corn stalks that got chopped up by the combine on their way through. By doing this they have lots of goodies to munch on throughout the winter and we don’t have to feed them as much hay and it also helps cut down on the volunteer corn in the following year. So a win for us and a win for the cattle. ;-)

To pull up the electric fence we had to walk the perimeter of the fence and pull up all of the rod posts (these are three feet long metal rods about as big around as one of your fingers that you put a plastic insulator on that holds the smooth wire) and T-posts (these are usually about 5-6 feet long metal posts that are in the shape of a T, hence their name, that you also put insulators on). Needless to say usually a good day’s worth of exercise. J Then to pull up the wire we use a small tractor with a wire winder hooked up to the PTO (Power Take Off). This is at the back of the tractor and is a dowel looking piece of metal that turns very, very fast that you slide the PTO shaft of the piece of equipment over in order to make that piece of equipment run. (This is also the part of the tractor you have to be very, very careful around when it is running because it can tear your body in to pieces in a heartbeat.) While my husband was guiding the wire on the spool I was “operating” the tractor, turning the PTO off and on or making it go faster or slower by increasing or decreasing the throttle on the tractor (basically the equivalent of the gas pedal on a car).

After we finished this (in about 2 hours) and about a day or two later we moved on to fixing some pasture fences. Parts of these particular pastures are five wire barbed wire fences. (See pictures below) These are permanent fences with, usually in our area, hedge posts (hedge trees with the branches cut off, at stress points such as corners or bends in the fence) and T-posts the wire is attached to.

(These pictures are of a fence on a rented piece of pasture, the second one shows the clips.)

The fence I have pictured has been there for at least two generations. My husband cut the trees lying on the fence and then used the tractor and loader to move them off the fence and over to a ditch. In this particular place, after he was done I drove five T-posts in and then used wire clips to attach the wires to the posts. The reason for clipping the wire to the posts is to make sure the wire doesn’t sag to low or rise to high depending on the terrain you are going over. Another reason is if a wire breaks then you don’t lose that wire for the whole length of the fence. To attach the clips you have to use a pair of pliers (Which I have my own pair of along with my own pliers pouch to carry them with on my belt, and according to my husband these are also a “guy” accessory. ;-/ But that doesn’t stop him from requesting my pliers when we are working on something that just one pair of pliers aren’t enough on. ;-) sigh… men).

On another part of the fence my husband used a wire stretcher to tighten it up and splice together a broken wire or two. Then it was off to another pasture to do the same things. Some of the issues in the fence he knew about from seeing them from the tractor while working in the fields. Other problems I found by walking the fence looking for problems (Yes, another walking/hiking exercise program. I’ll have to take some pictures of the hills here so you can see that not all of Kansas is flat.).

In this second pasture we also had to fix the electric fence going around about half the pasture. Most of this electric fence we could drive next to so that made things go much quicker. The only thing that could have made it better was if it would have been a lot warmer. Seriously it’s the middle of April and the temperature today is only supposed to get up to the lower 40’s, what happened to spring.

Either way, this is how it goes, there is always something to do on the farm and as long as you can get to whatever needs to be worked on and you’re not busy with something more pressing (like planting the corn since it’s too wet and cold) you’d better get it done. If you don’t do these things you’ll have more and bigger problems down the line. For example if we would have just left the fences alone we could have had cattle getting out into the corn or soybean field in the middle of summer.

Here is to fences fixed and hopefully some warmer weather and soon.

Later,

Stephanie

The Moderately Involved Kansas Farm Wife