Fixin’ Fence

A huge post jutted out of the ground in one corner. Loose and wobbly it had never been set, just sat in the hole. No wires attached. That part was simple. I set the kids to digging dirt and tamping it in.

I left them to tamping, and complaining about the heat, and went to work on the next corner post.

It wasn’t great. The post was obviously broke, or barely holding. But it was braced into place and holding. As long as we didn’t tighten wires too much it would hold enough to keep the cows in for a little bit. The stubble of a wheat field being grazed only because of the extreme drought, not because there is much actual feed in there, it isn’t worth putting too much work into.

I stepped over the wires strewn about the ground onto the neighbors side, into their tree row, to better access the post. There was a tall metal pole sticking out of the ground next to the post on that side. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. Figured it must be a survey marker showing where the boundary was supposed to be. The neighbors were gaining a few feet of ground here.

Fence pliers in hand I stepped up to the post planning on removing the wires still attached to it. I never thought about looking down.

The ground disappeared out from under me. The post jabbed me nearly in the armpit as my leg dropped into a hole past the knee. It hurt, in so many different places. It was more than a little concerning.

Dragging myself out of the hole I looked down, better late than never.

At first I thought a badger had dug out the survey marker. I peeked in carefully to make sure no animals were going to be following me out. The hole was suspiciously square. Interesting. I wiggled the corner post I had been working on putting to use. From this angle and with the grass above that hole cleared, it was completely broken off at ground level. Oh dear.

The children showed up about then. They had grown weary of tamping. Or maybe they had secured the other post firmly in the ground. One of them leaned over and actually read the label on the ‘survey marker’. Professional tamping bar it read.

Everything snapped into place.

A job stopped completely at a random middle point. One post sat in a hole but never tamped. A hole dug but no post inserted. The tamping bar left sitting waiting for the job to resume, but no one came back for it.

I’ve been around for quite a few years now, no one had touched that fence in that amount of time. Not from this side. Those corner posts have been sitting there partially finished all that time.

It sure made life easier having a post hole ready to go. I searched the random piles of stuff in the pasture. Found a solid post. We had more tamping to do. But now we have an actual solid post in that corner. Maybe eventually we’ll even finish that job started so many years ago.