Fencing has always been a real problem up here in stony country, but in my eyes that all changed one afternoon last week.
I plain and simply accompanied my son over to a nearby neighbour who asked for a little help. He had a rather expensive machine coming to put the posts in the ground on that particular day. My son picked me up to have a boo at what was going on during the time they stopped for lunch.
What I saw was a quarter mile of posts, straight in line and evenly spaced along the roadside already in the ground. I saw a tractor-pulled farm wagon loaded with an assortment of posts that were sharpened like a pencil. I saw a humongous big backhoe sitting idle in the inner corner of the field. I saw a quarter mile of string stretched in a straight line. I saw along the string at definite measured intervals a squirt of spray paint on the ground, marking the placement position of the posts.
Neath a cluster of aged apple trees, obviously a once was thriving orchard, I saw a car and a couple of trucks parked on the short-cut lawn grass in the shade, a cluster of cattle munching their cuds, lying as though carelessly strewn in the barnyard, and, randomly wandering, a small flock of ewes and lamb sheep, nibbling here and there with direction unintended.
On the wind-around porch that cornered the ancient farmhouse were a half-dozen boisterous creatures that I guessed to be of the Homo sapiens species. They had obviously finished lunch and, judging by their bursts of laughter, were swapping off-coloured jokes. The backhoe driver was the first to stir, rising stiffly to his feet.
As my son directed, by thumb motion, this way and that, the backhoe operator guided the huge shovel, attached to which was a five-inch in diameter, five-foot spike that he drove into the ground where the post was to remain.
When the spike was withdrawn, my son placed a post in position and the huge shovel came down again and pushed the sharpened post the three feet into the ground. No fuss, no muss, no stones to carry away, no soil to replace. My question to that is, “Where in tarnation were you when I was young?”
As the tractor, driven by one, moved slowly down the fence line, a second one placed a post at easy reach for my son, at each of the marked locations. In the span of one short hour, they had reached the corner of the field, with over 60 posts well planted. What a way to go.
As they restrung the line at right angles, I wandered off with a visiting friend to cut two or three wild grape vines that grew along the old fence line. I use those as perches for my canaries in their outdoor flight. I just wind them around this way and that, and the canaries love them, as they are different sizes and angles, which gives them much more exercise when they chase each other in flight.
Two hours after I left home, I was back home.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105