Fencing for the Homestead

I’ve written about fencing before … when we were first getting started on our homestead. We’ve done a lot of fencing projects around here since we bought this property. And depending on the application, there are a ton of options available. We had relatively good barbed-wire fences around the perimeter, except for when trees fall on the fence. Why is it that a tree that falls never falls harmlessly in the other direction, but always on the fence? Must be Murphy’s Law.

Soon after moving in, we wanted to start building a backyard. We needed to be able to let our “city dogs” outside to do their “business” unattended, without having them run wild on our 10 acres … or everyone else’s acres for that matter.

We found ourselves staring at every fence we passed by. We came up with a vision of what we wanted it to look like, and designed and constructed it ourselves. That first phase of the backyard was really hard work. We were in a drought, so the ground was really dry and hard. And the backyard happened to be over nice hard clay. Ugh. It was S.L.O.W. going, digging those post holes. And let me tell you, we dug every one of them by hand (we being my husband). We buried 8-foot treated 4×4 posts 2 feet deep and concreted them in. Then we added three “rails,” which were 8-foot treated 2x4s, and stained the posts and rails with a semi-transparent cedar-colored stain. Finally we wrapped the outside with 5-foot tall welded wire fencing. We used a pneumatic stapler to attach the wire to the posts and rails.

Using this style of fence, we built our backyard, chicken yard and front yard. We also just finished fencing off the driveway and the chicken yard to the front fence to create a “cow-free” zone and our future orchard.