Rotating Pastures

It is a lot of hard work but in the end, it will be nice to be able to rotate the livestock from one pasture to another.  Since we have sheep and who knows, maybe goats in the future, we need to have fencing that they cannot get through.  There used to be barb wire and electric fencing.  Both of those would work fine for the steers but the sheep can't feel it through their wool.

Posts up

The design needed 11 heavy duty corner and mid-point posts.  Earlier I had shared that we picked up 11 treated post that are five inches in diameter and eight feet high. That would mean a lot of digging.  Dale's brother came over with his "toy" and switched between the post hole auger and the bucket for the project.

8 inch hole

The first 2/3 of the posts, I measured the depth of the hole and made sure that the pole was straight up and down.  Dale shoveled the peat rock into the base while I held it straight until he had enough rock for it to stay in the right position by itself.  (That was how I was able to snap the picture from the next hole.)

Setting the posts

The pasture is huge and it took a long time but it was a good having Bob there helping out with the auger attachment and a bucket. Dale's friend stopped by and chatted for a while.  He wanted to help out but even walking to the pasture area left him breathless.

Dale checking my work

After I went in, Bob and Ed challenged the fact that there was 330 feet of fence rolled up tight.  So they had to unroll and and loosely string up the fencing to make sure that we really had purchased enough.  MEN!  (That was the first picture on the page.)