We are fencing in a little over a third of an acre to start with. The plans are to grow annual type fruits and vegetables, enough to sustain four of us. And when we have extra, we plan on selling it at a local farmers market. The area picked for the fenced in space is where some soil was already removed for the upcoming 50x100 building. So it was a great time to start a garden with freshly turned up soil, so the hay wont grow where I want smaller plants.
But for now, we must build the fence that keeps out the deer as they will eat just about everything I want to grow. They can jump very high, and depending on how dense the population of deer the more agile they become. Around here we have a lot of deer, so needing a tall fence is something that we needed to get.
It showed up on a pallet, weighing over a thousand pounds. The pallet jack in the delivery truck would not budge it. So we had to resort to dragging it out with my Jeep and tow straps. Slowly I pulled the pallet over forty feet to the loading ramp of the tractor trailer. What was a new experience for sure.. I guess they assume whoever is receiving these pallets will have a forklift or whatever to unload.
In the end we got it out without breaking anything (I do not think you can really break a deer fence). And I dragged it a few hundred feet until it was in the middle of the clearing.
Held together with straps and wrapped with plastic I just left it out in the field for a few days until we were ready to start.
First was to mark the four corners of the garden. And measure to make sure we have enough fencing. I bought 500 feet, and we will keep it a little under that so we have more than enough.
Running a string and 100' tape measure, we drive in the ground stakes every fifteen feet.
Driving in poles took some patience, starting off with little taps until its firmly into the ground.
The hard work begun when driving in the stakes, they have to go a few feet into the ground.
My friend is a very hard worker, and honestly I think he drove in more than I did. Glad we only had a few dozen to drive in, if I wanted to fence in an area of multiple acres I would need so many more. So glad we are starting with something smaller. Around 14,000 square feet.
Maybe there is a machine we can buy to do this, but glad both of us could wield a sledge hammer and get it all done.
The little black dots are the ground stakes driven all the way in the ground. Or as far as we could without deforming the holes.
Trading off between driving in ground stakes we got it done in around an hour.
Once the ground stakes are in, the 8 foot poles slide in.
Hah! A little crooked, we tried using levels when pounding them in. But I found it hard to keep them going in straight.
We can see the ground stakes along with one pole in the ground.
The budge is from driving them into the ground. We did not want to rip the pipe open so we stopped when it started doing that.
The sledge driving cap was quite battered by the end. But it held up.
As we were wrapping up for the day, another shipment came in. A 30x30' enclosure, will be having my ducks, chickens and honey bees there in the future. But for now we need to finish building the deer fence. Will also need to purchase a chicken house, a kit probably. But for now I want to get the enclosures up.
What's next?
Next is to rent a skid steer and drill holes in the ground for the corner posts and gate posts. Then we can pour concrete and set them.. Once dried we can finally attaching the welded wire fencing, and mount the gate doors.