If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk to go with it. If you give him the glass of milk….

    Running a small farm is much like giving that mouse a cookie.

    This spring, septic problems led to having the backyard dug up and pipes replaced – correctly this time we hope. When the plumbers showed up with a little bulldozer, we asked them to do some dozing that we’d been trying to get done for years. Well – that meant we had to reseed not only the yard, but also the pasture where they worked. And, of course, we had to cover the seed with old hay.

    Now, if we were a big farm, we’d have equipment to do that, but since we’re not we have hands – those two on the ends of my arms. And, to get the new pipe in the ground, we had to remove some fence boards.

    Of course, those fence boards were getting too old to hold paint anymore, so we might as well replace them with new. And, since we were going to replace that section of fence, we might as well replace all the fence. Because, if we buy in bulk it will be worth paying to have it delivered. And, we want it to be delivered because I don’t like driving in sheer terror. After having two near-death experiences hauling trailer loads of barn and fence lumber up and down Northern Kentucky hills, I’m very hesitant to do it again.

    Have you ever driven a pickup when it started steering itself and all you can do is try to hold on to the steering wheel and keep it from fishtailing the entire width of the road? Those who’ve pulled trailers more than I say the answer to regaining control is stomping on the gas. Now, driving I-275 at 55 mph downhill in three lanes of angry commuters interspersed with semi drivers who don’t care if they run me off the road and increasing my speed flaunts my brand of logic – tho I know it works and have forced myself to do it… While it’s a great adrenalin generator, I don’t recommend it. Give me a black diamond ski hill or a fractious horse instead – I know I can control those outcomes!

    So, we ordered what turned out to be a flatbed truck load of 1”x 6”x 16’treated poplar boards. It rained all week. We planned for the truck to drop them behind the barn. He said no, couldn’t get over there and unloaded them right next to the road. So, what we’d planned to be a summer project became a rush job to get those boards nailed on posts before they began walking away.

    It should have been easy. Take down the old boards, put up the new. BUT, our very nice previous owners did a lot of things around here themselves. Evidently one was putting in the new septic tank, but still using some of the existing old clay pipe in the woods where the tree roots were thick. Another was setting fence posts.

    We started to put up boards and discovered, rather than being the standard 8’ apart, some were 8 ½ ‘- 12’ apart. Then we got to decide if we were going to buy lots more boards or reset fence posts so they’d be 8’ apart. Dana, who has recognized that combining some farm work with his computer work gives him exercise, offered to reset the posts, a serious amount of heavy work.

    While the white fence is one of our trademarks, lumber must season for a year before it will hold paint, so it won’t be white until next summer.

    You’ll also notice that we’re taking down some long sections of board fence and replacing it with white coated high tensile wire. High tensile is safe for horses, easy to mow around and requires no maintenance, until like the biannual painting of the board fence.

    If you have horses, be sure to remove ALL barbed wire and woven wire from anywhere horses can get near it. In the last few weeks I’ve heard more horror stories of horses being maimed with both. We walked the entire farm before we brought our first horse on it to remove dangers. Doing it once isn’t enough; trash migrates up from the ground.

    Today I pulled a big chunk of iron out of my riding arena that just showed up this week. Unlike cows and other animals, most horses caught in wire will fight it until they are severely injured. Lots of Kentuckians just string barbed wire because it’s cheap and easy to get. If you care about your animals, make the effort to order high tensile wire and make a safe fence. It’s not that much more expensive.

    We’ll likely be nailing up fence boards for another week or two. Then we’ll move on to stringing the high tensile and taking down the old boards. Constant spring rains have the grass growing and none of the boards have walked off yet. We’ve posted the old boards on Craigslist and people are recycling them into projects at their homes.

    Some fence boards we got rid of last year on Craigslist went to a couple who had stayed with us several years ago when they were deciding whether or not to buy their own farm. They did, got goats, and came back to get lumber from us to keep those little rascals from getting out of their old fence! There are always six degrees of separation whether it’s mice and cookies or B&B guests and fence boards!