Wanted: Elbow grease

Fencing is certainly not for the weak, and I'm sure our backs will be killing us tomorrow. Nevertheless, we made progress! All we needed was a beautiful, sunny day...thank you Mother Nature!!! This morning we headed down to Lynchvegas with the intention of buying a gate (the first of two) for our fence. We had no intentions to start driving posts into the ground because we didn't have a lot of time to work with since Noel had to go into work at 3:00 and the 'rents had a concert to go to in Chattanooga. And the thought of me doing this mess by myself is just hilarious! Change of plans, though. I suppose Daddy was itching to play on the tractor, since it's been too stinkin' cold and wet to do anything for the past few months, and thought we could get this thing going. So we piled into the truck, stopped at the corner store to get me a Honey Bun (hey, I needed fuel for this strenuous task), and headed to our land to get started. Before we knew it, we had driven at least 20 T-posts into the ground, which turned out to be pretty easy...even I could do it. 

(Pics courtesy of Noel's phone. Will hopefully take some action shots next time.)

Now T-posts are one thing. Wooden posts (stretcher posts) are an entirely different story. Enter the tractor and auger. The auger saves so much time and effort if you can get the thing to dig a hole straight down, but, because we were working on a slope, the auger would slide and start digging the hole at an angle. Ahhh! Once we finally got the posts, which had to weigh every bit of 50 lbs, in the holes we had to tamp the dirt into the hole and around the posts.  Oh, wow! Shoot me! (Noel and I had toyed with the idea of putting up a high tinsel fence, which requires all wooden posts. Can definitely say that deciding on barb wire was the best decision we've ever made.) However, a tornado isn't taking those posts out of the ground!


After our morning of fencing, we noticed that some of the T-posts aren't in exactly in the straightest line so we'll have to redo a few, but all in all it was a very productive morning.


AND...remember the grass seeds we had sown a few weeks ago? Grass is beginning to peek through the dirt!!! Come on spring!!