Family Weekend

This weekend, my family came to visit us...not only for fun (which it was) but to help out around the farm (which they did).  By the end of the weekend, we had the majority of the garden weeded and the new horse pasture ready for the goats.

It was a pretty warm weekend, so lots of sunscreen was in order.  While Dad and J worked on clearing the fence line with the loppers and chainsaw, Lisa and I worked in the garden.  The kids worked on the trampoline and throwing rocks in the pond.

The horse/goat pasture has been quite a process.  J likes to build fences only once.  He began the process by clearing the line where the fence would go with the ditch witch.  After that he took several old pivot legs and set them in concrete as corner posts.  These posts are super tall and about 4 inches diameter.  It gave us something to really pull the fence against.  In between the pivot legs, J ran a string line and set t-posts at ten foot intervals.

Because the fence roll is very heavy, J took a little side trip and created a spool attachment for the tractor.  He welded the bottom round plate off of a pressure tank to a steel pipe.  The pipe sits in the center of the plate.  The plate is welded to a square pipe that fits into the tractor hitch.  Put the roll of fencing on the spool and one person holds the end while the other drives the tractor along the new fence line unrolling the spool.  Pretty slick.

Once we had the field fence stretched, the guys cleared and attached stand-off insulators to the posts.  Because one of the sides is made up of a four-strand barbed wire, we put two lines of hot wire between the bottom two barbed wire strands.  The far end of the pasture has four lines of hot wire tape.  On the end, we used baling twine (thank God for baling twine) to insulate the tape and stretch it tight around the wooden corner post.

I was pretty excited to put the goats into this new pen because it meant we could move the pigs into the old goat pen and I wouldn't have to chase Abraham around any more.  We didn't get them in before my folks left, but soon after that we did.

In the garden, Lisa and I did a lot of weeding.  But as much as I would like to believe weeds create diversity, they are really out of control.  On Sunday morning, my Dad showed up with a small tiller.  Wow!  Things that used to take days to weed, only took a few minutes.  By the end of the day, we had the majority of the garden weeded...including the elusive potatoes.  Thanks Dad and Lisa for the gift.  It will be well-loved.