Fences

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Jake, one of the ponies decided to hop out of his field and into another one which he shouldn’t be in, so we discussed putting a fence up when finances allowed.  Then on Friday, next door's cows broke into the field.  It was only a matter of time.  The main problem with them doing this is firstly, my horses were in there and I have no idea how would mingle.  My horses are girls and the cows are forever mounting each other which my girls wouldn't take kindly too.  The second problem is I don't have lots of land (compared to the farmer) so cows churning up my field is not on the acceptable list.  The farmer is our neighbour and he was lovely about it.  Certainly nothing more he could have done other than fix the fence and hope it doesn't happen again.  He offered to move the cows if it does happen again but let's hope it doesn't come to that. 

We have specific savings that we allocate to jobs like this and we’ve now saved up enough to get cracking with this mini fence project.  It won’t be a super quick job as we need to fit it in around working full time and the usual running of the smallholding.  That said, Steven started on the smaller section of fence on Sunday and all in all it took him only 2 hours to remove the broken stock fencing that was there and replace it with a lovely new post and rail fence.  The plan now is to continue this fence along to the edge of the field, then save up again to do the next section.  We’ll leave the cows and the ponies to dictate which section that will be during the next drama!

I’m really pleased and proud of this job, I think he’s done a cracking job.

Here’s a quick photo to show the ponies making the most of being in their stables after their tiresome antics in the field!