Stock panels for pasture fencing

So, leave it to my brother to ask me to explain why we chose to install stock panel perimeter fencing. It occurred to me that if he had this question, others might as well. So for all of you with an incurable curiosity about livestock fencing, here is our answer.

First of all, everyone has to approach fencing in a way that works for them in their situation, in terms of thinking about short-term and long-term resources and goals, what kind of livestock you plan to have and for what purpose, how many animals, how much land, whether you plan intensive rotational grazing, etc., etc.
Most people will tell you to use some variation of electric fencing, whether it be New Zealand style or whatever. And it is certainly easy and cheap up front. But if something shorts it out, it's immediately ineffective, both at keeping livestock in as well as keeping predators and marauding dogs out. And tall grass, or snow, or a branch, or all manner of things can short it out. So it requires constant vigilance. Plus, when it's working, you have to worry about zapping yourself on it---or your neighbor's kid or your grandkids doing the same. Based on the kind of farm and lifestyle we want to have, electric doesn't fit.

The next thing many people recommend is woven wire. We did the dog run with it, just to see how it would go. What a pain in the neck. It is really hard to do anything other than a straight line on level ground with woven wire. You've got to stretch it, and it really needs wooden posts, which will rot unless you are willing to put pressure-treated wood into the soils that will feed you and your animals. It is impossible to unroll and work with in a wooded area. And if something falls on it, or your animals challenge it, either of which is fairly likely, you've got to redo an entire stretch of fence.

Stock/cattle panels make sense in both the short and the long term. Short term: they are fast and easy to install using T posts. They do well over uneven ground. It is easy to carry them into and install them in wooded sections that would be impossible to run woven wire through, and impractical to run electric fencing through. They don't need to run in a straight line, and in fact are stronger when curved and bent around corners, trees, rocks, etc.. The t-posts are easy to whack in among tree roots. Gates are a snap.

Long term: They last a long time with little maintenance. Stock panels are strong. T-posts won't rot. The stock panels are easily moved if you decide to rearrange your fencing or carve up paddocks differently. If something falls on a stock panel fence, you can just bang the affected panel back straight and reclip it to the T-posts. You haven't lost a whole stretch of fence.

We are in this for the long haul. All things considered, we figured that stock panels cost about twice as much as woven wire, and that this was one of those up-front infrastructure costs that is worth it, and will repay us for years to come. And, like anything else, it's a choice to spend this money over other things that people might decide not to live without (like . . . hot running water).

(We are indebted to Gene Logdon's ruminations in All Flesh is Grass, for providing us with a sane, common-sense perspective on pasture fencing for small farms.)

The Coop de Ville and a half mile of fencing

The chicks, which have now begun to look like smallish chickens, have been in the completed "Coop de Ville," as Joe calls it, for about two weeks. We have installed a small pen covered with netting in the front where the young birds can get used to the outdoors and their surroundings while remainng relatively safe from hawks. Eventually we will need to let them range around the farm and take their chances.



They were pretty surprised by the big, bad world at first, but they got over it. 

We have been feverishly installing fencing so that we can go fetch our sheep. The grass is so tall, and needs grazing desperately! For a variety of reasons, we have decided not to use electric fencing. We are taking Gene Logdon's advice regarding a small pasturages and starting with good perimeter fencing, using stock panels and metal posts. We need to keep predators and neighborhood dogs out as much as we need to keep sheep and goats in. We will figure out how to carve it up and rotate animals as we go forward. We have completed nearly a third of the necessary 2460-odd feet so far. But fencing during the height of black-fly season? This is either evidence of, or the cause of, our complete mental deficiency.

Tacking . . . toward Sunnywood Farm. With incremental progress.

Given the acceleration of political, economic, and environmental deterioration around this fragile world, we have put completion of our cordwood house on hold in order to develop food-production and farm infrastructure. The Sunnywood blog will be evolving into the Sunnywood Farm blog. (Yet there is more cordwood building to come in July and August).

Anyone who knows anything about farming knows that there is a steep learning curve. So despite our years of reading and workshops, nothing compares to the real thing. Every morning and evening we do battle with our small but stubborn Nigerian dwarf dairy goats, who delight in kicking over the milking pail, and refusing to let down their milk.

The 16 heritage-breed Buckeye chicks were tiny little balls of fluff when I brought them home a few weeks ago, and when I fed them I would say, "Come here, little peepers!"

Now they have outgrown their second box. When we open it to feed them, some descend, beaks-first, upon our hands, while others mount a mass escape. Our feeding-time crooning has changed to "Keep your beaks to yourselves, ya little savages!" Joe is in a coop-building frenzy so that we can get the killer chickens out of our greatroom.

We have six or so sheep arriving soon. As soon as we can get enough fencing installed. There is no fast, easy way to install fencing. Although we have discovered better tools than the sledge hammer/step ladder system we used for the goat paddock.

The weather has rendered all normal planting schedules irrelevant. Even though I planted my peas early, even by Maine standards (where it is a point of pride to have your peas in earlier than your neighbors), they are already balking at the warm weather. Same with the cold-weather greens. But it's not warm enough at night for warm-season crops.

Our garden plan comprises 14 beds, and I have prepared and planted three so far. Our driveway contractor had offered to haul away the sod and topsoil he scraped up, and bring back some loam. But I liked the looks of our sod/topsoil, and I had no idea what his "loam" would be like. So instead, I'm busting up and screening mountains of sod, one 30-inch screenful at a time. This is a time and place where fossil-fuel-powered equipment would be useful.

Diggiging holes for apple trees today under an unseasonably hot sun, plagued by clouds of early black flies, I longed for someone with a backhoe to rumble by. We have found, in situations like these, that it is essential NOT to regard the whole task at hand, which leads to immediate psychological defeat. Just like the winter when Joe moved all of the cordwood for our house, on snowshoes, with a plastic sled: it is imperative to concentrate on one small piece of the work at a time. And before you know it, you're done. Incremental progress.

I have decided that this will be the Sunnywood Farm motto. Incremental progress.