A Bad Week for Fences and Gates

Tuesday morning as I was pulling on my jeans to help with the morning chores, barely awake, and shivering in my cold dark closet, Brett opened the front door and called up to me.  "We have a problem."  My first thought was burst pipes but, no, it was another section of fence in the front pasture that was leaning to the ground.  We had to move Flash and Mufasa out of the pasture so Brett could remove and replace the fence.  I didn't want to put them in with the donkeys because Mufasa can be a bully and I didn't want him to bother Tuffy and Finessa.  I moved Jackson, Lucy and Pistol over to the donkey pasture and Brett put Flash and Mufasa in the Oak pasture.  Jackson joined the donkeys first.  He's spent time in the pasture before, when he has had an abscess.  He immediately got to work on breakfast.  Pistol is always interested in food so she hardly looked at the donkeys, huddled in the back corner of their pasture, watching the horses arrive.  Lucy has been fascinated by the donkeys since her arrival.  (She nickers softly to Tuffy when we walk by their pasture and seems to think he is foal in need of mothering.)

When I removed Lucy's halter, she immediately paced the fence line and sniffed the piles of donkey poop; oblivious to breakfast.  Tuffy approached her with his ears forward and a jaunty attitude.  He reached his nose up to her and she arched her neck while touching her nose to his.  Tuffy gave a little squeal and bucked.  She trotted off -- and he joined her.  They did a lovely circle, side-by-side.  Lucy stopped, looked over at the others eating hay, and headed their direction.  Tuffy ran in circles around her; trying to get her to play.  She squealed at him and he ran off, kicking out in her direction as he went.  Finessa, remained at a safe distance, watching.

Tuesday night after dinner, while I was buried under a blanket on the couch in my sweats, there was a knock on the door.  Brett climbed out from under his blanket on the recliner and padded to the door.  Kersey looked up with interest from her bed and thumped her tail.  A delivery guy stood there, he had left us a box on the front porch.

"Your gate closed on my truck and I can't get out," he explained to Brett.

Brett put on his work boots and jacket and met the guy down by the gate.  He had dropped off our box and then drove back down the driveway.  The gate opened and he started through.  Then for some unknown reason, he stopped halfway out to do paperwork or make a phone call or god-knows what.  The gate stopped when it hit his van, but there it sat wedged.  Brett released the gate, and the guy drove off.  And the gate no longer worked.  Brett secured it closed with a bungie cord and stomped back to the house.

Yesterday morning, our friend and neighbor, George, came over with his bag of tricks and mechanical knowledge.  The gate had blown a fuse (we didn't even know it had a fuse) and it was an easy, inexpensive fix.

Later in the afternoon, Brett noticed that the wire had come off of a section of fence between the arena and our neighbor's property.  The posts are still solid in the ground so the repair won't be as extensive as the pasture.  Poor Brett, he never seems to get a break.

New Fence

Here are some pictures of the new fence/repair that Brett put up in the front pasture.

The wire now goes part-way up; enough to keep the goats in but low enough that it is easy to reach in and give the horses treats.

The rest of the fencing on the pasture

still looks pretty bad.

Gates and Fences

This past Christmas, one of my gifts from Brett was a garden gate.  He promised to build me one by the summer.  He's been planning and designing the gate ever since, thinking about what kind of wood to use and what kind of decoration.  He asked a local guy who makes iron gates to make him an oak branch.  He found a heart made of horse shoes.  Our neighbor Marv gave him some beautiful redwood.  And he got to work.

He put the gate frame up first and parked the tractor to block deer and other animals from going in the garden.  Deer could jump over the rose bushes next to the tractor but Passage thought the tractor seat made a great bed so it did serve a purpose.

When I pulled up the driveway after work on Friday I could see the gate, and the sunlight glinting off of the oak leaves.  It was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes.  Seriously.

This afternoon, I helped Brett with the pasture fence.  The fences are all in sorry shape and Brett is constantly having to reinforce them.  At some point, we will replace them but at this point we can't afford to do that so it's t-posts and wire.  The most recent fence fail came as a result of Pistol flirting with the boys, or vice versa.  Not sure who pushed the most but together they got the fence halfway down.

There's always more projects waiting in the wings.

Linking up to Good Fences Thursday at Run*A*Round Ranch