Sunday 26 October 2008

Why is no job simple!!!!!!

This week the Resident Vandal and KD have been with us. The main jobs on the list of "Things to Do", was the to fit 2 new gates and repair some old fencing.
Well they started fitting the additional gate in the field that currently holds the ram lambs. Between our fields we have "races" or "cow walks" which make moving the sheep so much easier. We've realised that when we are moving sheep to the lambing barn, once the hurdles are up one race is out of action, so by adding this additional gate, we are no longer limited moving sheep. No matter how well you plan fencing layouts, you always miss something. The second gate, is at the side of my new shed, so I'm able to get into my main veg plot without having to walk the long way round, but if we want, during the winter months, we can run sheep in this area, after putting hurdles around the deep beds to stop the sheep eating the veg.
These two jobs went pretty well to plan, then they hit the problems, replacing the fencing, was initially just going to be, replace the wire. Well after Tim had taking out 100+ staples holding the wire to the posts, it became apparent that the wire had been holding the posts in place and not the other way round, so all the posts had to be replaced. They got that done on Wednesday and were walking back to the house, when they noticed one of the ram lambs had it's head through the wire, when it pulled it's head back there was a large hole in the wire. On closer examination of this stretch of wire revealed that it was rotten and with very little effort the sheep could escape and more worryingly Holly could get in amongst the sheep.
So Thursday, Friday and some of Saturday was spent repairing this run of fencing. It took longer because they had to go back to where the wire joined the "stretcher" post, so to repair 12 feet of wire, meant replacing nearly 50ft if wire as well as some posts.
I have to admit the fencing looks good and you realise how bad it was beforehand, but it has meant that the repairing of the fencing on the common land has been put back to another day.
One thing that has been better than planned has been the weather, it has been very windy at times, but the forecasted rain has not arrived. One other thing that got done this week was the "dagging out" and toe clipping of the ram lambs. Dagging out is not a pleasant job, but it has to be done and despite my best efforts, they need doing again!!!!! Oh deep joy!!!!!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rather an unpleasant task before you get on the outside of your tea! The Dogs thought we had an interesting odour though!