We've been slowly but surely getting the property across the road turned into a proper pasture.
We had lots and lots of poplar trees removed. You can see the piles. They'll be cut up and used in our maple sap evaporator.
We've seeded with pasture seed and mowed again and again to cut back the baby poplar trees that keep wanting to pop back up.
We've had the Amish build a nice runout for the horses - doubling as an equipment winter storage shed.
But we're still waiting to put in the posts for the fence. The fence you can see is on this side of the road and the new fence will go on the other side of the road.
We've had a summer with very, very little rain. Without the rain, the ground grew harder and harder. And as my dad says, "we have bony soil", already! Lots and lots of rocks.
So the man brought out the post pounder, attached to the back of a tractor, has twice tried to pound in the posts. You can see the results below:
When the ground is this hard, the poles split instead of go into the earth.
So for now, we wait for rain and hope we get enough before the ground freezes!
Spring time is best for fence post driving. We use a heavy iron bar to start and widen a cone-shaped hole by dropping and wriggling it around and keep doing so until the hole is deep enough and then drive the post down with a 16-lb post maul. The post maul is a heavy sledgehammer with two identical flat faces. In the spring time the ground is relatively soft, the post maul used to drive a pointed (sharpened) wood fence posts into the ground, that is the best way to do it.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'll admit our timing wasn't the best for this. We've discussed getting the corner posts driven in - they're thicker and then having the holes augered for the rest of the posts.
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