My dad is getting ready to put in a livestock waterer in the middle of a large field on the SouthEast corner of the farm. When complete, this waterer will serve 4 paddocks made by bisecting the field North-South and East-West.
There were flags out on the hill marking the location of the waterer, but we had to mark out the fence lines today.
Easier said than done.
These fence lines are all longer than 1/8 mile, and they traverse some pretty gnarly hollers. For all of you North of the Mason-Dixon line, a holler is what we call a ravine.
We started off with one person standing in the middle, at the waterer, and one person standing at the fence line. The idea was that the person at the middle would maintain a straight line of sight to the fence, and signal the other person to plant flags when they were in that line-of-sight, thereby perfectly bisecting the pasture.
The problem was, that not one of us could see the other through the trees and hollers. Even the flourescent-pink landscaping flags didn’t help.
After a few attempts, we gave up until dark.
After the sun went down, we grabbed a lantern, and a few flashlights and went back out to set up some fencelines. We stuck the lantern in the middle and walked in towards it. a light through the trees in the dark is a heck of a lot easier to see than a little pink flag in the middle of the day.
Fencelines. Check.
Now just the small matter of trenching in 1200 feet of water line, installing a Tire-waterer and installing close to a mile of hi-tensile electric fence. You know, the easy part.
Heh, I never would have thought of that. I’m looking forward to the followup posts, with photos if possible.
I’ll try to haul my camera and tripod out next time to get some photos. It actually looks pretty cool with little lights moving around in the dark. It’s hard to take pictures of though.