Fence Building

Fence Building

It has been wet and cold again today – you’d never know it was June! So the time has come to show some of that OH has been up to over the last few days – building a new fence.

Our vegetable plot is made up of ten deep beds. Each one is 12 feet by 4 feet and they run next to each other.

We also have wild rabbits in the garden. It can’t be helped really, as we have open farm land across the road and the recreation ground next door. They not only get in through the smallest of gaps, but they have taken up residence in a pile of earth, taken from digging out the future patio (more of that at a later date).

So it became necessary that we built a fence around the deep beds. There is a short fence around some of the beds already, put in before we added the last four deep beds, but it is neither high enough, nor long enough - the rabbits seem to be getting in still. If you look hard, you can just see the low fence in this photo:

The ground is full of stones and weeds, so the job has not been straight forward. We bought 4 foot posts and some 4 foot high weld mesh. Weld mesh is stronger than wire netting and will last longer. The idea is that the posts are to be buried around 1 foot in the ground and then the mesh is also buried below ground level, to prevent the rabbits digging beneath the fence. A string line was tied from one end to the other where the fence is to be created.

There are also 4 x 8 foot posts that will form an entryway. The 8 foot high posts have not been driven into the ground, due to their height - they have been dug in. Swinging a mallet at 8 feet in the air did not seem like such a good idea! A narrow hole was dug and the post then rammed in.

The short post is simply a marker and will be replaced by the 8 foot post in due time.

This is as far as OH has got at the moment; the rest will have to wait for another day.