…Especially when your neighbors are goats and sheep. This week we started implementing a new fencing plan on the southern tip of the property. The new fencing will allow the White Oak herd to access a lot of new pasture. Currently the mammals are housed in the barn, where they are locked in every night to keep them safe from predators. However the barn is not adjacent to any pasture, so to give the animals access to fresh grass we run them to the bottom of the property where there are currently two fenced pasture areas. The rest of the pasture is just too far to run the animals to twice a day, especially through spring and summer when there are unruly lambs and goat kids that love to run off. In the new pastures though we’ve got plan to build a new barn, so that we won’t need to run the animals in and out. Additionally, the new fencing and barn will give us potential access to pasture on a neighboring property. More pasture space will allow us to increase the size of our sheep flock, and maybe even eventually support a small milking cow, pigs, or other livestock.
We used local cedar posts, and dug the holes by hand over a day and a half, setting the posts as we went. Now the skeleton of the fence line is plainly visible, with areas for gates and the future barn laid out.