Fencing before and after

Fugly wants people to cap their Tposts this weekend. What a great idea. I remember when we bought our fence posts last year, the farm supply company assumed we would buy the caps too - Tposts are a new thing here in Germany and they want to see it done right.

I am proud to say I removed 5 acres of 4 strand barbed wire all by myself (and only bled once). Barbed wire is really not too hard to remove, it self-coils as you cut it. The bottom strands were embedded in long grass (and even underground in some places) so I did fight a bit with it.

I had to really search to find a picture of our old barbed wire, because I wanted it out of here stat and didn't want pictures of it. You can see the old fence on the left of the photo - two strands showing and two are in the grass. It is so rewarding to have it GONE. (Unlike blackberries, that will always try to come back...)

I have only seen one other horse fence with Tposts besides ours in the 3 years I've been here (capped in yellow). Recently they are appearing for sale in the German horse magazines. A lady stopped her car as she drove by to ask me "Are those posts you have from Texas?" and I laughed, "They're all over America."

I admit, I never liked the look of a Tpost fence. But for practicality and cost, they win. And after all our efforts (hammering them in standing on a ladder!), I think it looks fine. I think the key is buy the super tall posts, hammer them in very deep so animals cannot budge them (the sheep tried), and make sure they are exactly 3 meters apart. Oh, and cap them with plastic hats.

You are asking why we used a hammer and a ladder? As I started building this fence the ground was soft and they went right in. As time passed, it became more and more difficult, but by then we were on a roll and we were determined to just finish it. And Tpost drivers are very hard to find here. I distinctly remember after all the work driving those posts, putting the caps on was the fun part.

You can see we could not keep a Shetland pony here - he'd walk right under our fence. It is very easy to mow underneath it this way.

When we moved in last year, not much needed fixing, so the fence to date has been our biggest project. Aside from the wooden fence by the road, we enjoy the satisfaction of knowing we--two city people--did it ourselves.