Mike, Michael and David planted all five of the new fence posts on the far side of the garden in one day! (Well almost – one still needs some digging). I (Alan) finished the rails on the Eastern Ave side. If the weather is good Tuesday evening, I’ll oil the rails, and should be ready to hang the fence fabric next Saturday. I have no doubt now we can finish this season.
The general fence-building process is:
- Measure and plant the metal post bases, in a reasonably straight line, evenly spaced, right height, and plumb. Every so often we get lucky and just pound one straight down without any digging. Most of the time we need to dig a hole, get the post base in the right position, and pack the hole with rocks and dirt to hold it firm.
- Cut a notch in each 4×4 posts for the irrigation lines and paint them with raw linseed oil.
- Cut and fasten the 1×4 rails, making everything nice and square, and paint them with raw linseed oil.
- Screw and staple the 1×1 hardware cloth to the posts and rails and trim up the edges.
- And when the new fence is finished, we need to disassemble and dispose of the old one.
A couple of challenges left – we’re recycling about five post bases that are currently holding up the old posts, so we need to at least partially disassemble the old fence to finish the new one; what do we do with the Philosopher’s Stone?
