A bit of real Farming

Our "Farm" is 3.5 acres and currently consists of the fully fenced house yard, including the chicken run, orchard and vege gardens, and the rest is one big paddock that has a small dam a few trees on the road frontage and our bore.  At some stage I will take some photos and take you on a bit of a tour but that is for another post.

Our property was once part of a large dairy farm so it was cleared of all but a couple of trees, something we are going to try and change.

About 6 months ago we purchased a whole lot of natives in tube stocks and planted them out along our far back boundary fence to provide us with a bit of a wind break as well encourage the native wildlife to come back.  We planted out and fenced off the area using second hand stakes and dog wire (the stuff with square holes in it) that we picked up from the local dumps recycling area.

Sadly the cows and horses were pretty interested in the grass on the trees side of the fence and broke through the wire to eat the long tasty grass, and the tops out of some of our trees.  Most of the trees have recovered but once they get bigger there may be a few odd shaped gum trees that have multiple trunks, oh well that's life.

So we decided that it was time we put in a proper fence before investing any more money in trees that may not survive the livestock.

Proper fencing has be a topic of discussion for a while now so Hubby has been cutting up trees for posts and they have just been waiting to be turned into a fence.  (Hubby is an Arborist/Tree Dr/Tree Lopper so has access to trees and owns chain saws and portable milling equipment).

So we had the posts, step one complete.

We then marked out a string line and paced out equal distances for each post marking the grass, then it was time to bring in the big guns, a post rammer and some neighbours who actually are real farmers.

I am sure we keep our neighbours amused with our "farming" antics as we trek about in our gum boots.

The Post Rammer in action- being operated by our neighbours the "Proper Farmers"

For those folk who have never had anything to do with rural fencing there are basically 3 ways you can do it.

a) Dig by had with a shovel, put the post in, back fill with soil and ram the earth back around it

b) Use an orger bit (a giant drill that goes on the back of a tractor and drills the hole for you) then put the post in, back fill with soil and ram the earth back around it, or 

c) Use a post Rammer that basically hammers the post into the ground, no digging or back filling.

The ground is so soft here at the moment due to all the rain this year that the posts went in no issues at all.

The posts are about 2m long and go about 80cm in the ground

So the posts are in and now we just have to wire them up then trim off the tops of any that are too high.

We are also going to put a gate in at one end so we can get in and out easily to plant, mow and whipper snip.

Hubby waiting for the last post to go in

Now I just have to wait till the wire goes on and I can head off to the nursery again.  This time without worrying that my hard earned cash is turning into cow manure.
We are quite proud of our first "real farming" activity although if I can convince Hubby of the plans I have for our "farm" there will be some more fencing practice to come. 
I am determined to make "real farmers" of us yet.