Fences

Before I bought Chaplin Bend Farm, it was used as a cattle pasture.  As you might expect, the farm is divided by many hundreds of yards of interior fences.  Fences don't fit my plans for open grasslands and forest, so my intention is to take them out.  I'll be working on that all summer in preparation for tree planting next winter.

The first phase of the project is to remove a few hundred feet of board fence near the barn.  The boards in this fence are 6 inch by 1 inch poplar, from 4 feet to 14 feet long, and will be added to the barn wood to make flooring for the cabin.

I got started on this work last week, removing the face boards and the planks from a few dozen feet of fence.  Not too hard using a crowbar to pry off the facing boards and then hammer and pry off the planks.   A few were hard to get started but eventually came off with a little elbow grease.  A few boards split but none too badly.

I've stacked the boards so that the barn contractor can take them away when he dismantles the barn.  Some are a bit warpped and a few have splits, but I figure we'll get several hundred square feet of flooring from this small amount of fence.

Later I'll come back and pull the posts using my tractor.  I'll either hold on to those for some future project or sell them on Craigslist.