First Fire & Fencing

Sunday, Inge, Melissa, and I went out and with the 12 1/2 gauge wire tackled the post bracing and we stretched the long stretch of fence. Following a suggestion from Kenneth, our NE neighbor, we used the come-along with the bolted 2x4 (Thank you Kenneth!) and two chunks of chain to stretch a short section around the curve, then we pulled the long straight section from there. Everything came out very well, but we did find out that the rain Friday loosened some of the posts.

Monday, after getting a couple bags of gravel from HD, I picked up my brother for more fence work. Using the gravel and tampers we reinforced all the posts, installed a new post, and on the curve, following a diagram I saw online, reinforced the weakest post with a diagonal brace post. It looks great and the fence is very taut.

We also installed the gate, though one of the top bolts was missing washers which I'll have to install Thursday when we get out there next.

When I arranged for my brother to come out and help with fencing, I mentioned that we'd need to bring sandwiches for lunch. However, as we drove out there he suggested, instead of ham and cheese, why not stop at the Taylor Meat Market and get some of their green onion sausage. He then suggested we build a fire and roast the sausages up for lunch. Well by any measure, that idea beat ham and cheese sandwiches so we stopped at Taylor and grabbed the sausage and after we got to Die Weide we dug a fire pit with a generous border to protect against grass fires. I gathered a bunch of dead mesquite limbs and for the first time, we built a fire on the land. For our cooking forks, we grabbed and trimmed a couple of green branches and made sausage-on-a-stick. And let me tell you, those Taylor Meat Market onion sausages are supremely delicious when roasted over a fire built on your own land.