Fencing/Gate

[wannabeCitizen]

In order to allow Emily and David's animals to graze our property as well as keep hunters/hicks off of the property, we'll need a gate and fencing.

For fencing, the initial thought is to do fencing along the road and around the tree line with a gate at the end of the cemetery and gates on either side of the road to enter into the pastures. We may want to make clipped, movable fences at the pond and at the spot where David and Emily's land is abut to ours.

Total fencing: ~4000 ft for each side of the road + ~5000 for the treeline + ~ 200 for the turnaround at the cemetary = ~ 10,000 ft of fencing. 4000ft of high tensile wire costs $95 here: http://www.kencove.com/fence/Wire_products.php

If we made the fence out of posts, 2 lines of wire, and 1 line of barbed wire, the breakdown would be approximately:

10,000 ft wire x 2 lines @ $95/4000 ft = ~$500 10,000 ft barbed wire @ $36.96/1320 ft = ~$300 Fence Posts are $4.66/post on the same site, but we'd need to decide how distanced we want to make the post. We could use anywhere from 200-400 posts, pending how far apart we make them. We could also buy these in increments. Getting enough posts for one pasture, or for half a pasture, then moving and adding posts each visit. We also may be able to get some kind of deal if we buy this all in one bulk order; though, I haven't called any wholesalers to find out yet.

Gates are about $100 (give or take) for a sturdy aluminum pole gate that could fit a truck through it.

To do everything at once would be about $1500.

I talked to George and the gate by his house and the fencing for the turnaround, he's willing to split. For his share, this would have him chipping in about $200-300 for it.

David and Emily are willing to get an electric wire as an add-on so that the goats will be able to roam. We could talk with them about some of this too. They may have some extra posts, barbed wire, and such. They seem to REALLY want us to do what's best for us and let them help us with anything extra to get the animals grazing since this is mutually beneficial.

I see this as a high priority as Kudzu needs to start getting consumed and our grass is going to be a snake/bug frenzy once it gets over a foot high.

What's everyone's thoughts?

[coopaloopster]

Yeah I really like the idea of having animals grazing on our land, kudzuwise, sharing with neighborswise and just having animals around is nice :) I'm willing to pitch for the fence... that's a ton of fence but yeah wire and posts has gotta be the cheapest way to do it.

[cameronjj]

That sounds great. Do we know what shape we would make this? Would we need an additional gate to get into our space?

[heinburger]

[coopaloopster]

haha i love the picture. it looks like giraffe heads coming out of a green spot in my pubic hair. I'm coming to pittsburgh day after tomorrow to meet up with you guys and get on the same page about this stuff. @mynameisfiber wanna join? drinky poos in pixieburgsy?

[heinburger]

[wannabeCitizen]

Yeah that drawing is nice! We will not be able to do the gate at the front of the property and the second gate will have to be on the backside of the cemetery not the front. We will almost certainly need the fencing along the road since we can't put in that front gate. However, I'm thinking, if the budget is tight, we may want to only fence in the big meadow this year and we can save the eastern meadow for next year.

[wannabeCitizen]

So Coop, Jackie, and I went and got the numbers out to do an exact estimate for the fencing and realized that I pulled a bad number out of the air for the length between the front of our property and the cemetery.

This turned out to make an estimate that was way over the top. Here is the correction with the right numbers from my measurements from the weekend we went down there.

Distance from the front opening to the cemetery: ~ 400ft From the road to the treeline: 120ft Front fence to the treeline bend: 230ft The tree wrap-around to where you walk to the pond: ~266 ft

The estimate came to about 1100 ft (1016) per line of wire. If we buy the 4000 ft spool of wire, it would allow us to do 3 lines around the entire west pasture. Then using a guideline we found for fencing we need posts that only route wire, every 16 feet, but line posts (load bearing posts) every 80 to 120 feet. Thus we need 15 load bearing and 55 line posts; the load bearing should be about 9 feet long and the line posts should be about 7 feet long.

This means our total cost for doing just the west pasture would only be about $540 (70 posts @ $5, 1326ft barbed wire @ $36, and 4000ft spool of wire @ $95). We would then need to buy a posthole digger and a chain grabber (that holds the tension in the wires). Hopefully, if Dave and Emily can help us on the hole digger, we just need the chain grabber which is under $50.

This project is much more affordable than it seemed with the wrong dimensions. Really sorry about that! I don't know why I thought I heard or remembered 2000ft along the road :-1: