Fence Repair

I'm still alternating ice on my hands and feet. I spent the morning and part of the afternoon fixing the pasture fence(encloses 7+ acres) so that I might be able to rent out the pasture. A lot of the work involved tightening the field fencing, but I replaced close to 50 connectors/stand-off insulators for the top high tensile electric strand. When deer jump the fence, it breaks the wire, so there was a lot of high tensile repair as well. Ultraviolet radiation weakens the plastic stand offs, so any pressure on the line breaks the standoff. That pressure could be from a limb falling, a deer entangled, or a horse leaning over, and here, it is because of all three reasons. I have a Leatherman Blast multi-tool that is wonderful for this job.

http://www.leatherman.com/multi-tools/full-size-tools/blast.aspx

Everyone, especially every woman, should have one of these. I use the pliers to bend wire and to remove slack from the fence. I also use them as an extension of my hand for getting a good grip on wire. I use the saw on the multi-tool to remove woody vines and sapling trees in the fence. Today, I even cut a inch thick limb with it. That isn't what the saw was designed for, but it sure saved me from having to come back up to the workshop to get a proper saw.

This was not heavy lifting, so to speak, but it does require hand and arm strength that I lack. It is a nice, breezy day, and I did not even break a sweat, but the pasture is rocky and uneven and is not the most pleasant walking surface-especially in muck boots. My feet have deformed(from RA) so much in the last year that I only have two pair of shoes that I can wear. I have a cheap pair of tennis shoes that is wide enough but lacks a hard sole and arch support and I have a pair of muck boots. My old steel toed work shoes that I bought last summer for working at the plant might as well be 100% steel. The steel upper and toe is not foot friendly, so today, my only real choice was the muck boots. I put menthol patches on my foot joints as a prophylactic treatment and wore heavy socks, but I don't think it helped. I can barely walk right now, helping only by the inch thick foam on a pair of Skyguy's slippers. It will be better tomorrow, I'm sure. Whoever said that exercise is good for arthritis never did farm work. I would think farm labor is good to prevent RA pain, but once you have it, exercise certainly is not helpful. I'm on fire, my fingers and toes feel like they are about to separate from the rest of my body. A few minutes ago I decided to wash dishes thinking the warm water would help...ice and heat alternating, that type of thing. It helped the pain some, but mostly I regained some mobility.

At any rate, the only thing I need to do now is replace about 450 feet of high tensile wire. We have it on a large spinning jenny that was made to fit in the bed of the truck. I'll need to put the jenny in the back of the truck and drive parallel to the fence line, unrolling it. I'll need help getting it up in the truck, or I'd do it now and be done with this job. Once you get the right amount of wire off the reel, it is a pretty simple job to stretch it through the standoffs. I probably
won't even need the come-along for that short length. Also, I need to get a new fence charger. I'm trying to decide whether or not to spend the extra money that I don't have anyway and buy a solar panel for the charger. It would pay for itself in two years, but justifying it right now when money is so tight that I have to charge the charger is a tough call. It would be nice for it to be off grid, and perhaps we could use the power generated to run other things. We do have an inverter that we use for the telescope.

Aside #1: When I was looking at solar panels on the web, many, if not most, companies were sold out or they were back-ordered or not otherwise available. I wonder what that says about the number of people preparing for the future.

Aside #2: When I was growing up, every male and about half the girls carried some kind of pocketknife. They were carried to school, too. It was never a weapon or needed for protection, it was simply a tool that one used like fingernail clippers or a nail file. Sometimes boys would whittle during recess, AKA PE. If you wanted a weapon, you got a switchblade, then, you were 'Bad'. :) I wonder if one day my kids will say: When I was growing up, we had a gun in the house, can you imagine!?!