Hi Ho, it's off to work I mow

I arrived at the farm quite late on Saturday, about 4:30pm. I had planned to stay overnight, so I could do some work on Sunday. My arrival at the farm was greeted by a large storm in the distance - which seems to be happening a bit lately.

The main project on this trip was to do some preparatory work on the fence for when I return on the Australia Day super-long-weekend.

Fonzi accompanied me - here he is amongst all the gear for the overnight stay. He always seems unimpressed to be at the farm.

While I had planned to do some work on Saturday, it was not to be. The rain (drizzle) was just heavy enough to keep me inside the shed. I took the time to snooze and relax - I wasn't all that disappointed! Fonzi is a bandit for a nap too.

The next day was sunny with scattered clouds and about 32 degrees - a bit on the hot side but very bearable.

Today's job is to prepare the fence line for the star pickets. To make life easier when hammering in the star pickets, I needed to cut the grass along the fence line. The most accurate way to determine where the fence will go is to strain a line of wire between the posts. However, this methods needs a wire spinner. You can buy a wire spinner for about $150. But here's a photo of a wire spinner I made from plywood and 4 multi-directional wheels - cost me about $20.

The fencing wire is high tensile wire (2.5mm) - which is the standard type of wire used for fencing. A characteristic of the wire is that it springs back and doesn't bend easily. All this means that I must roll the wire out in a controlled way, otherwise it gets tangled easily.

Here's an action shot of how the wire spinner works. Fonzi must be thinking "what the hell does this thing do?"



This is a photo of the fence from the centre post looking towards the front boundary (where the gate is). The fence has to go through the trees. I'm hoping that no trees are on the fence line, so I can avoid having to cut them down. I brought the chainsaw along just in case.

Here's a photo standing 180 degrees from the last photo, looking back to the back post (which is about 250m in the distance and down a small gully). This part of the fence doesn't go anywhere near trees, but there is a lot of tall grass.

Here's my knot in the wire to start straining the wire. There is a bit of an art to tying this knot, which I'm a long way from mastering. This is the best one so far.

Here is the wire on one side fully tensioned. The last time I used the wire tensioner was to install the gate. I still hate using it!

With the wire tight, I know exactly where the fence will go and what obstacles are in the way. I fired up the lawnmower and made 2 runs with it to cut the grass. Now I'll be able to tell how far the star pickets are in the ground.

The good news was that no trees were in the way and it was only necessary to trim a few branches, which will get in the way. The wire runs right between the 2 trees.

Here are the tress afer a bit of a trim. I only had to start the chainsaw for about 1 minute.

The challenging part of the fence is always going to be the back half. Firstly, it's about twice the length (so about 250 metres) and it has a few gullies which make fencing tricky (or so I'm told, having never actually done any rural fencing before!).

This is the back half of the fence line with the wire strained. The white post in the foreground is the surveyor's marker. The fence line goes through some bushes, which will need to be removed.

Here's a path along the fence line which has been mowed. This took about 2.5 hours to mow and 3 tanks of petrol. By comparison the path on the other side of the fence only took 30 minutes to complete, and that included the chainsawing! Fonzi stayed in the car for most of the day.

Here's the end of the fence - the finish line!!! This is where I will finish the job (hopefully, if it doesn't kill me). I have to fence through the fence (if that makes sense?!?)

By now it was about 2:30pm and I had completed the job.

The last job to do was water the plants and fill up the water reservoirs. All the plants seemed to be doing fine, despite the high temperatures. The leaves are even starting to grow back on Stella, the cherry tree. After watering all the plants, we are left with about 850 litres in the tank.

There was not enough time to start another job, so I decided to sit and relax for a while and head back to Sydney at 3pm.

It's been a very dry January so far, comparing to the average. This January we have only had 7mm of rain, where the average is 45mm. The forecast is for the dry conditions to continue, so we may have to conserve the water during January.

My next trip is planned for the weekend before Australia Day - for 4 days.