At long last, I finally have a new front fence. I could go digging through my blog posts or photographs to show you its somewhat ugly predecessor — which I built with limited resources in 2010, just to try to keep my rabbits hemmed in. 

Oh, OK, here. Isn’t it fugly?

How the front fence used to look

In a post about making red pepper jelly, I wrote that I don’t have a post-pounder, an auger, or a sharp-shooter for digging the post holes. Page wire is the kind of fence I wanted, minus the barbed wire, however, when I found welded-wire fence at the hardware store, I bought it to finally commit to the project. I posted it would look something like this when done, except with nice round cedar fence posts from the country, and not square city posts.

The kind of fence I wanted was page wire, a wide-grid braided (wrapped, not welded, at the cross-points) wire fence that you find in farm country, with or without barbed wire to keep people out or critters in (some bovines will just knock it down if they really want to, but it isn’t safe for horses). However, when I easily found welded-wire fence at the hardware store, I bought it just to commit to the project. I posted it would look something like this when done, except with nice round cedar fence posts from the country, and not square city posts.

I rented a post digger shovel from Home Depot, and I got the help of one fine friend, Marc. He thought that round posts or square posts made a difference in ease of installation, until we got to work and saw it made no difference at all. We used six posts for the fence. Each one took about 45 minutes to dig – or at least it felt that way!

The sun was bright, and it was hot, and hair-metal music played on the boom box (which was called a Ghetto Blaster in Mr. T’s day). We joked about wearing beer t-shirts just to fit the work image. Marc had too much beer the night before, so we saved all cap-twisting for when the work was done.

The next day, my friends Jeremy and Bruce (updated to add: he has a great Instagram photography account – you should follow it!), both from Australia, came by and helped with the fence. It was done in no time!

When we stretched the fence, it looked slacker than fences usually do. A wonderful man stopped by just to tell us we were doing it exactly right. He said if this kind of fence is tight on a hot day, when the cold weather comes, it tenses right up, and this causes fences to heave over. Awesome. Practical information to thwart the cosmetic perfectionist! And make the fence last a long time.

Here are the photos from the end of the day:

Welded wire fence and cedar posts
From ground level, the welded wire fence and posts
welded wire fence, facing the house
Fence view, from the corner facing in – with an experimental stick in the way along the top of the fence
welded wire fence with posts
From the gate post, view from the top of the steps

And a gratuitous shot of my backyard, simply because I’m proud of the irises that have taken so nicely to the patch under the cedars.

Back yard view of pond
Back yard view of pond