Submitted by Preeceville area farmer, Kaare Askildt.
In my previous carrier I associated fencing as something done by criminals buying stolen goods, or two adversaries squaring off with sharp swords to settle an argument. I have since learned it more accurately describes a common practice by any farmer that needs to contain his livestock.
We had stretched the top wire for our new southern fence line, and Tim Olson used it as his guide when pounding our posts. Now came the time to fasten that wire to all the posts, and stretch two more strands of barbed wire from my "Sproing" rolls. It was becoming somewhat urgent, as we have so many other pending chores to do this fall, like digging potatoes and me running my "new" cultivator through the garden, and of course all the butchering.
My wife was sick with a head cold and we decided that she should stay inside and rest. ?I shuffled my schedule around to find time to at least get the top wire set. I was preparing to go out, and I asked her what height the top wire should be at. My wife told me that she had marked the end posts to where we fastened the guide wire, off the bottom corner of the diagonal zipper of the top left pocket on her jacket that she wore that day.
To me this was akin to a fisherman marking the outside hull of his boat with an "X" to remember a good fishing spot, then lending the boat to somebody else to try their luck at the same spot. It did absolutely nothing for me. We want the barbed wires to be level, so I had to find a way of equalling her measure. As I stood by one of the end posts trying to figure this out, I realized that the bottom corner of the diagonal zipper of the top left pocket on my wife's jacket, matched the fifth button down from the neck of my jean shirt! Problem solved.
However, I had to make sure that my shirt was tucked snugly into my pants at all times for this to work. My routine then became like this: stand in front of post, tuck in shirt, mark the button on the post, adjust wire to proper height, pound staple. Then on to the next post and repeat the procedure. It worked like a charm, the top wire was nice and level! I'm sure that there are many other ways to achieve the same goal, but probably not as interesting.
My wife felt better the next day and we decided to string the rest of the wires. So I again shuffled my schedule to free up some time, and we loaded the quad cart with some "Sproing" rolls, staples, hammers and wire cutters. We hitched up the cart to the quad, drove out to the southern fence line and set about to string two more strands of barbed wire.
My wife was impressed with the work that I had done on the top wire, it was straight and taut. We marked the hammer handle with the space we wanted between the strands and used it as a guide. We fastened one end of the wire to the end post, and rolled out the wire. We did the second strand first. My wife would mark the posts and stretch the wire, and I would pound the staples.
As I said earlier, my wife was suffering from a head cold, and a sneeze can come on very quickly. Most of us when we sneeze also end up having some uncontrollable body movements. In my wife's case it constitutes what is best described as muscle spasms in her arms.
This condition resulted sometimes in a taut wire suddenly going limp, usually just when I was about to pound the staple. There is no pre sneezing warning, it just erupts. It was kind of amusing even though she was still suffering from her head cold. However, we got the job done! Then we opened up this pasture for the horses and the cows. They were so happy to be in there, they were just bucking and running!
Even the two little heifers threw a few sideways bucks before they gorged themselves on the pasture grass.
We are the happiest when our animals are happy!
