With the smooth wire up we were ready to start putting up the high tensile woven wire. We chose high tensile woven over conventional soft metal fencing because it is stronger, more resistant to damage, and better coated against rust. Unfortunately, Bekaert, the largest supplier of high tensile woven, is an east coast company and the product selection is limited out here. We eventually had to special order our fencing from a local farm store.

First step is rolling out the wire.

Then some finagling to get the wire on the opposite side of the fence posts. It was rolled out on the other side so it wouldn’t hurt my planted veggies.

Next came wrapping the post with the woven wire and tying it off.

The next several steps take a while as you have to cut  each  square knot and pull off the verticals until you have enough bare line wire to tie back on itself.

Each wire has to be tied into a slip knot down the length of the woven around the wooden post. In the picture below, on the left is the slip knot that terminates the woven line wire. On the right is one of the woven square knots that gives this fencing its strength.

Lee made a homemade stretcher so we wouldn’t have to buy one. This was the first version of that stretcher. We put the fencing in between the boards, bolted it together, and then hooked the two come-alongs to the eyelets on the board on one side and two cables around the post. Then once the fence was nice and tight the tying off process started all over again. After the post was tied off then you could release the come-alongs and unbolt the stretcher. After that we went along and stapled the woven wire on the fence where we wanted it on the posts and wire clipped  it on the T-posts.

This whole process was very time consuming and we only managed to get one of the four woven lengths up per day (working in the evenings). But it is done now. HORRAY! The below picture doesn’t show it well but there really is woven fencing all around. The woven wire is hard to see from a distance when looking straight on. The top three wires on the posts ended up being the most visible on the fence.

With the H-braces completed we were ready to go on to the next step, pulling the top three wires of the garden fence. This process was pretty easy.

Starting out, Lee marked with chalk where each of the wires would be placed using a pre-measured board as a guide.  Sometimes the wire can’t be placed on the mark if it has to cross a wood brace.

Next, we hammered staples at the corners or midpoints.  Just enough to hold the wire but not to create a lot of drag.

We pulled the smooth wire off our spinning jenny, through the staples we’ve put up.  This process went much faster the second day, after we rebuilt the spinning jenny.  When we reached the end of the wire run, we looped it around through a staple, and crimped it.

Back at the start of the run, we added another crimped loop and a strainer ratchet.  The top wire gets a tension spring.  The spring is there to indicate 150 pounds of pull, so you can pull on the wire and check that the others are similarly tight.  It also helps cushion impacts if a deer does try to jump the fence.  We connected the two wires and take out some of the slack.

We walked back around and added staples at posts we missed the first time.  Posts that are at the top or bottom of a hill get a double staple arrangement to resist the pull.  (Like this one.)

We clipped the wire to the T-posts.  The wood posts really hold the wire, so the height at the T-post is mostly determined for us.

At the corners we dropped staples behind the wire to minimize friction when it’s tightened up.

Then, we tightened up the ratchet to the appropriate tension (determined by measuring the spring).  After repeating the process 5 more times the garden top wires are done.

Almost as soon as I had veggie seedlings coming up I noticed that I was getting holes eaten in different leaves. I wasn’t too concerned. Then I kept getting more holes and I kept seeing this bug that looked like a lady bug but was green and was all over the garden. So I did some research and found out that I had an infestation of Spotted Cucumber Beetles. Lets just say that I was NOT happy. We looked at our options for getting rid of them naturally and decided to just battle it out by hand for now. I go through the plants and pick them off squishing them as I go. According to some information we read on them they can reproduce and you can have four different cycles of them go though. I have seen this already as there will be barely any that I will find one day and then the next day I will find a bunch and they are all soft when I squish them. The older ones have an harder squish.

Two of the reasons that we weren’t happy that we had them as a pest were because they can spread plant wilt disease and because they eat almost every thing. Don’t let the name fool you as they have barely touched my cucumbers and have been concentrating on the beans at the moment.

On the bright side, on the left here is a before picture taken on the 13th of this month and then an after picture on the right taken on the 21st of this month. The damage is going down some. My pole beans got hit really bad where some of the leaves got severed off. They are still trying to bounce back. Lee and I were surprised that we got hit so bad with this beetle as there had never been a veggie garden at this house probably in about 20 years or more. So the only thing we can figure out is that someone around here maybe had a problem with them and didn’t take care of it. That or they came from the pumpkin farm about a mile away.

Another funny thing going on in the garden is the tomato size. Some of ours are huge and others not so much. The huge ones got more water, didn’t get sun damaged, or have the deer nibble on them. The small ones have had a harder go of it. Mostly with the sun burned leaves and deer browsing. That little one in the picture really is that little. All the tomatoes were all planted at the same time.

Some of the potatoes have come out in bloom. I didn’t realize that the blooms could be so pretty. I was expecting something smaller and uninteresting.

My cucumbers are up and this is the first time that I have ever direct sown them. Thankfully the Cucumber Beetles have been ignoring them so far.

Lastly here is my pumpkin. I’m so excited about growing one as I never had before.

The strength of our fence comes from H-braces, an assembly of three posts and a wire which creates a strong resistance to the lateral force of the fence.  This is important, because each strand of smooth wire transmits about 150 pounds of pressure to the corner posts, and the woven wire causes 300 pounds or more of strain.  There are other ways to brace a fence, but many of them don’t age well and some are harder to construct.  Driving around Oregon gives you plenty of examples of badly installed fences.  If I had really hard soil, I might consider the floating brace.  Otherwise, the H-brace is the way to go.

I was going to discuss the mechanics of an H-brace, but I found a blog post that provides a good overview without being boring like I would.  There are a few important rules of thumb to remember when designing H-braces.  The cross brace length should be 2.5 times it’s height above ground.  Many people put the cross brace at the top of the vertical posts, but for a 4 foot fence this requires a 10 foot brace.  Since 8 foot posts are cheaper, you should put the cross brace 3 to 3.5 foot above ground and rely on the strength of the vertical posts to support the top of the fence.  Also, try to place the cross brace where it won’t interfere with line wires.

For our garden fence (84″) I placed the posts at 59″ above the ground.  For my 10′  cross braces, this only gives me a ratio of 2.0, but I was also trying to site it to avoid the high tensile wires and woven.  12′ cross braces would have been better, but they were spendy and harder to transport.

Anyway, too much talking.  This is supposed to be a picture post about installing an H-brace.  When we left off in the last post, we had installed our corner and brace posts and pinned the cross brace.  The brace post had the tail of it’s brace pin sticking about an inch out and facing “down” the fence line.

First step is to drive two staples about 5 inches above ground level on the back side of the corner post.  Leave these well out of the wood.  You will be threading two wires through them.

Next, pull off 12.5 gauge high tensile smooth wire from your spinning jenny to create two complete loops around the posts.  Thread the wire through the staples at the bottom of the corner post and over the pin at the top of the brace post.  Some people cross the wire to form a figure eight.  I’m going to have high tensile hot wires tied off at the corners and running through that air space, so I kept the loops straight. High tensile smooth wire has a breaking strength of 1700 pounds.  Two loops should double that number.  If using a ratchet to tighten the wire like I am, be sure it ends up on the inside of the fence (away from the woven wire).  I also made sure that my end wire was going “downhill”, but that’s only because I’m a little OCD.

Slide two crimps onto the wire end you’ve been pulling, then add a strainer ratchet.  I suggest buying your crimps and crimping tool from Kencove online.  Local farm stores will hit you for 5x or more the price.  Ratchets are best purchased at Premier1Supplies online.  They are about 2.5x more expensive at farm stores.

Crimp the two crimps.  This is also called “swagging”.  Who knew?

Check that you have sufficient slack and then cut the wire off the spinning jenny.

Thread the newly cut end into the ratchet.  About 1/4″ or less should poke out of the hole, then twist the wire around the ratchet and crank it a bit.

Before you get too carried away, drop two staples over the staples and behind the wire loops at the bottom of the corner post.  This reduces friction  so you can equalize the tension on the loops.

Crank the ratchet to tighten the H-brace.  I probably overtightened mine when I first installed them.  My recommentation is to bring them up good and snug, but don’t really tighten them until you start pulling wire on the fence.  Otherwise you can lean over your braces with this cross wire and nothing to counterbalance it.  Some sources suggest tightening until one of the posts moves a 1/4″.  I think this is probably bad advice.

Here’s what my completed H-brace looked like.

Sometimes you see H-braces with two cross wires in an X pattern.  There are only two reasons to do this: for an inline H-brace in the middle of a long fence and for a corner post that will also support a gate.  Otherwise, the second wire actually works against the brace, adding it’s strain to that of the fence wire and causing earlier failure.

Today Lee and I along with my sister Jessica went to the Black Sheep Gathering. The purpose of going was to scoop out different sheep breeds that we might be interested in once we get our fences up. Well it worked. We now have our sights on both the Shetland sheep and Navajo-Churro sheep breed.

Both are small breeds, with ewes weighing about 100 pounds or less.  They are also old breeds, come in multiple colors, dual purpose, and have lower feeding requirements.  Much like goats, these two breeds of sheep are browsers and will eat Blackberries, Poison Oak, and Scott’s Broom.  However, for all their similarities there are some major differences.  The Navajo breed was developed in the U.S. by native Americans from sheep they bought and borrowed from the Spaniards about 500 years ago.  They do not need grain supplements even when lambing and generally produce twins.  Their wool is coarse, low in oils, and good for rugs and blankets.  If sheared twice a year it will grow to 6 inch lengths.  Navajo-Churro sheep still have a strong wild instinct and are not very sociable with humans.  Their meat is supposed to be quite mild flavored.

Shetland sheep were developed for the harsh climate of the Shetland Isles of Brittain.  They come in 11 colors and over 30 different coat markings.  Their wool is extremely soft and fine, considered to be one of the best wools after Merino.  They are slightly less prolific than Navajo-Churro’s, and will benefit from a grain ration during lambing.  They are extremely sociable and will follow you around and wag their tails if you pet them.

Obviously, the pattern here is that we are interested in sheep that are lower maintenance and that won’t demand a lot of purchased hay and grain.  We’d like them to have useful wool, but also be good for dinner.  Seems like both of these breeds would meet those requirements.  We plan to do more reading and visit a few sheep farms before making any purchases.  We don’t expect to have the fences done and the property ready for sheep until next year.

The chicks keep getting bigger. We got some scratch corn for them so they would view us coming around them as “treat time”. Now all the chicks love it when I come into the coop and most come running. Then they stand around waiting for me to get the corn out.

Here is Elwood. She is the most shy of the bunch and will stand in the back when the others are getting corn. We aren’t sure whether it is that she is shy or just dumb. Maybe a combination of both? Oh well, we think she is cute.

Last is the chick that we are guessing is the boy. Lee is now in agreement with me that he thinks that this chick might be the boy. I will be mad after all this time he turns out to be a girl.

We got our first produce from the garden today. Okay so maybe I was just thinning out the lettuce row, but it still counts right?

So what have we been doing the last week and a half? Figuring out how to put in a high tensile garden fence. We were supposed to have this all done in the week that Lee had off work but things didn’t work out as we had quite planned. So get ready for a lot of pictures as I bring you step by step through what we have done so far.

First, in overview, our garden fence encloses an area 100′ by 128′.  This protects 14 fruit trees and about 9000 square feet of garden (in rotation).  It will be 7′ high to discourage deer jumping, and have baited electric “scare” wires on all sides but along the public road.  The bait is an apple scent which encourages the deer to sniff, ensuring that the deer’s first experience with our fence is a wet nose touching a wire with 10,000 volts.

The fence has two gates and uses 20 treated wood posts.  We considered other post options, such steel pipe in concrete, but all have environmental positives and negatives.  Wood posts are a proven and reliable technology when installed right.  Most farm and building supply stores in our area sell extremely low grade fence posts.  We were very unhappy with our options until we found a supply of great posts (and the best price) at Tinker Toy Fence Posts in Junction City, OR.

The post hole digger has marks on them so we would know how deep down the hole was. We were burying the posts three feet deep with the corner posts having 120 pounds of concrete in them. The corner posts leaned away from the strain of the fence and were offset one inch for every four feet.

We wrapped the posts with heavy 6mil plastic 3 feet and 2 inches up on the bottom of the post. Why would we do this? Well acording to a study done by the Oregon State University it can double the life of your post.  It also minimizes leaching of the wood treatment (ACQ) into the surrounding soil.

For the end posts that were getting the concrete treament we put nails into the bottom so the concrete would have something to grip into.  Instead of mixing the concrete in a wheel barrel we just poured about 30 pounds at a time into the hole, tamped, and added water.  The idea is that the concrete will wick sufficient moisture from the ground to set up hard enough for fence holding purposes.

The posts were 10 feet tall with 7 feet being out of the ground. We really don’t want the deer in our garden. Here is what the post looked like next to Lee out and in the ground.

Most of the post hole digging went really smooth. Then there were the few that didn’t…… Yes there was some rocks. And some barbed wire under the rocks about 18 inches down. We scratched our heads on that one. There was also a charcoal line that was dug through, toys in the top 6 inches several times, and one horse shoe about a foot underground.

Lee didn’t want to buy a tamper for the holes so he made his own from a piece of Fir tree around our property.

Each corner post was part of an H-brace to resist the pull of the fencing. Here is how we made them. First a hole was drilled 57 inches up the post. The height was chosen to maximize the strength. Lee will probably discuss the reason for this height in a future post. Then a 5 inch brace pin was hammered part way in.

A hole was drilled in the center of the cross brace that would be fitted onto the 5 inch pin. This was done usually with me sitting on the post so it wouldn’t spin on Lee

The cross brace was fitted on the first post.

Next step was getting the cross post level.This was fun sometimes as the posts being uneven made it a challenge.

Once the cross brace was level with the brace post it was then marked with chalk.

Then the chalk mark was measured and a new hole was drilled all the way through the brace post.

Once the hole was drilled then a 10 inch brace pin was hammered just barely through. Basically enough so the cross brace will catch onto it. Once the cross brace was in place then the pin was hammered in leaving an inch of the pin out of the brace post.

Then came the level reading and adjusting of the post as it was filled back in with dirt.

One thing that took us so long was making sure that every post was level. We used wire though a hole in the level to hang them off the post. That way we could keep a constant eye on how we were doing.

In addition to the wood posts, we used 10 T-posts as line posts to support the fence material.  (In retrospect, it would have been stronger and cheaper to use all wood posts of slightly smaller diameter.)  Lee put in the last of the metal T-posts today. They were also 10 feet tall. Lee hated putting them in as they twisted and were a huge pain.

The garden fence posts are all in. Now we will be moving onto the next steps of putting in the fence in the coming week.