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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 12:41 am and is filed under Farm Structures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.