Eustice!

yesterday....


Arthur and I got a call from Scott saying that a grazing animal had made a buffet of the nursery.  The most probable culprit is Eustice.  He's managed to escape about once a day for the past month.  We've put off fixing the fence because it would require putting up a whole new line of fencing in a new, yet uncleared area.  It also kept falling back on our list of priorities to make way for farm work, market stuff, bee stuff, garden stuff.  But, the phone call was our kick in the pants.  So....we walked the area to pick the new fence line so it wouldn't be surrounded by gaps in the foliage to make new escape routes.  We then cleared the line of over-grown mature cane grass, thimble berries and a take-over-everything ground cover (this is the most labor-intensive portion of the plans).  Then we cut fence posts from Strawberry Guava saplings.  Then we rolled out a few feet of fencing, and pulled it a few feet, rolled out a few more feet, pulled those few feet, and continued until the fence line had fencing running the whole length.  Then we staked the fence in.


Then I felt motivated to clear the rest of the cane grass in the newly expanded pasture.  So I went to work with my machete.  I got a bit too excited and chopped away most of the natural barrier we were relying on to act as a big portion of our fencing.  Well.....shit.....


So, I had to extended the fence line some more to meet up with the paddock so it would once again be a contained, hopefully escape-proof, pasture.  Got the fence line cleared and extended and the fence up and staked, with the new gate entrance further down our trail.  So far, Great Success!  And it looks so nice.