Having fun with the fence lines

This is a shot of the fence I put in at the family farm.  Now I know some people will consider a 8-9 wire overkill but when you are trying to keep in little critters like goats it works out well.

I know people ask, 'why not use woven wire'?  Well there are a few factors in determining if you want to do that.  I'll admit it does have an initial lower cost, but the maintenance and upkeep for it is quite a bit higher.  When you start getting critters stuck in it and you have to cut them out you understand why.  A high tinsel barbed wire fence has fewer maintenance requirements over the long run.

Another bonus that I noticed is the fact that other critters like dogs etc have an extremely difficult time getting through that kind of a barrier.  They have to dig pretty far under the fence if they try that tactic since your bottom wire is only a few inches off the ground if that.

This is the kind of fence I plan on putting up at the 'homestead' in Texas.  There is no permanent fence on the southern boundary of the property and I plan on fixing that.  Last weekend (for me at least on my days off lol) I had the kids working on clearing out the brush and trees along the other established fence lines.  I was rather surprised at the amount they were pulling out of the fence there.  They pulled something like 6 pickup loads of brush cut out of the fence line.  It sure made the burn pile we started rather large but it burned down nicely and left a nice bed of ashes that we can spread out in the garden plots later.

For the fence line on the southern boundary I have to cut a lane through the trees for about 100 feet so that's on my agenda when I go home this weekend.  That way I can get ready to start putting up that stretch.  It is a little over 900 feet so that's a nice little stretch.  Once I have the lane clear I can figure out how many corner posts and braces I need, t posts etc so we can get the rest of the materials and get started on it.

The other project we are working on is a new chicken coop and runs that we are building.  I will have to do another post on that one.

Til next time...

The fun in assembling a M.O.L.L.E. II pack system

Well to those of you who have had the dubious pleasure of serving in our armed forces you know how much fun assembling gear can be.  The military usually does things one of two ways.  They either give you a point by point set of instructions that can border on the insane, or you get absolutely nothing.  For some odd reason there is no in between lol.

So I had ordered the large pack system over 6 months ago.  I got one that was in excellent shape, with no previous markings on it from the 'former' owners which was nice.  I had purchased it to carry in my truck while I was driving over the road so if I needed to I would have something to be able to make it home with.  Well I decided shortly after that I was not driving over the road anymore so I never set it up.

Here it is 6 months later and I decide that maybe I should go ahead and set it up since I have it.  I pull all of the pieces out and lay it out.  At that point I realize that I have never set one of these systems up!  I always got it assembled.

So I get on my trusty laptop, type in a Google search and look at the results.  There were a bunch of  video links but I will admit it took about 3-4 different ones before I found one that actually showed how to assemble it.

It took me about 3 hours between searching the net and slowly putting it together to get it assembled.  It really wasn't all that hard which was surprising lol.  Here soon I will load it down and readjust it accordingly.

So who has had this much fun with army surplus supplies lol?

Cold in Texas!!!!

Who would have thought it gets cold in Texas, I mean its way down there in the southern part of the US, right?  Yeah I know wishful thinking lol.

When I went home last weekend it got pretty cold at the homestead.  Now keep in mind that we are located just below the 'freeze' line that stretches across the area.  Yes I know it can still get cold down there but not into the single digits normally, not including win chill ugh.

We found out we have some work to do re-insulating some water lines.  Thankfully they didn't break, but we spent the whole day with a heater trying to thaw them back out.  This happened in the newly remodeled section of the house where the new bathroom was plumbed in.  We do have a section of wall on the outside that needs some new siding put up, so I plan on pulling down the old siding so I can get to the water lines to make sure they are well insulated first.  In that spot is where the water comes into the house, and to the hot water heater.  Having a spot between one to two inches on the outside that is exposed to that wonderful wind did us in I believe.

Another thing that I needed to do was fix the security lights we have on the poles outside.  They are your normal pole lights that come on at night.  Well the first problem is that I didn't have a ladder that could quite reach all the way, unless I put it in the tail gate of the pickup.  The other is that the light in front is not right on the pole but out about 3 feet from the pole.  I started to go up, but after looking it over, thought better not to without any type of fall protection harness to protect me since I would end up like the picture above.  I'm sure our cats would make the same comment too knowing those furballs lol.

My father in law was able to bring over a bigger ladder after I had to go back to Oklahoma for work and reach a pole that was a little lower with the light right on it. (we have 3 total in the yard)  I'm glad he didn't try the other one.  I think we are going to call the electric company and see what they would charge to make a service call to put in the other one.  If the charge isn't too bad I'll gladly pay to let them do it safely.  I'll admit, I'm not relishing the idea of getting up that monster lol.

The kids are very happy to be back in their old school, and the better half is glad to be back in her house.  Now to build that list of  "honey do's" for the year so we can figure out what needs to be done.  The only other major thing I have to do is look into putting in an amplifier for our cell phones.  The service for ATT in that area sucks although they say its fine.  I can get a few bars outside but inside the house the signal drops too much.  One I located is about 220 from Wilson and it looks like the best bet so far so we'll see.