A Post About Posts!

The vegetable garden comes closer to fruition each weekend. The latest step completed was the installation of the fence posts. Scott and Carl made quick work of digging the holes and placing the poles - and by mid-afternoon, all 22 were in place.

Scott and Carl each had a post hole digger so the race was on! 

Recent rain showers softened the ground a bit which made it a little easier (albeit slightly messier) to dig the holes.

Scott devised a very high tech way to ensure each hole was 18 inches deep; he made a notch on a stick and used it to measure the depth.

Yep! This one's deep enough. 

For some reason, you have to slam the pole into the hole . . . you just can't place it.

Once the pole was in place, some of the dirt was shoveled in . . .

 . . . and then tamped down with the end of a shovel. Thanks for another full day of hard work, Dad!

Here's a view of the fence (yes, that's a fence - not a frontier stockade) at lunchtime. All the posts were in place by about 3PM. It became pretty evident that they were not consistent in height. In order to create a fence tall enough to keep the deer from leaping over, each post needed to be extended to 7.5 feet high.

After considering screwing on skinny cedar branches, Scott chose to utilize 4-foot lengths of steel rebar (leftovers from the wedding bar tables.) He created a "story pole" by attaching a screw to a scrap 2x2x8 at the 7.5 ft. mark. With this as our guide, we were able to attach a piece of rebar to each post and end up with the top of each piece at the same height - so no matter how tall the cedar post is, the top of the fence will be consistent all the way around.

Each piece of rebar was attached by using two 3/8" conduit clips - little "C"-shaped metal pieces that were easily screwed to the cedar. We finished this task Monday (the 25th) evening - and we bought all the welded wire fencing and chicken wire Sunday . . . so we are really ready to finish the fence! Let's see if the weather cooperates this week.

Stay Tuned for Our Next Adventure!