Building fence, and look what the cows brought home!

Yesterday it was cloudy and damp, but Cliff and I got out there and put electric fence around the newly-planted field. It's on a slope, and if the horses and cows walk around on the soft ground, their footprints can become a place for water to run in and create a ditch, when it rains.

Besides, the horses love to roll in mud; that's what happened here. Not good for little seedlings.

We use little thin posts for electric fence, but the corner posts have to be sturdier; so Cliff drove T-posts first. That post driver weighs perhaps twenty pounds. You lift it up...

then drive it down, with all the force you can muster. When I was raising calves in hutches, I became all too well acquainted with that post driver, every time I moved a calf hutch and its pen to fresh ground.

We got all the electric fence posts in, and the wire is up; as yet, though, it isn't electrified. It's OK, the cows and horses don't know it isn't turned on.

Last night the cows came up and brought a guest along:

the neighbor's Angus bull. I have him penned up now, but he surely isn't liking it much. Here's hoping he doesn't tear down a fence before the neighbor comes to get him!

I'm rather proud of myself, getting the bull trapped in the small pen all by myself while Cliff was at work. I try not to let on, but I'm a little afraid of bulls.