Fences

When you have livestock, you need good fences. And when your neighbors have livestock as well, you need really good fences.

We have llamas, three burly guys who haul camera and camping gear into the wilderness backcountry for us. Stegner, Arion and Charlie work hard for part of the year but basically eat and loll about when they are off duty. Llamas aren't pushy fellows when it comes to fences, but, because they do enjoy nibbling on landscape plants, we need a fence to separate their space from ours.

After considering many possibilities and weighting the costs of each, we decided the best option for us would be a fence made from treated posts and woven wire. Since our household is arriving in Torrey soon, and llamas and cats are part of "we," the fence needed to already be in place on moving day.

In late April, knowing we would both return in early May to continue the project, Scott ordered and received fence-building materials and began.

The first thing to arrive was an auger for Orangejello, our tractor. I'm sure we could have dug post holes by hand, or hired a young, strong and spry person to dig them for us, but I've learned from Scott that you can never have too many tools, and the convinced me that the auger was a new tool we absolutely needed. (He was right.)

Scott placed posts on the south side of the house.

He stretched enough woven wire to make sure the concept would work...

put three rails in place, took a photo to document the concept and returned home to Logan, looking forward to our return in two weeks to continue working together.