Building a Garden Fence

Building or "creating" a fence for your garden can be relatively simple provided that you have some time, patience and a bit of strength.  The cost will depend on how simple or fancy a fence you make and how strong you need it to be.  It is also important to keep in mind the purpose of your garden fence.  The 10 or so deer in our yard about a week ago reminded us at how important it was to create a barrier for those who might make a meal out of our hard work.  So after the last few months of deliberating and because I was on spring break, we decided it was time to get going.

The garden before we began this project.  

Fortunately, we have a wooded area on our property where we can find fallen trees and limbs to use for our various projects.  This time, the fallen trees became our posts.  We decided to go with a 6 ft. high chicken wire as it was cheaper than the "horse fence" that I had originally set my mind on.  The posts reach a high 7 foot out of the ground, and we will be stringing some wire or string at the top to provide just a bit more protection (apparently deer don't see very well so they are psyched into thinking the wire stretches up that high).  Who knows if our efforts will actually work.  We have had many different reports with suggestions from peeing on your garden fence to claiming that the deer won't bother our garden at all.

Al used a hatchet to strip the wood of branches
and some of the bark.

We foraged our property for 17 relatively straight posts, most of which were cedar, the others pine and oak.  Each were stripped of bark and limbs and were set in foot-deep holes with Quickcrete.  We then cut a large panel of wire for each "side" of the fence to make handling it easier.  Attaching the wire to the post with U-shaped nails was "relatively" easy aside from dropping them or hammering them in crooked.  I can't see how this part would've been possible with one person so I was happy we were able to work on this project together - one holding the wire in place, one hammering the nails.

We took turns digging.  Post hole diggers
aren't the most effective in heavy clay soil.

A chunk of our beloved clay.  Should be a great growing
medium when we finally get some organic matter in there!

We measured out and cut the chicken wire
to make it easier to handle.

The original plan to use 2x4's for the gate was switched to using 1x4's.  The 2x4's were really heavy and I was worried they would pull on the gate posts too much.  For our purposes, I don't think it was necessary to have a heavy-duty gate.  We bought four 1x4x8's which were cut to make a gate that was around 7x4.  Braces were made by cutting the wood 8 inches long and sawing a 45 degree angle on each end to fit in each corner of the gate.  A cross bar was cut for the middle.  We also purchased 3 hinges and a hook for the gate's latch.  I have yet to actually attach the gate to the post.  This is a task that needs two people, both for physical support and probably emotional support, as I predict this step of our process will be easy.

The heavier posts for the entrance gate.
Not sure how I'm going to get the hinges
on there!

We've worked really hard for this fence and hopefully it will be worth it as far as the deer go.  For me though, there are few things that are more fulfilling than working hard on our house and land.  Throw in the sunshine and a pleasant temperature and I can't get enough.

Breaking Ground

It started with a stake out, as in staking out 3 plots of 5 feet by 12 feet to become the first raised beds in our garden. Stake outs in this part of Virginia are hard work, especially when the soil is packed clay and solid from months of incessant heat. Thankfully though the temperatures from the height of summer have started to cool off and have been accompanied by increasing amounts of rain. Yesterday it rained for a soild 10 hours, most of which time I spent at the Virginia Craft Brewers Festival hosted by Devils' Backbone, where I was judging beer.

When it rains so heavily our garden becomes a mass of rivulets of water heading toward the lowest point of the neighbourhood, it also makes the top few inches of the soil moist enough to actually get stuck into it, without getting stuck in it. That's what we did this morning, started clearing the grass out of the plots, most of which came up with plenty of roots and hence got transplated to parts of the garden needing some greenery.

As you can kind of see from the picture, we got one plot completely done with, de-grassed and forked over, as well as making a start on plot two. Eventually when all three plots are broken up, we'll build the wooden frames which will keep in the soil. I am planning to have the frames be at least 8 inches high, so that we can dump in plenty of manure and compost to sit over the winter and get rotted in. Come spring next year the plan is to have beds with a good growing medium for crops of beans, tomatoes and whatever else we will grow to cut down on our grocery bill.

While we have only 3 beds at the moment, the long term plan is to expand out to at least 10 for vegetables, as well as a few plots for fruit bushes and trees, in particular I want to try my hand at growing that most magnificent of fruit, the gooseberry.

Where Do We Begin?

We've been in the house almost a month now.  The master bedroom and bathroom along with the spare upstairs bathroom have been painted and "decorated", and I have just now begun to hang some pictures and begin to organize our lives here.  Other than daily memory loss and general forgetfulness, the transition has been smooth and we are happily settling in.  Owning a home for us has been several years in the making and now we finally have the ability to begin to put together our ideas and make something of them.  But where to start?  Prioritizing is obviously important yet proving very difficult.

Here's what we have come up with so far (not necessarily in this order):
1. Fence in a portion of the back yard.
2. Begin building and preparing raised beds for a garden.
3. Re-seed the at least the front lawn.
4. Plant some trees.
5. Landscape the front of the house.
6. Build a back patio.
7. Build a chicken coop.

The chicken coop is a long-term project.  I plan on re-purposing wood from discarded pallets and will obviously need time to collect all of it.  Plus, I'm not in a hurry to get chickens at this time.  I've done a little research on the type of coop I would like to build and have drawn up a few ideas of my own.  I've found that coops can range from very simple to really chic.  Ideally I would like a mix of both - simple chic.

I like the enclosed rectangular run on this one and the overall size.

This is more what I would like to do - construct the coop from used pallets. One like this would be modified to have an enclosed run to protect the hens from predators.













A backyard fence would be wonderful as it would deter wild animals, enclose our garden, and would provide Honza a huge space to run around in.  We are surrounded by farms, many of which have farm fencing.

  

This would be ideal but we have no idea what a fence like this would cost.

As for trees, I would love a cherry tree and crepe myrtle in the front yard.  We have located a person in our area that is selling plum trees for $3 each.  Perhaps we will get a couple of those.

It can be overwhelming to think about all of this at one time, but I have to remind myself that this is just the beginning.  Rome wasn't built in a day!