Remember when I told you about the Agri-Fab leaf sucker/upper/mulcher we recently bought? Well, it works awesome. But we still have areas on the farm where the leaves are piled up over a foot thick. My mower deck will only rise up to 3" above the ground, so, trying to mow over the foot high pile-O-leaves in an effort to let the Agri-Fab do it's work ......well, let's just say it doesn't work because the leaves are too high.
So Joel and I decided to burn off some of the leaves like we did in the Fall. I raked most of the leaves away from the fence line where they tend to accumulate and Joel used the leaf blower to create a more organized pile. We obtained the required local burn permit (by internet) and proceeded to light the very large pile of extremely dry leaves on fire. Wow. Did they ever burn fast!
See how nice the very tall pile of leaves burned off? There are hardly any leaves left to clean up. Um, yea. That's very nice, except for one thing.
Do you see it now? The problem? The mistake we made? Yup! We totally burned the lower half of a pressure treated 4"x4" completely off. That used to be a really sturdy part of our fencing. Now it's an hour's worth of work awaiting us this next week as we do some repairs. Oops! We were laughing out butts off when we saw this. Talk about feeling stupid......I believe there is nothing more to say here.
Moving on......oh, yes. There's more. Now, I'll bring you up to the present. Earlier today we went outside and jumped in our trusty Polaris, opened the gate to the boy's pasture and drove inside. We dropped off some much needed hay in their feeder and drove over to the side of the pasture under the trees. After about 20 minutes of picking up downed twigs and branches we moved further into the pasture. As I was driving past the fence, I gasped and immediately stopped the Polaris.
Can you see it? What in the world could have caused our sturdy wire fencing to be "eaten thru" like that? Here's a close up of the damage.
As Joel and I scratched our heads trying to figure out what kind of animal could reach 3 feet off the ground and then paw it's way through a heavy duty fence like that, I was getting a wee bit concerned. What kind of critter did we have stalking our farm? And what was it after? Should we set up a field camera to try and capture an image of the culprit? Gulp.
We slowly drove the remaining perimeter of the boy's pasture, checking to see if "the critter" had tried to get into the pasture any where else. And wouldn't you know it, just opposite where we had discovered the first wire damage was another smaller area damaged in the same way. Now we were getting kinda creeped out. We continued to drive up the hill and exited the pasture while we discussed what we needed to do next.
As we pulled up near the house, it suddenly hit us. Don't you dare laugh at us. Stop it. I can tell you're already grinning. Um, uh, we....sorta....kinda did the damage ourselves. How? You ask? Ummm....this is how....
This is the unused grape arbor.....upon which Joel handily screwed some leftover 1" foam insulation. And where he posts our sticky-backed targets for us to use as......wait for it......gun practice.
Yup, see all the holes? Of course the bullets go right through the targets, the insulation and penetrate whatever is beyond. But it made total sense when he erected this simple fix for our target practice. The woods below the target belong to us, and we feel secure that there are no people, homes, or animals that will be injured by the trajectory of the bullets. Who knew we'd hit the danged fence so many times we destroyed it?
So, I guess we're going to have to find another "safe" place to do our target practicing. Looks like we'll be removing the foam board from the arbor and repairing fence this week as well as replacing the 4"x4" from our burned leaves. Lessons learned.
Now you know how foolish we felt this afternoon.....but I hope you joined us in laughter as we relived our mistakes of the last week. And you can start your work week feeling infinitely smarter than we, your friends,
Debbie & Joel
