We Put This Project Off for 4 YEARS & Completed it in 3 DAYS I Fencing our Fruit Trees

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This week, we took a good look at the orchard and noticed several big problems. What started out as simple maintenance escalated into a big project including fencing the entire orchard!

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There is one area on our property we have scarcely touched in the last 4 years and that is the orchard we basically planted trees and haven’t done much else so it’s severely neglected and barely staying alive this week that all changed when I took a walk past the

Orchard and decided enough was enough never [Applause] mind [Applause] The pasture where the orchard is it never gets mowed because normally for the rest of our property we rotate the cows all around it but for the orchard we do not let the cows into the space so the pasture has grown up a whole bunch

And I’m I want to mow that down and in order to do that I need to take off the cages from around the trees we have those there for deer protection I realized something unfortunate so I mentioned before that we don’t let the cows in here how we keep them out is two

Strands of electric but the electric is usually never on I think when cam does it and I’m seeing some Cow Patties in here and I had one tree that was completely broken and one tree that has damage so so that’s really really a bummer I’ve talked about this for years

That I want to put up a fence around here just like the way it is with homesteading of so many projects on the list it’s hard to prioritize what you want to do I think this is moving up on our priority list of what needs to be

Done if I’m going to save these trees from getting ruined by the cows and the deer and everything else my original plan was just SM this with a lawnmower but Cam said it would probably ruin our lawnmower so I have never used the brush hog on our tractor

Before so cam taught me how this morning it seems simple enough okay I’m going to teach Becky how to run the she knows how to run the tractor I’m going to teach her how to safely operate the brush hog see how it kind of goes halfway that’s

Not on but it’s it’s like prepping to be on so then push it one more time that’s on okay wish me luck I’m going to try it right now I haven’t gotten all of the cages off but I do want to try and get some of this mowing done before it gets [Applause]

Dark that ended up being a lot more fun than I thought it would be and I’m super glad that cam told me to use the brush hog cuz it was like 10 times faster than using a mower I’ll just use the mower for getting the detail work around the

Trees I’m wrapping up for the night just because I can’t see where some of these little trees are and I don’t want to run over them so we’re going to call it quits for now I’ll go in and then we’ll pick back up on this in the morning I’m

Feeling a little bit tired this morning because we end up staying up late last night to make some Cajun Cow Pei soup a couple days prior I had made some turkey stock with the leftover turkey and turkey carcass that we had from Thanksgiving so we decided to use that

Turkey stock for our cajun cowy soup and we made it last night and we ate it for dinner it was a late dinner as well and now my kitchen is a mess so I’m going to work on cleaning up this morning I’ve got some sourdough going in the oven and

Then I’m going to put the pot of CPI soup back on because we didn’t can it last night we just put it all together and and then this morning I’m going to pressure can some of that and then I’ll probably do another batch this afternoon need to put in the kale oh

Shoot there’s a bay leaf in there somewhere I finished the canning and everything that I had going on inside and it’s a little later than I expected it to be but it actually worked out okay because orally I had plann on finishing Mowing and doing the mulching today but

I do not have a way to hook up a trailer to haul mulch down to our Orchard because our side by side is in the shop it’s been there for like 3 months and our truck is also in the shop today we’ll have the truck back tomorrow so

We’ll get to the mulch then I think that’s probably a better big like family project anyway and I’m just going to finish this mowing solo while rigs is taking a nap right now and I’m driving down there there instead of walking so that I can come back super fast if I

Need to when I was talking about cars in the shop I just realized my car is also in the shop this is a rental car because it had hail damage so all of our cars are currently at the shop right now it’s fun I still have some cages around the

Trees that I need to remove so I’m going to do that right now several of these trees have string on them because I’m trying to train the branches to grow a certain way and I need to take that string off right now so I can take off these trellises I

Forgot to grab a knife at the house but luckily inside our tractor I found a razor that I think is going to work instead Oh yay Works while I’m working on taking down the teos and taking out these cages I want to tell you about something that I have been asked about

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Recommend bogs I will leave a link to their website in the video description and I also have a coupon code for you guys taking off all those cages from around the trees took me a lot longer than I thought it would it is 5:00 right

Now and the sun has just set so I’m going to see how much mowing I can get done right now before it gets dark hopefully I’ll be able to finish at least what I need to do with the tractor and then tomorrow I’ll come out here with the smaller Mower and get around

Each of the trees The kids are running outside to grab a cabbage for Dinner the trashes so we’re serving up some sweet potatoes from our garden a Col SLA the Cabbage carrots and onions from the garden and apples that we locally Source from a friend uh and then and pasture raised pork chops from our place of course so it’s day three of

Trying to fix up our Orchard I am still on the first step I’m still mowing with our tractor and the brush hog but I’m going to be finishing up today I came out a lot earlier today than any of the other days so that I could actually finish this I brought reinforcements

With me today Noel is helping to watch rigs so that I do not have to wait until his nap time to get down here do you like the breeze does that feel good they’re all warm warm it’s nice and bright out here so I’m actually going to

Be able to see where I’m mowing today so that’ll be good so I can get a little bit closer to the trees and then looks like I don’t have very much Left good job babysitter he’s out so yay I’m finally done with the mowing part of this project my original plan today was to be working on some of the mulch unfortunately our truck is still in the shop still getting fixed I did have some inspiration this morning I texted Cam

And I was like hey can you take off half of Thursday and Friday and he texted me back and he was like I love that idea and then he called me and it was like what’s going on and I was like I really want to finish up the fence for the

Orchard let’s just knock it out we’ve put it off for four years we could probably finish it in like two days I am going to Mark out where I want the corners of the fence to be it’s the orchard was the first thing that I put

On our property and I made the orchard in these nice straight lines but I never thought about fencing it and how that was going to lay out so if I fence one end of the orchard it almost hits up to where our road is and we drive so I’m

Going to have to figure that out now this way yes okay it’s good I can’t this morning I came out here to measure the sides of the fence so I could get an idea of how much fencing we would need and now Cam’s back here and we are trying to figure out

Making it actually Square making it square and making it parallel with my fruit trees which adds another element to that the reason I was using those yellow storage tote Lids is because of their visibility for when I would view this area from above I was using my

Drone to look down to see kind of where I wanted the fencing to go and just get an idea of it and then when cam came we put in rebar and actually measured everything out we spent probably an hour and a half trying to measure out all the

Sides we measured diagonally and got that measurement as well we got it as close as we could get it but it still seemed kind of off so I took the Drone up again to look at it and it was more crooked than when I had just sort of guesstimated where the fencing was

Supposed to go finally we figured out why it was crooked and why our measurements weren’t working and that was because we were taking the measuring tape and just placing on the ground on the slope this particular part of our land has a pretty significant slope so it was affecting our distances if we

Would have measured that horizontally it would have been a lot more accurate we had spent so much time trying to make it all straight and stuff and honestly in the end we just ended up taking a a picture from above and adjusting a little bit based on that so it is not

Perfect but it’s good enough for us oh wow like it was made for that I got an 8ft fence I tend to do this cuz it happened there too but we decided that’s a little too tight so I got to take this back and get a t like an 8 fit

Will fit will allow a tractor to go through but it won’t really let a vehicle and especially a trailer go through you need at least 10 to 12 ft to do that comfortably so I will take this back and get a t Foter okay one down 12 to go great job two down 11 to go 11 to go you got this unless I was looking you should put in you should put in the corner do all the corners and then you can string line from there right you have a good point do the corners

First okay so Becky and I are doing this Orchard we’re having a hard time there you are you have the Orchard and then there’s a road that comes past it like this so there’s this triangle piece that’s kind of wasted if we don’t use it so we’re just trying to decide if we

Follow the tree line in the orchard or if we follow the road and make a irregular fence line I took my drone up so I could kind of see and I took some pictures I think we’re going to go back in and draw on a piece of paper and see

How it looks like that cuz visually like when you drive up our driveway it’s going to look really weird to have it be a perfect rectangle [Applause] [Applause] pretty good since Cam’s here today he’s teaching me how to back up the truck with the trailer I’ve done it maybe once before I feel like it’s an important skill to have just generally if he wasn’t here one day yeah then I could

Know how to do it yep without so wish me luck yeah I’m also you probably noticed I’m also not very good at using the tractor and the scoop yet he was also kind of coaching me on that as well so that I can be a little bit more

Proficient she’s pretty good just it just takes a little bit yeah all right so here we go you need to go out like 12 in and then put the mulch down you can’t put mulch all the way up the tree side just go out

A little bit and then put like a ring of mulch on the outside Okay you guys can turn [Applause] [Applause] yep right when we finished got it [Applause] a fits like a glove we’re just going to use this level that’s okay either that way either that way or this way or whatever so this battery’s almost [Applause] dead there we go [Applause] [Applause] okay go yep okay now that’s going to hold that up enough that that’s now that that’s holding that side up we can level this post cuz you don’t really want it’ll look ugly if it’s following the the slope of the ground yeah so just

Figure out how to kind of put it on there so that it’s level green means go okay so see there’s like there’s a wide range in that I don’t know how much C tress is level here [Applause] but got it lucky stars a line then it should go okay cool now you

Need to see if it’s actually level yeah well I’ll come back down and what if you just look at it it looks really Good the heck is that the pig’s getting shocked so I drilled this one a little higher off center so that this still lines up with that because I had to I had to drill this hole higher than that one so it wouldn’t intersect smart so I only learned that

From trial and error so this one cuz this it doesn’t have to line up there we can just drill that in the center and it’s going to be fine so oh yeah okay that goes through a lot easier why is that one easier it’s just just a

Different piece of w yeah sometimes it’s just different you’re you’re in different parts of the wood oh like the grain you take the steel rebar and put it into the hole and then line it up with this one here and then it holds it and the purpose of

That is just to hold it in line until we kind of squeeze it um with the fence with the tensioners okay the phone level off that much yeah well look look though like if you were level like see that like that’s level okay so you literally

Have to raise it like we’re like less than we’re like a quarter inch so it’s not it’s off but yes but it’s not like so we’re not redoing that right not like end of the world yeah okay fine cool Cruz just grabbed that from the

House so that we could be a little bit more accurate yeah it’s right at that knot it’s good okay [Applause] that’s good rebar goes in yeah that goes in really good Good so I guess I have a tendency to be overly optimistic about how long a project is going to take I thought we could knock this out in a day or two and we probably could if we spent the entire day on it but we have short daylight

Hours right now and then this weekend we had other commitments as well so we were not able to finish the fence but cam was able to come out here after work one night he tightened the little tension things on the H braces I’m just getting these fingertight right now because I’ll

Need to do further adjustments as we stretch the fence Chris just got home from school he’s putting in the rest of the tsts I thought we just had one side left but we have two and then we are going to stretch this fence just me and Cruz and try and figure this out

Ourselves because cam is busy at work so I’ve never done stretching a fence before without Cam and neither has Cruise so it’s going to be fun to see if we can actually get this to work and um get it tight and not hurt ourselves at the same

Time all well I’m holding up over here you can let go we took a little break and went inside now we’re back out and add it again hopefully we’re going to get at least one to two sides up before it gets [Applause] [Applause] Dark yeah the Bottom’s tight but the Top’s not I’m going to go gra that’s how it always is that’s why we use the toost things hi hi we got one side on good yay I’m glad you’re here good are you going to like wrap it

Around a little bit or I like to give myself some slack like cool cool this is really happening we’re doing this long stretch of fence Ing and so cam clipped both ends of these so we can join them together to make the full stretch each

Of the rolls is 100 ft and we need about 150 ft to make it all the way down this fence line take each loose end as long as it’s on the same one and just wrap it so now just hold It a little bit More okay oh I brought flashlights oh thanks right well you just pull it tight and remember we crank it with the now either come hold this or do your thing thereit like five more Cranks okay [Applause] good I usually use a crescent wrench or something to for leverage but I had a chainsaw tool in the back of the truck [Applause] so I need so I need one here now to to keep the gate from ripping it more that

Way cool no I think he knows he’s pretty black [Applause] [Laughter] Rumble okay the fence is done and one of the best parts about actually having a fence rather than just having cages there is that I can access right underneath the trees so I can add mulch whenever it needs more Mulch and I can also fertilize underneath the trees for

Fertilizer we are planning on moving a set of our old retired chickens down here it is quite a ways from our house so what we were planning on doing is having a more stationary Coupe but have it be more self-sufficient and then they will be able to Peck and scratch through

The entire Orchard and one of the reasons why we chose welded wire fencing instead of something else is because I knew that I was going to move chickens down here and we have coyotes we have dogs and all kinds of land Predators so we needed to make sure that the chickens

Were protected if they were going to kind of free range within that area so hopefully we’ll be able to get to that project sometime before another four years go By