Fencing at Sparrowhawk Farm: 17-09-2013

Today we continued with a task that has been ongoing for a while now - fencing at Sparrowhawk Farm. Ten NCVs (including two new members, Sue and Mike) walked up the hill to join Paul and his van load of tools near the farm at 10am sharp. Once the equipment was all in place we split into two teams and got to work.

Team A used the straining equipment to pull the wire fencing into place on the stretch of posts inserted last time. They also added a strand of barbed wire to the top of the fence and some rails to join the end to the gate post. This was a highly skilled job and also needed careful handling of the barbed wire if they wanted to finish the day without a nasty injury. 

Sue and John hunker down after being 

sent into the corner for being naughty.

Wire fencing all strained into place and 

barbed strand added without any blood loss.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the field, Team B started erecting a post and rail fence. This required a lot of careful measuring to decide where the post holes would need to be. We eagerly started to dig holes and then realised that we were getting too far ahead of ourselves. Remember your fencing training day folks - you put the first and last post in place first  to get the line in THEN decide where the others go and insert them ONE AT A TIME. Hmmm. One of the holes we'd already dug turned out to be OK but the other was too far to the left so had to be re-done. We won't make that mistake again.

Digging the holes was far from easy. As usual at Sparrowhawk there were lots and lots of pieces of rock just where we had to dig. This meant that we only managed to get three posts in by lunchtime (it would have been four but one had to be taken out as it was far too wobbly). Luckily Dave B. was in our team and, thanks to his very beady eye and high standards the three posts were inserted in a straight(ish) line.

A tiny frog decided to sit on Hannah's boot 

at lunchtime. He sat patiently, awaiting crumbs.

Paul does his usual regal lunchtime lounging pose whilst his loyal subjects 

sit and await his signal that they can start eating.

The weather remained dry until we finished lunch and then the rain started. In spite of the resulting quagmire we managed to get six more posts in place, and added two of the three rails, by 3:30pm. 

Dean decides to do the difficult job of 

watching everyone else dig the holes. 

(Only kidding - he was stone collector in chief.)

Mike tries to squash his head in the giant tweezers.

However, it was when we started to nail on the rails that we found standards had slipped somewhat after lunch. There was a call for "a bit of packing" to be added to one post in order to ensure the nail wasn't being hammered into thin air. Then we realised that one rail would need to take a 30 degree turn - not even a lot of packing would bridge the gap if it was to remain straight. 

Everyone gathers at the end of the 

fence to discuss the problem.

We decided to make a feature of the error and go with a definite corner. Mike pointed out that it would allow the nearby oak sapling room to grow without any constraints. In 100 years time passers-by will assume the fence was built around the tree. Mind you - the likelihood that the fence will still be standing in 100 years is highly unlikely. We'll be lucky if it is still there in two weeks time given the wobblyness of some of the posts!

Unfortunately it was a lack of sufficient materials, rather than the weather, that stopped the job 10m short of its end. Yet another day of fencing at Sparrowhawk is needed!

Ros E.