My fence has been threatening to fall down, so now that the weather has decided to cooperate I’ve started to take it down, with the idea of putting up a new one. This last Saturday was supposed to be a day for significant progress on that project.
Unfortunately I was wrong. The people who put up the previous fence did use concrete to set some of the posts. Their piles didn’t go very deep, though, so they weren’t that hard to get out. Except the last one. I have a hard time believing it was done by the same people. It was done…well, right. Unfortunately, it was also done when the nearby tree was much, much smaller. With all the roots through that area, I had a hard time digging around it deep enough to get it out. With just a shovel, a two-foot metal pry-bar, and some scrap 2x4s for leverage I not only didn’t make much progress, I broke two 2x4s.
Once again, I finally gave up and went to see my neighbor, hoping he had a sledgehammer. Even better, he had a sledgehammer and a 5-foot steel 20# pry-bar. The thing felt like it weighed as much as I do. Between the two tools I was able to break up most of the concrete and remove it. There’s still a bit that I just won’t be getting out unless I dig the hole wider, and I’m not going to do that. It’ll just have to serve as filler for the next post hole.
It took me six hours of work to get to the point that there is nothing left of the old fence, and at least two hours of it was spent on that doggone chunk of concrete. I’d hoped to have at least some of the new posts up by now. I guess that’ll have to wait until next weekend. Not that we have a lot of time then, but we’ll see how it goes. The next thing to look forward to is digging eight holes with a clam-shell digger. Yeah, I know. I get to have all the fun!
Actually, the quasi-fun part comes later. Once the posts are up I’ll probably enjoy running the cross-beams and putting up the fence boards. It’s not so demanding, and fairly repetitive. I could listen to a lot of audio-book during a project like that.
It is great to have a life so good that we get to have so much to gripe about.
I can only imagine Facebook posts from 150 years ago:
“My oxen and I cleared two acres of land today. All them trees’ll make good firewood. Not sure what to do with the rocks, but I piled ’em up in case I need a new chimney. Tomorrow I’ll plant the entire field with barley, if it don’t rain. Taters and onions for supper.”
Ezra Thompson, Amos Crandall and 3 others like this post.