Fences Down and Roads Closed

We took down the rest of the barbed-wire fence along the front of the farm. We have a lot of road frontage! (About 1,100 feet! Which is nearly a quarter of a mile.) And we'd only taken down about a third of it.

This time Mike decided to give up on saving the barbed wire. Which made it go much much more quickly. It was still hauling barbed wire and pulling posts. That's no picnic (in case you were wondering). But cutting the barbed wire (rather than getting all the impossible clips and stays off of it and then rolling the entire strand) was so much faster!

Penny had a performance of her play that day, but Daisy was home for the weekend, so she and I switched off watching the little ones and helping Mike, Jesse and Anders with fencing (defencing?) at the farm. Sadly, that means I wasn't there at the same time as Daisy to take any pictures of her.

We took all the metal to a recycling place, and we gathered up all the metal stakes, but I didn't realize just how many wooden posts were left behind. Mike went back for those on another day, and it was hours (in wind and snow) of work piling wooden posts (and several 200 lb railroad ties) all onto a trailer. Poor man. But ... living his dream, so (shrug).

It's great that we got it all taken down because this very week they have finally started on the road shoulder we have to build out (the entire length of all that fencing) before the county will let us build.

How maddening that particular county requirement has been, how many calls and people we've talked to, how hard to find anyone who would get us a bid much less do the job, how shockingly much money it is costing us (that might have gone into building our home) is a tedious and discouraging story for another day. 

But! It doesn't change the excitement I feel about it finally getting out of the way! There's something oddly thrilling about trying to drive down a road only to find the entire thing closed ... because of you! (Mind you don't tell all the vehicles that have had to [and will continue to need to] detour for a week or so that it's because of us.)

You can see a couple of construction vehicles down there. I didn't even dare to drive along the road myself to see the progress (though I was incredibly tempted!). I'll need Mike with me so I don't feel like I have to answer to anyone. Still, for a thing that feels somewhat criminal for them to have made us do, it feels pretty exciting to see it happening!)