When A Post Gets Broken
During our snowy weather stint and our fence mess with an unknown vehicle skidding off the road and leaving without clueing us in on the damage, we propped the fence back into place in a temporary fix. While this temporary is holding the broken power pole turned post and three metal t-posts into a very crooked expanse, it has been holding well and the electric wire that runs on the inside is keeping our show barn critters from attempting any breakouts. Mike has been contemplating the best way to repair the cobbled patch.
While thinking about the fence repairs, the other issue of logging the trees at the lower end of this same field came up. The tall firs in this area are not doing well and we had been planning on taking some or all of them out so we could replant the area. Two of the trees are already showing damage with the top halves of their trees dead and we are worried that will spread to the neighboring patch. Logging the trees will be touchy because the area is bordered by power lines on one side and the county road on the other. Trucking the logs out once they are felled are another matter altogether.
In years past when we thinned this patch, we had the logs loaded onto trucks and they took a circuitous route through the pastures on our property, through a gate made in the fencing, across the neighbors pasture and down his private rocked road to the county road. The shipping could only be done in August or September to assure that the wet pasture swampy areas were completely dry and solid. But that was nearly 30 years ago and the property is no longer controlled by the neighbor as it had been in the past. The route through their pasture area has grown into wild tangles of brush patches and the rock road disappeared into the earth a decade or two ago with whip-like seedlings choking off the path. Loaded trucks could come through our pasture and into our driveway area but the end of the driveway is on a rounded corner and a loaded truck would not be able to navigate with enough space to keep front wheels and back wheels from slipping into the deep trenches on all sides of the driveway and road.
Our current thought (Mike’s actually) is to finish tearing out the breached area of the fence that was destroyed by the unknown assailant and turn it into a temporary driveway for the shipping of logs. By doing so, we would be able to get the patch logged and hauled within the next couple of months instead of waiting for the restrictions of summertime due to fire danger and lower prices for logs.
This plan is still only in the pondering stage but it does keep reminding me of when one door closes another one opens but I am still not happy about the ditch driver who left us high and dry about the original problem that he/she/it caused.