The Culprit Identified

A couple of days ago, the story about the electric fence dangers and handy tips, was not what I had planned to write. Somehow, the story took a direction of its own and you heard all about the all the ups and downs of using electric fencing. Then we had the first snowfall of the season and the story for the next day revolved about all that entails, now I think it is time to get back to the original story that I had planned to write…

The story begins with the small, solar powered electric fence unit attached to the barn across the river. Since it is on the acreage on the other side from our power grid, there are no electric services on that side of the river, that is why we use solar power to heat up the fences where they are needed. Anyway, this one unit charges the fences in this area.

The single fence wire takes the electricity around the barn to the other side where we install the temporary fences. One fence goes around the secondary barnyard and another for the temporary fences to keep the cows out of the hay fields or the cows/calves inside the nursery fields. Even with the fence only doing cursory duty around the barn itself this time of year, we still check to make sure there is a current running through by using the grass spear on the fence trick I had talked about a couple of days ago. This test showed the sucker was as dead as a door nail. I proved it to myself by then grabbing the fence with my bare hands. This was not a dangerous or stupid act, it was a very gloomy day and if there would have been any charge at all it would have been minimal (most likely not to cause an involuntary scream or anything). I knew that I needed to find the problem of dead fence before worrying about getting the two wire strands up around the secondary barnyard or across the neck of the field to where it matches the permanent boundary fencing.

Walking around the barn to the backside, I quickly found the problem. Blackberries had en-snarled the electrified wire and wove tendrils under the metal siding. The wire was pulled from the insulators toward the barn where it touched the siding in several spots. I had these very bushes cut down during the early summer but the growth went into overdrive and was much worse that before. Since it is so close to the cement wall, the only way to get them removed was slashing the stems at the roots and pulling the long, barbed, octopus like, vines that held fast to the barn. I did finally get the last of the vines removed, but with all the scratches and embedded thorns in my arms, legs and hands, I think the blackberries won this round of battle. Once again,  the power has been restored around the barn.

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