Fences

We’ve all seen the crumbling stone walls almost hidden now in deep woods–particularly in New England and the Hudson Valley. Stone fences that date back 100-200 or more years. When I first moved to the North Country, there were still about a half dozen small dairy farms strung along the eight miles of my road, plus a few heifer and beef operations. Every spring, fences were mended. Often, one neighbor purchased necessary supplies and the other did the work.

Nowadays, fencing seems mostly superfluous, unless it’s meant to keep people off one’s land, rather than cattle in.

In recent weeks, my husband Bill and I (mostly Bill, with me providing a lot of encouragement and gofer-ing) have been building pasture fence for our sheep. We kept laughing as we struggled over rough terrain in snow and rain storms, determined to get the sheep onto greener grass…and keep them there.

Here’s our victory picture, taken at the rather comlex corner Bill engineered on top of rock at the northeast corner of the pasture:

Note my bulging slicker–pockets packed with gloves, extra hat, tissues–and I think I had three pairs of pants on because I’d already stored our winter clothes. By the way, Bill is actually sitting atop corner post–not on my shoulders.

Here he is in front of the great corner engineering feat (stone walls seem easier in comparison):

And here are the sheep in their new pasture:

So, while we were fencing, I kept thinking “good fences make good neighbors” and I remembered this comes from a Robert Frost poem. I tracked it down and discovered he found the whole fencing thing kind of odd once there were no animals to contain. I probably read this poem years ago but had pretty much forgotten it. In case you forgot it, too, the poem is called Mending Wall and if you’d like to read it here’s the link to the whole poem.

Tags: fences, Mending Wall, Robert Frost