Fence posts

[ASRG]

I bought a few fence posts the other day at my local Co-op. $5/post for 6 foot 4 inch.
One year in the early nineties you couldn't find any posts. I cut a bunch of poplars posts, soaked them in Bluestone (barrel) and most of them are stll pretty solid. A year later I bought a bunch of big posts off a truck from Prince Albert and they all rotted off within about ten years! They were supposedly "pressure treated" but were kind of dark brown instead of green penta treated! They were pretty cheap (I think I bought the whole load for $2.20/post). I peddled a lot of them around to the neighbors.....I wasn't the most popular guy for a few years!

I used to buy used grader blades for 50 cents and they make good posts. I just wired the barbed wire to them with telephone wire (My Dad bought rolls and rolls when the telephone cos. went underground). Also he bought a lot of cross members and they made pretty fair braces.

[ag-boy]

yes this is how we got started those days learn to do by doing.
like the 4-H motto .
interesting reading by an oldtimer from an oldtimer. look forward to find your place up there in the north
hope I doint get off the dirt road and hit one of your steel post with my model aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[ALLFARMER]

Ya in the old days guys used to clean the engine
oil filter on their tractor to avoid buying a new
one. Lol

Now some big operators put 400 hours on a new
combine and never change oil.

Darn near got 2 of my new quarters fenced. Got
the cattle on them already. Grass in over the
cows heads. My other pastures very skimpy, no
rain and heat sure shuts the grass down. Been
using a trac hoe to trench the perimeter an use
the muck....once it dries out to level into a
road/fence line. Massive beaver dam just got cut
off of their water supply

[gaucho]

Sounds really sustainable Allfarmer....Have you ever wondered why the environment might be changing or getting drier your way.... get rid of more trees and you might really see how drought prone that are up there is

[smcgrath76]

AF - I am interested in your area. What
type of grass is growing in your fried off
quarters? We found last week in the heat,
we could watch ours grow daily. Generally
with a good layer of litter it takes a
long time to dry out our pastures.

[ALLFARMER]

SMC excluding the last couple days we have
had LESS than a half inch of rain since spring.
The 1/2 section the cows were on so far is 80%
unseeded....native grass. This land was v cut,
piled and piles burned. My plan is to focus on
cutting and piling the 3 quarters I just bought and
let the half section's roots and stumps rot for
aprox 8 years (cattle eat leaves off tree regrowth)
then after these years go in with a heavy disk
and mulch the nearly rotted wood material.
Saves me plowing, 2 root pickings and a root
piler expense, also I don't plow under any
organic matter this way. I have a guy wanting to
come with a feller buncher and cut the birch for
sale with his self loader log truck...to city
firewood guys.

[ALLFARMER]

Gaucho - how is it you guys were very dry 3 to 5
years ago but now are getting rain? You been
planting allot of trees?? Since this county is the
only one dried our guess we won't see the
drought payment you guys got.

[grassfarmer]

There is a place at Nordegg for sale Allfarmer - about
50% more annual precip than your long term average.
101,000 acres and enough trees you'd never run out
of things to push over. Asking $2.3 million.

[gaucho]

Allfarmer we have quarters that have anywhere from 0% bush to 50% Bush... when it rains they all produce grass... when its dry the ones with 50% bush produce more than the ones that are 100% open. Trees stop wind, hold more snow, shade areas and offer browse for livestock... We have a 1/2 section that is wide open and every year we get caught with cattle grazing stockpiled grass with a a minus 30 storm and 50 km winds hit... Its a good reminder of how short sighted the guy that had the land before us was.... how may guys on his blog drag around wind breaks....yet you love burning diesel and trees... I here trees don't make you money, yet everyone knows how they modify the environment... Just like the Coffee..."stupid to the last tree"

[burnt]

Allfarmer, how many frost free days do you have there?