Frugal fencing

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Most of our fences have been built very cheaply. Once when Cale was on a bridge job, they were replacing interstate fence, and he was able to get large wooden post for free, and the woven wire, and to buy the long metal stakes for $1 each. Every night he would haul some home on his way form work. another good source of post is telephone/electric poles. Whenever they change these out, he is usually able to get them for free. Once we bought large unsplit locust post for $3 each, they are about 12 in diameter and should last a long time.

A corral we built "western" style. Using telephone poles and small poplar logs cut from our woods. We jsut nailed them whole to the posts, they are about 20 feet long and hit 3 posts. This fence looks really good.

We also have another section done with poplar boards that we painted with old oil. It is our winter pasture. It has been up for about 8 years and still looks good. We cut these ourselves, saving a lot of money.

We are building a short divider fence right now. Posts are telephone poles, and we are going to buy some "outs" from a guy our neighbor knows. they are 1/8 of an inch different in thickness than they should be, so we can get them for about $1 each. 10 feet long, 6 inches wide and 1 1/4" to 1 3/16" thick. But that is fine for fencing. We have a planer, but it isn't necessary to be too particular for fencing.

So we have saved a lot of money over the years. We have 3 seperate sections of fence, totaling about 6 acres fenced in, and our total costs has been less that $400. Cale dug the fence posts holes by hand and did all of the work himself.

-- Melissa in SE Ohio (me@home.net), April 09, 2002

Answers

Duh!!! I forgot the main point of the thread!!! Tell us your frugal fencing tips...

-- Melissa in SE Ohio (me@home.net), April 09, 2002.

Since nearly all of the firefighters have an off-duty job, we kind of hit it lucky - a couple of them started a fence company, and they bring us leftover pickets from their stockade fence jobs! They have also brought us some nice chain link, five foot, six foot and even some eight foot tall! (If you have a good small fence company in your area, you might check on this - they just don't have a good place to store leftovers sometimes!) We are hoarding it to build a good fence around our entire lot (2 1/2 ac.) so we don't have to worry so much about our wildlife "visitors" that like to eat the garden AND the chickens!

Oh, and the telephone poles - we haven't used them for fencing (yet), but we have been making garden beds with them, and are planning on building a fort for the boys using them as corner posts, and also probably when we build the new barn, the corners will be...yep! Those things are wonderful! After the ice storm, if anyone in Oklahoma is interested, O G & E took all the poles they have had to replace to one location - Red Rock, OK - just north of Stillwater, I think. They are free, just go and get them! I'm sure there are thousands of them!

Well, better go, I'm off running with kid stuff, and we're working on a bigger chicken house in one end of the barn today, and have to put up a good FENCE to keep out that fox Lance saw last night! (we have lots of them around here). Have a good day!

-- Christine in OK (cljford@mmcable.com), April 09, 2002.


For a truly indestructable fence, go to your county shop and ask for old used mole boards. They are the replacable part from grader blades. It is amazing how many they actually use. They even have bolt holes at the proper spacing to run the wire through.

-- Tis I (really_tis_i@yahoo.com), April 09, 2002.

Our paddock fencing was about as cheap as we could get. We purchased 4-5" wide, 7-8 foot long cedar posts from our neighbor for a buck a piece. Then we tore down the old wooden silo that "used to be" attached to the barn. Reused nails that we had and voila...a very, very inexpensive fence!

-- Lisa in WI (llehman16nospam@hotmail.com), April 09, 2002.

For a garden fence to keep deer out we have a unique construction. We use 1 1/2 inch pvc pipe on the corners with y elboys to create a sturdy corner post. Than we use 1 inch pvc for in line posts. Drill holes every 6 inches for the electric fence wire and string the wire through. We have a 4 volt 60 amp solar charger that hits harder than a 12 volt direct current charger. Add a gate and a grounding rod and Walla !--No deer in the garden except my dear wife !

-- Joel Rosen (JoelnBecky@webtv.net), April 10, 2002.


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