Yesterday, between raindrops, I finally finished getting a fence around the house. It's not the final permanent fence, just a temporary barrier.
Today, under a glorious winter sun, I started fencing a new pasture for the horses. thirty-eight T-posts driven. Almost exactly an acre enclosed.
At the far north end of the field there is this really thick, really tall grass. I mean really tall - seven feet or more in places. (That is my post driver on top of a six foot T-post in the photo.) And thick - really thick! I don't know what kind of grass it is, maybe a type of sawgrass. But it will scratch you up! And down.
Looking at this grass I couldn't see over, that I could barely walk through, I thought of how the first white settlers must have felt looking at grasses on the Great Plains. I had a couple hundred feet to get through, not a thousand miles.
Still I thought this is nuts. a machete won't cut this stuff. I know, I tried. I needed a way to make a path, to flatten this stuff down.
Enter "Mongo." Named for Alex Karas's character in Blazing Saddles, Mongo is my 1999 Dodge Ram pick up. "Mongo good truck. Mongo tuff truck."
It's a good thing 'cause we hit some rough stuff plowing through that grass. Most of it was pretty easy going. Until we hit the rocks I couldn't see. I scraped the bottom over one big one then buried the nose against two more. But Mongo's four-wheel drive got us out. When we were done I had a mashed down path to follow to put in fence posts.
Tomorrow I string the wire and then let the horses in. For now I'm tired and sore.
No rain today. Sunny and breezy.
NOW: Sunny, warm, no rain. I realized the Christmas winds are blowing, just much more gently than in other years. Deja vu all over again: Worked on the new yard gate today. We'll be fencing a new pasture sometime in the next week.
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