Column by Hal Walter
Rural Life – December 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHEN IT COMES TO FENCING, there are two standing jokes in the West.
One is about a greenhorn who can’t figure out who “Bob Wahrr” is. The other is about the urban refugee who calls a rancher to complain about the cows grazing his unfenced property.
Recently my friend Patrick was dealt the punchline on both. His property had become overrun with cows of unknown ownership due to a section of downed fence that had been obliterated by a flashflood during the previous summer.
Patrick participates in a sport known as cyclocross, second only to pack-burro racing in its notoriety, or lack thereof. It’s like motorcross without the internal combustion, and participants are often seen jumping hay bales and running up trails with perfectly ridable bikes slung over their shoulders. Patrick often confuses local residents by practicing cyclocross in the creek-bottom meadow along the Brush Hollow Road where he lives. He had been in no hurry to fix his fence until 23 cows and calves — and their bull — took up residence in this meadow on his cyclocross course.
At first thought it seemed to me that trails greased with slippery green ooze and a bull with twisted horns and testicles the size of cantaloupes might lend an air of gnarliness to cyclocross practice. But Patrick was not amused by the rodeo atmosphere, and called a local ne’er-do-well who gave an estimate of $50 for the half-day he figured it would take to fix the fence, and then never showed up.
Several days later, I had grown quite weary of stories of cows, cowpies, flies, AWOL fence-fixers, buried barbed wire, unveiled threats and menaces to bovines, and calls to the usual unhelpful authorities. So I instructed Patrick to make the purchase of wire, posts, stays and clips, then loaded up my saddle donkey, Billy Sundae, and all of my fencing tools, and went on over to survey the cyclocross course turned feedlot.
It was said later that Billy knew more about rounding up cattle than both Patrick and myself combined, something I became keenly aware of after Billy took me straight up the near-vertical side of the washed-out arroyo in pursuit of a calf. Patrick on his mountain bike kept them penned in on one side and Billy pushed them off the property, and then a good ways down the road.
That was the easy and fun part. Then we had to figure out how to keep the critters out. There was a good corner on one side of the wash, and the fence was still standing on the other side. So it was easy enough, with Patrick’s help, to splice to the far side, pull four strands from the corner, pound in new posts, clip the wire to them and twist in some stays.
When the new wire was strung, I declined offers of the $50 and microbrew, and left for home filled with the joy of a neighborly gesture and thinking about the fencing chores I needed to attend to around my own place, where cows coming in were less of an issue than burros getting out.
Besides, the keyboard as of late had become more unwieldy than a fence-post driver, had inflicted more tension than a wire stretcher. Outside work seemed the proper remedy.
A fence is only as good as its weakest link, and the weak link at my rancho is a decorative split-rail cedar fence around the main compound.
Over the years, my burros have reduced this fence to splinters, usually breaking it down at the most inopportune times, like during a spring blizzard, while I’m away, or right when I’ve arrived home after an exhausting trip. I always “fix” this fence, but never permanently.
A permanent solution to the problem would not involve split cedar at all. I did research on the subject, consulting the Bureau of Land Management’s fencing handbook. I also began taking an informal eyeball survey of fencing techniques on my trips hither and yonder.
In order to see how not to do it cheaply, I paid particular attention to the fence on a local dude ranch. Thus, I was quickly able to rule out jury-rigged corners made from shoddily wired-together T-posts, and two-strands of wire draped loosely like Christmas-tree garlands between old juniper posts.
In order to see how not to do it at extreme expense, I looked at the fences built by the state and paid for by taxpayers. Thus I was able to rule out bolted angle-iron corners set in concrete, and five-strand fences with double stays between steel T-posts.
Somewhere in between was the answer, but I knew deep in my soul that the key to a decent fence is solid corners. Standard wood corners with four strands of wire would probably do the trick.
The best fence I ever owned was a stoutly cornered five-strander built by Bernie Abrahams around the half-acre pasture on the property I used to own in Wetmore. I traded Bernie a mountain bike for the work. Bernie is a master at building fence; he takes his time and pays attention to details. When he’s done, even small birds and insects can have difficulty passing through. Bernie is also a chef of endless talent.
I know I’ll never possess Bernie’s keenness for detail when it comes to fencing or cooking, so I adjusted my expectations just like I do every night at dinnertime, and started digging. After all, I don’t stop writing essays just because Jim Harrison has been known to put ink to paper.
IT WOULD TAKE six 2-foot holes to plant two corners, the equivalent of digging to China on this hardscrabble acreage. I decided upon 6×6 beams for the actual corner posts, braced with 3-inch round landscape timbers.
I consulted local professional fence-builder Randy Rusk about making corners. He explained the tension mechanism of twisting wire diagonally from the corner to the brace posts, something I never fully understood. He said it was a common mistake for fence-builders to run wires from the top and bottom of each post in a corner, forming an X. The real trick, he explained, is to run the wire from the bottom of the corner up and toward the brace post in the direction you need to pull the fence wire.
This tension is actually what keeps the corner braced.
I went home and quickly noted that all the corners on my property, built by a previous owner, had either Xs or wires twisted down from the corner to the brace post. I thought perhaps this is the feng shuistic reason that nothing — the fence notwithstanding — seems to be wired any too tightly on the Walter Ranch.
I dug the holes with a shovel. I planted the posts and braced them together with the timbers, which I balanced by means of a level, and lodged into place by means of metal L braces. I ran a loop of smooth wire from the bottom of the corner to the top of each brace, stapled them in place and twisted them tight with a stick.
At last it was time. It was late on a golden fall afternoon when I wrestled the roll of “Bob Wahrr” to my new corner. With a fence stretcher I pulled the wire tight. At the moment the wire reached its critical tension, I felt the deep sense of satisfaction that no free-range cow or fence-shattering jackass could ever knock down.
Hal Walter lives, writes and mends fence in the Wet Mountains near Westcliffe.
