Putting the Horse Before the Fence(aka Putting the Cart Before the Horse)

It would make sense to fence your pasture before you get a horse, but sometimes I jump the gun a little...  We bought a horse last week and we are building fence next month.  So I had to do some finagling (wasn't sure that was a real word, but it showed up on spell check!) and we borrowed a trailer and arranged for our horse to stay at my father-in-laws.  After trying two trailers in hopes that one of them had the electrical plug that matched our pickup and finally buying an adapter we now have  a horse!

It's so nice to have a horse around again!  We went out and brushed him today and led him around to let him graze(he's in a corral for now).  The girls (5yrs and 3yrs old) learned a lot about reading a horse's body language and how to get out of the way and also how to approach.  By the time we left both girls were talking to the horse, whose name is Tonto, each time they would approach him.  They would also put a hand on him before they brushed him so they wouldn't surprise him.  He was a little nervous, but he's in a new place and  I think he's going to be a great horse for us.  He seems like he's very sensible and well trained.  I'm so excited to have my kids grow up with a horse! 
Finding Fencing Supplies on a Budget
A few months ago I had driven past a house where they were replacing fence rails and I had thought about stopping to see what they were going to do with the old ones (which aren't really that old and are in great shape!).  Well we drove past there on our way  home yesterday and they still had the rails sitting out so I decided to stop and ask.  Turns out they were going to throw them away and were happy to have me take them away, so I have a nice big pile of fence rails to build a corral with! They still have a few more left to take down and they said I can have those too.  They don't even have nail holes in them as they were used in a fence that had rocks inside wire as a post so they rails were just set inside of the rocks as it was filled up.

This year we will be fencing part of our property as we can't afford to do all of it yet.  But I found an Electric Fence Energizer, grounding rod and insulators on craigslist. So we are going to fence another part with electric fence. I had bought some lightweight t-posts last fall (again on craigslist) to use in the garden but I'm going to use them to put up electric fence instead.  We don't have much pasture and I'm determined to not have it grazed down.  So I'm also going to talk to a couple of close neighbors about possibly being able to graze Tonto on their unused pasture areas.  We have a couple of houses close to us that have approximately 1 acre fenced but the people don' t have livestock and the pastures get quite overgrown.  The one place had a LOT of Leafy Spurge last year too so maybe we could put our goats in there too.  Maybe it will benefit both of us. Did I mention we are getting goats back?  No?  Well, I'll go over that in one of my next couple of posts!  I will also cover some of the basics of fencing.  Once my dad tells me what they are, lol!


Thanks for stopping by!  I'd love to hear about any projects you have in mind or that you are starting.  Also I would appreciate any fencing tips or how to fence without breaking the bank.

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