bout to do a little building, and after that will do the same thing, i think.
i really didnt know this guy well when we started the farm.
he is the sort who cuts his grass twice a week, and doesnt need to grow his own food, thank you.
he has a bunch of flowers, automatic watering, roundup once a year whether he needs it or not.

visitors always wonder if the guy objects to my chickens and my straw bales.
but he loves the farm. he gave me a key to access his unmetered water for the first year and a half. elec.
i am sure i froze him out of more than one shower, but he never said boo.

it is a great feeling.
and people love to do it. i get offers aaaaallllllll the time to help at the farm.

it's how it's done.
nice work, my friend.

Cooperate on a project. A shared effort is often successful in more than one way.

to help my handy-but-not-quite-handy-enough spouse?

The fence looks nice.

I bought my first house at the same time I started writing on a freelance basis. The house needed a lot of work, and so did I. So, I started fixing up the place and writing about the projects, doing step by step photos, etc. I started with Family Handyman magazine and worked up from there. Usually what I was doing was the first time I had done that thing. At one point, I was in talks with PBS to do a show on home repair, but a different guy with a beard got the gig. Bob Villa did a great job, and I switched to writing about computers in the mid 1980s. Life's funny.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.

The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors?
Isn't it where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!"

I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well.

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

somehow.

I had to buy a come-along for this project. I'll probably be loaning it to neighbors for years. Tension isn't always a bad thing.

Too many slopes, roots, uneven surfaces, etc. Wish I had the skills and resources to do it myself! Hope your doggies have fun in your new fenced-in yard!

Rocks, roots and all. I bought a big chisel end spud bar for that. The bid from the local fence company was 300% over materials costs. I had maybe 15 hours in the project, and my neighbor had half that. Well worth it. Materials were about $1000. Tools I didn't have were maybe $100. No-brained. I'm sore, but we have a fence.