Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [52]
One little farmstead, and there is so much to learn. In the odd available moment, I make explorations. On a previous nose-around I discovered several steel cattle panels in the brush, and today I go about extracting them. It’s a sweat-making, itchy task. This early in the year there are no nettles or poison ivy, but the panels are trapped in skeins of wild cucumber and woody twists of grapevine deep within six-foot-tall banks of burdock. Furthermore, a few tenacious staples still hold fast to the posts. Diving in with my fencing pliers, I cut and yank and tug. I have always regarded brute force as an acceptable first option. Eventually I free the first panel. When I drag it out into the open I’m speckled with dirt and duff, and my shirt is so gnarled with burdock burrs it looks as if I’ve been swarmed by a horde of miniature hedgehogs. I dump the panel on the dead grass and burrow in after the next one. Once I get off my lard and rolling, I am a sucker for grunt work, where the most difficult problems are solved by getting a better grip and putting more heave in your ho. While the bones and meat wrassle, the mind is free to sort and ponder.
The project goes well. In just under sixty minutes I have six panels flat on the dead grass of the paddock. Brand-new, these panels tally up around sixteen bucks apiece at Farm & Fleet. I congratulate myself on being self-employed at right around a hundred bucks an hour. Sadly, this fiscal spike is what your statisticians call an “outlier” and is unlikely to skew long-term results.
With the panels at hand, I set about fashioning the pen. In the corner I have chosen, several panels are still upright and attached to relatively sturdy posts. A twist of wire here, a staple driven there, and they’re pig-worthy. In another spot a gaping hole has been torn in the panel—they are made from heavy-gauge welded wire, so it must have been someone careless with a front-end loader. Back in the brush I find a short section of panel that covers the gap to near perfection. I wire it in place with short lengths of electric-fence wire snipped from a tangle I found twisted around a decrepit plastic insulator tacked to one of the railroad ties. When the patch is in place, there is still a small vertical gap about the width of a piglet. Following another rusty strand of electric-fence wire into a patch of blackberry stalks, I find a deformed electric-fence post. It is bent in such a manner that I am able to weave it in and out of the panel on either side of the gap to form a rebar suture obstructing the hole. As much as I would like to have a spotless, squared-up operation, I need only look around the rest of my life to know it ain’t likely, and furthermore, having recently priced fencing supplies while resting in the bathroom with the latest Farm & Fleet catalog, I am getting hooked on the idea of salvage in terms of budget enhancement. I wiggle-waggle a steel post ($3.25 new) loose from the old fence line and drive it to extend the reach of the pen, the thaw having been such that the earth here is soft.
I work well into the afternoon. By the time I decide to hang it up, I have formed a three-quarters-sided enclosure and am surprised to find my shoulders sunburned. I am snugging the last twist of wire down tight when a fly buzzes past. The sound is out of place for the season. Perhaps the world is changing. But there could be snow tomorrow. The fly should not get his hopes up.
The culverts where Ricky and I played still remain. The tubes are sunk deep and solid. Should you run that stretch of Beaver Creek Road, you will