More Fencing; A Foolish Mistake; Hauling Hay Bales; Planting Winter Flowers

Cloudy in the morning and just after lunch we had a quick rainstorm that perhaps lasted 10 minutes. I don't think it even made the ground wet. The rest of the day alternated sun and cloud with the emphasis on sun.

I redrilled holes where the cows had knocked off some of the insulators in their scratching and resited insulators where they had fallen off. While looking at the problem of where to put a t-post or attach insulators to the barn, I figured it out. I found a perfect spot to put a t-post close to where the wire comes out.

Then I put in the polywire along the barn. As I mentioned below I had to figure out some way of going above the waterer so I ran 3 - 5 inch extensions above the waterers. I ran the polywire along the bottom set of insulators and then ran both upper and lower wires onto those three insulators and then back to the t-post by the fenceline.

I connected the wire from the circuit-breaker to the polywire, installed two gate hooks along with two connectors (made out of wire with insulator tubing surrounding the wire), and connected everything so that the fence, gate and polywire fence were all connected.

From there I went to the tack room and connected the wire to the charger. I tested the wires on the gate (2.8 mvh) on the hi-tensile fence (2.7 mvh) and on the polywire fence (2.7 mvh). Why so low. I told Chas and after lunch he took a look. Dang, if I didn't attach the electric wire to the ground wire. After I put the electric wire on the proper post we tested it again. Still the low reading. We checked the polywire and then the gate. Both were reading 6.7 mvh so we knew the problem had to be in the hi-tensile fence. We found two shorts and a strand of wire tape that I'd attached to two of the wires to let the animals know the fence was there all of which were shorting out the fence. Once those problems were corrected the fence worked just fine.

Before lunch I got the tractor and pallet and drove the tractor into the barn. I picked up four bales of hay and put them on the pallet, drove over to the green barn and tried to drive the tractor into the barn. The stump from the large tree Gary cut down last year for us was in the way. Oh well, next time I will drive straight into the green barn and unload the bales a lot easier than trying to get the bales off at an awkward angle.

It's going to be a whole lot easier to move hay, large bales and square bales, with the forks. Nothing like good tools to make life easier.

Then after lunch I took the plants I bought yesterday and planted them. I had a lovely oval metal planter that I partially filled with beet pellets that had gone bad and a plastic pot that I also filled with beet pellets. I put three flowering kale and two different kinds of asters in the oval planter. I put a geranium and two pansies (white, and white with purple) in the plastic pot. Both are sitting on the stumps outside the deck.

Before I watered the vegetable garden I planted two different kinds of grass and watered the cottage garden plants, too. I'll have to get the names of the grasses. One is red and about 2 feet tall; the other has variegated leaves and is about 8 inches high. The look nice in the garden.

Dinner was vegetable soup that I put on earlier in the day and garlic bread (bought from Franz's used bread store). It lacked flavor to me. Chas said it was good.