Going posthole

As part of my project to fence in my land my newest set of friends/volunteers have been helping me dig postholes.

Of course this being a mountain top, made of stone and seemingly very little soil this task is sometimes hard work, but with Diego swinging the pick and Natalia and I on Azada duty we soon got some holes dug.. 

 

 

As we dug we came across this..

It was an earth worm, all tied up in a knot, as we carried it to safety it untangled and showed itself to be quite a big boy/girl. 










Of course a posthole isn't much use without a post to go in it. So we got to work cutting and preparing some.

First we cleaned the bark off of the trees I cut and seasoned last year.
Then we painted them using recycled engine oil. This I know doesn't sound very eco, but think about it, what else would you do with it, throw it away perhaps? This way it is used to preserve the wood from insects burrowing into it and laying their eggs. And because the post is set in concrete the oil soaked posts won't come into contact with the soil so it shouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately we only had 9 posts so we had to go cut a few more trees down so we can make more.

But how do you choose which tree to cut down?


If you look at the above photograph you will see a stand of pines, crowding each other, without room to grow and mature.
So we cut down half the number to allow the stronger trees room to grow, this is how you manage a
forest.
 
We used ropes to help us guide the trees so that they wouldn't fall in the wrong place.

Cutting them with chainsaw.
 
And hand axe.


In total we cut down several trees which we have cut into posts, however we will have to allow them to season a little before I paint them and set them into concrete to make my stockproof fence.