Pearl Creek Farm is 10 acres in size and carved out of an original 87 acres, with the remainder owned by our neighbors. The original owner, and probably the owners before him, had fences crisscrossing the place like stripes on Christmas candy. Few of the fences could turn a cow or horse, but they seemed to give us fits and always seemed to be in the way.

When you have only 10 acres to roam, you don’t want your way impeded by anything unnatural. Originally, you would have crossed three fences walking from one end of the place to the other, no matter whether you started at the north or west boundary! This wouldn’t do, of course. We set out to remove the fences pretty much everywhere to open the place up.

I’ve built new fence and I’ve repaired old fence. It’s not very much fun. Taking fence down is no fun, either. Barbed wire is unpleasant to remove and roll up. Even the comparatively innocent woven wire ends up stuck in the ground with various plants and roots growing over and through it, making it nearly impossible to remove in some cases.

Anyway, it’s a big job even though it’s only 10 acres. I’ve taken down some pretty much every year. Joseph and Alex have helped at times, too. We gave some chain link fence remnants to our neighbor who is using it to raise some hogs. The rest has been rolled up and stashed in the barn.

I’d heard that most metal recycling places wouldn’t accept barbed wire or woven wire so I never knew quite what to do with it. One day, I was talking to an old man at a gas station. He had a truck load of old wire and I asked him where he took it. He told me of a place nearby so I decided to make some phone calls. It turns out that my information was false and most metal recycling places would gladly accept old wire, though most wouldn’t pay the same rate as regular scrap metal.

Today, I took in a truck load of old fence. I estimated it was about 1/4 of what we had on our place originally. Surprisingly, we earned $69 for this truck load! Although that seems like a lot of money for trash, nobody around here is anxious to get out to pull more fence. Still, it will be a cause for celebration to pull the last post out of the ground. You can bet you’ll read about it here when it happens!