electric fencing + irises

Jay has been working his butt off getting the fencing ready for the piggies. Not only that, we decided to let our neighbor use the part of the upper field that the pigs won't have access to for pasturing two of his cows -- probably a mom and calf. At first, we were against this idea, but then we decided that it would work out to our advantage because the cows would start the renovation of this neglected pasture by chomping it down, and then our neighbor agreed to bush hog it after the cows are done and the season is over. Plus, it gets us to install perimeter fencing now instead of waiting until next spring when we plan to get our own cow (or two). Then, we'll only need to cross-fence it into paddocks for our rotational grazing plan. We opted to skip this step with the neighbor's cows because the whole thing will get bush hogged anyway. We won't have to do anything with the cows themselves -- the neighbor will be responsible for all that -- we just get to enjoy the sight of them, which was kinda what sealed the deal.

I finally finished building and seeding the corn patch today and enjoyed the view of some irises growing along our culvert. Not sure if these are wild or planted by the previous owner, but they sure are a sight to see.

The piggies will have access to the barn to use for shade and shelter. We did break up their fenced area into three paddocks of increasingly larger size to accommodate their growth. The nice thing about electric fencing is that gates are so easy to make with just an insulated handle that is quickly unhooked from the electrified part of the fence.