An Exercise In Skills Building and Frugality
There is a four year old gelding horse languishing in my field that needs training. He has goofed around far too long and needs to be employed, and by employed I mean carrying my derriere around in the mountains all summer. In order for him to achieve gainful employment he must have some training, and in order to accomplish that to-do item I need a round pen.
New round pens made out of steel panels cost between 1000-2000 U.S. Dollars. Used ones are pretty steep in price too, sometimes you can find one for 600 or 700 dollars, but they are few and far between. Spending that kind of dough on a pen that I am going to lunge horses in caused me acute mental stress, for I can think of a lot of other things to spend that kind of money on around the farm.
We keep about a five acre patch of lodgepole pine growing in one section of the farm for project reasons. Anytime we need a pole we head out to our Jack (logger slange for lodgepole) pine shopping center and select the tree for our need. This arrangement has worked well for fifteen years. One problem with using Jack pine in building projects is that it will rot in the ground in about 4-6 years, but I figure by the time this round pen rots I will finally spend the money and get a steel panel version. Maybe.
Pen construction method decided, my husband and I marked off the area for the pen. It measures forty feet in diameter with poles every eight feet on the circumference of the pen. I got out my tractor and post hole digging implement and dug the required post holes. For many years we had to dig the post holes around here the old school way, with a manual post hole digger until one of our farmer friends gifted us with the tractor version. I LOVE IT SO MUCH! There is always a post hole that needs to be dug when one has a farm.
We then fell the trees needed for the posts that went into the ground and debarked them. If you take the bark of the poles you get a little bit more longevity out of them.
Next came the character building part. Our close family friends have six boys. As the boys hit early teen years they come to "Tom School." At this particular educational institution one learns all sorts of skills: how to run a chainsaw, how to peel poles, how to install and stretch fence, how to dig holes, how to drive a truck and tractor, how to measure and use power tools, and the list goes on. This week's favorite class was how to use a hand drill on poles and lag bolt them into place. My kids are old enough to attend now, and between the four kids they finished the round pen in two afternoons of work. They are such a great group.
My contribution during this time was a small mountain of food. The volume of Frito tacos, spaghetti, chocolate chip cookie bars, and buttermilk white, chocolate mousse filled, chocolate ganache glazed cake consumed was impressive. You have to keep your laborers well fed.
And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's jack pine sap covered iPhone.
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