A Shocking Development

A few months after we bought Farcical Farm we had most of the property fenced, which is an expensive proposition. The "fence" that that came with the place was a mishmash of different materials and appeared quite unconvincing in its purpose. One exception was the line we share with our neighbor to the west -- the posts are smaller than I would like, but uniformly shaped and spaced with five strands of barbed wire, just a bit saggy in places. This is not ideal horse fencing of course, but it is covered with page wire along the back acre, leaving only 300 ft of danger zone, about one third of which sits behind the manure bins. Tonka and Raven aren't wild in the pasture (there are more important tasks at hand) and they don't challenge fences, so it's really a problem from our equine perspective.

Goats, however. Have you ever considered the root of the word "capricious"? It comes from "caprine" and means "goat like". Pygmy goats are the most contrary animals I have ever had the dubious pleasure of knowing. Their sole motivation in life seems to be getting to places where they currently aren't. Five strands of barbed wire might as well be five strands of air where pygmy goats are concerned, meaning that we could never leave Timbit, Morsel and Roland McNugget unattended in the pasture. But that changed last weekend when we finally cleared the fenceline enough (hence the blackberry removal) to establish three strands of hot wire at 12, 24 and 36 inches. Now we can toss them out there with 80% confidence that no one will go wandering (which is much better than 0% confidence). These photos were all taken from the deck with my iPhone because I was too lazy to (1) find my camera or (2) actually leave the deck in the 30+ degree heat.