I was informed we would be fencing the next weekend and was soooo looking forward to about it—about as much as a root canal. This particular fencing project was for cattle, so it needed to be built tall, strong, straight as an arrow, and made of bull-proof wire. Ed would do the instructing, as he was the professional fence architect, and my title was “runner” because we all know girls don’t know a thing about putting up a proper fence. I wouldn’t hold the tape correctly so a post or two would be off by an inch and we would have to re-do it. The wood ticks would get me, so a hissy fit or two would take place. The wire I unwrap and do not hold tight enough will turn into the world’s largest slinky, and the posts I counted the day before will come up short by ten or twenty.

Hee hee, I will then be instructed with nasty verbiage and flailing arms to run into town for more posts, and I’ll sneak a little pre-planned side trip to the Dairy Queen and Herberger’s with the previous day‘s clipped coupons in my back pocket, getting home way too late to finish the project by dark.

Whatever happened to the single-wire electric fence with sheets torn up in little strips and tied between each post to make it visible? Speaking of posts, I miss the skinny little electric fence posts that you can push into the ground with a tennis shoe or rubber boot and pull back out with one hand tied behind your back. The whole fence could be picked up, wrapped up, and moved in a matter of a few minutes for fresh grazing.

I suppose the “flags” are too expensive nowadays, having to cut up 700-thread-count pure Egyptian cotton sheets, or maybe our modern-bred animals don’t see as well as they used to. Heck, in the good old days we would picket our horses out to graze by tying the end of a long rope to a cement block. The horse would munch a little bit, then pull a little bit and never wander too far away, with the smaller ones making precise little crop circles as they weren’t strong enough to pull the block more than a few feet.

One time we had three or four horses staked out in this incredibly uncomplicated way when a neighbor’s plastic kiddy pool was blown by the wind and rolled down the road straight toward our farm. Cement blocks can bounce pretty dang high when being dragged through a plowed field at forty miles an hour behind a terrified horse.

The selection of fencing materials is absurd nowadays: cattle panels, horse panels, hog panels, sheep panels, but I think they still call chicken wire “wire.” When did we get so specialized with our fencing? Then, of course, we must pick the thickness gauge of our new animal enclosure. Let’s see, if I have a thousand-pound horse, does it require five-, 10-, or 15-gauge wire?

We tried using electric fence for the hogs one time. The problem is, hogs root in the dirt and don’t look up to smell the wire (yes, animals can smell the electricity; wish I could, but that’s a whole other story), and electric wire cannot be strung close to the ground or it‘ll short out. By the time the pig’s shoulders touch the fence to get a shock, they are long gone. “The pigs are out” is one of those calls that really, really wrecks your day.

I did assemble a cute little decorative wood fence along our sidewalk one summer. I cast off all offers of help from Ed; this building project was close to the house and in “my territory.” I had no clue how hard it was to dig with a hand posthole digger, measuring down with a yardstick every few turns for post depth, waiting for the dang oil to start gushing out! Receiving the “I told you so” look every morning when Ed walked out of the house as I tweaked my pile of lumber, there was no way I was going to let him touch one teeny-tiny nail or board, even as he tossed the words over his shoulder, “That’s gonna take you a coon’s age to build.”

One very fortunate day, the Schwan’s man pulled in for a delivery as I was sitting on the edge of a posthole, looking down and waiting for a fellow from China to crawl up and help me out.

We negotiated a small butcher hog for labor, and the jolly fellow dug right in. In no time at all we had each posthole measured to perfect specifications.

Later that afternoon, the UPS attendant arrived with a package from Great-Aunt Ida. In a whirlwind of trading, half of Aunt Ida’s homemade peanut butter cookies left with the big brown truck and my fence boards were nailed on straight as an arrow.

Coming off the school bus, the kids jumped for joy as I handed each a paintbrush with instructions to have a war with one child placed on either side of the rails.

Humph, who was it who said gals couldn’t build a perfect fence in no time at all…