Getting a Better Fence

My neighbors Randy and Jamie Loch have finished up with the maple syrup season and though they are still lambing they had some time to come over and start driving posts for me. If you want to see what their operation is all about look at their website at www.lochsmaple.com. Seamus and I spent a lot of last winter cutting, hauling, and splitting locust fence posts and last week began laying them out where they would go. We started on this fence on the run that goes along the road, as I figure that is the most important place to have a good fence. The rest of the farm at least has a rusty 43 strand barbed wire fence. The old tradition is to just keep adding barbed wire and fence posts as needed, so after 100 years you end up lots of strands of barbed wire in varying states of decay as well as the old posts which rotted off at the ground levitating next to their replacement posts.
Anyhow, this picture is of Randy driving the first post for this fence. His wife Jamie is driving the tractor. The post pounder is a heavy I beam that is hydraulically lifted, then free falls onto the top of the post. The ground is a little dry right now but the pounder still drives the posts all of 2 feet into the ground. They really go in solidly too. I wouldn't want to hit one on my sled.