Another On Pasture reader has a question and we need your help!
We raise hair sheep and Angus cattle together in one flerd, and use electronet fencing for daily moves. Our perimeter fencing on our land is high-tensile 5-strand fence powered by an 8J charger; on our leased land I built a cheap 3-strand perimeter fence with 16-ga soft wire and composite posts, powered by a Premier Intellishock charger and a deep cycle marine battery.
Our fencing set-up has worked really well in general, but the main issue is the vegetation growth under the fence lines. We have about 40 acres of permanent or semi-permanent fence in the humid Northeast, where the vegetation threatens to overtake the fence by early June if we haven’t spent a dozen hours weed-whacking it, and then they require another round by mid-August. This Spring I built perimeter fence on the leased land so it would save us time on the daily flerd moves, but didn’t think about how much extra time it would require in weed-whacking! This is taking so much labor that we are seeking creative solutions. Side-mowers, landscape fabric, and flame torching are among the fantasies we’ve entertained.
What do you do?
Thanks in advance to all the great On Pasture brains!
Cheers,
Erica
Share your answers in the comments below. AND if you have a question that you’d like all the great On Pasture brains to help with, send it to us and we’ll get it out there for you.
Thanks for reading and for helping the On Pasture Community!
Kathy and Rachel
P.S. Another great way to meet other farmers and ranchers and find out how they’re solving problems is to attend workshops and conferences. If you’ve got an event coming up that you’d like people to know about, you can add it to the On Pasture calendar here. If you’d like to see the calendar, head here.
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