Photo essay “THE FENCE”

1. Photo essay“THE FENCE” By: Taylor Tolbert

2. Arrive at cabin Our cabin at Lake Cumberland was in need of a new fence. The old fence was put in about 30 years ago and was falling apart. We arrived at the cabin, unpacked and began the day long project of building a new fence.

3. Unloading tractor The first thing that needed to be done was unloading the tractor. My cousin, Ty, brought the tractor from his home in Crestwood, KY. We could not have done the work without it. We used it to remove the old fence posts, to haul the supplies up the driveway and to smooth out the ground.

4. Digging up old fence posts The old fence posts were about three feet deep in the ground. They were rotted and very loose in the holes, but were too heavy to lift out without the help of the tractor. These old posts were made of cedar, so we cut them up into firewood and will use them during the winter in the wood burning stove.

5. Get the new fence Back in September, my Grandfather brought all the posts and rails for the fence to the cabin. He bought them in Louisville and got them to the cabin so they would be there whenever we could all get together to work on the fence.

6. Load wood on the tractor After we cut each post to the right size, we loaded them into the tractor’s bucket and took them to the top of the driveway. If we had had to carry these up the hill, it would have taken twice as long to get this job done.

7. Dig new holes My grandfather rented a gas powered post hole digger. Luckily Ty knew how to operate it and did a great job digging the new holes. Since the fence rails were longer than the ones we took out, new holes had to be dug for each post. It went pretty smoothly except when he would hit tree roots!

8. Start putting fence up The type of fence we were building was a split rail fence. The way the rails fit into the posts was like a puzzle, so we could only dig one post hole at a time, put the rails in and then move to the next post. It took a little longer but there was no way to estimate where each post should go. In this picture, my grandfather was doing a good job supervising!

9. Getting close to done The fence was starting to shape up and was looking really good. When we started, we weren’t sure if we would get this done in one day, but it was moving along pretty good – this picture was taken at 1:30pm. (Notice the sign!)

10. Finished product, Almost! The work day came to a close when we ran out of fencing material. We got to the bottom of the drive and were one post and two rails short of being able to finish. We went ahead and measured where the last hole should go so when we returned, we wouldn’t have to worry about digging it without the post hole digger. Since the last fence lasted about 30 years, we don’t plan on having to do this again for a long time.