Woke up bright and early to the sound of a tractor, and stumbled down to see what was going on, Farmer R was out spraying in his fields, and then I saw that my sheep were out of their pasture and at the edge of his soybean field..  Threw on cloths and out the front door I went, and saw the issue right away, they had broke down a “it will do gate” and were on the move.. I bellowed Sheep, and every head came up and they trotted down the fence line to the back gate to wait for me to get there and open up the way for them to return home.. Needless to say, I was quite unhappy.. so back to the house to phone Farmer R and let him know that they were out, and to say we would get right on fixing that gate, normally its one of his hired hands that do the spray work, as luck would have it, it was him doing it, sigh.. of course he was kind enough to say, that compared to the 200 cows that keep breaking out of someone else’s place into his corn fields, that my little sheep are not so bad, still fences make good relations, and so we checked our regular wood place and they were closed, sigh.. started calling around and finally gave up and drove into the outskirts of the city and picked up the wood, the lift wheels etc for the new gates, as the wheels were on sale, picked up a extra, you know what they say, two is one and one is none 🙂

We built two 8 foot gates and two 4 foot gates, to make new for both the front and back gates, the four foot are so its easy to get though them with the wheelbarrel and then the rare time we need to let the tractors though about twice a year, you can open both and have the full size.

We had put the sheep in the barn in lockdown till the new gates were built and then I had to both laugh and shake my head, when we let them out, they headed staight for the gate to see if they could head on out, they checked out the new gate, gave it the eye and good solid push, an then went back out to their own pastures.

Not only was this a very long day, but it got us thinking and talking about the fact that if you had lots of money, it would have been so easy just to buy the gates. Our homemade versions cost about a 10th of the cost of a new metal gate, I have bought metal gates for the farm but always at farm sales and at a good deal.

Given that they are off the ground and very heavily built with both sheep fencing and barbwire, and they are treated wood, they should last a good long while, but we got to talking about how lucky we are in the fact that you can just go get those 2 by 4’s and that we have the tools at hand for both wood cutting, but also measuring, nailing, stapling and that we have the wire on hand ( I had picked up a extra roll when it was on sale last fall).

We talked a bit about what we would or could have done if we had not been able to leave the farm and or could not afford to buy anything to do the job.. it was a interesting mental exercise while we spent hours making and installing the gates.

What we figured out, is that we would have needed to not make the big swing gate, we would in fact close off the one gate in total and make it part of the solid fence, the second one, we do need and we decided that we would need to cut down tree’s and build a solid outline, and I would have needed to cut willow to fit up and down into a solid fence with barbwire on the inside to keep them from pushing on it, and reuse the wheel to lift it off the ground, and if we were unable to get new hinges, we could attach it directly to the post by tying it down, it would not make it as mobile as it is now but it could easily be undone for the twice year need..

Do you ever stop and think about, what if I could not get this from the store? What if I had to make this from what I have now? Are you missing any important tools? Do you ever play the What if and how could we make that work at your place?