pipe fence – Permaculture Homestead

Setting My First Terminal Post

So my wife told me I couldn’t go up to Dove Ranch this weekend, because I’ve been up there every week for the last month. But I got all this new fencing material, and it’s like a new toy. You can’t just go two or three weeks without playing with a new toy.

So, yeah, she relented and I went up while she was working. The kids were all out of the house for the day, so it was a solo trip. Sometimes, it is nice to do a solo run to Dove Ranch.

For such a remote location, Dove Ranch and Dove Creek Road keep changing while I’m not looking. When I went to water the trees this weekend, all the mulch I had put around three or four trees had been swept away. That means water at least knee deep and likely closer to thigh deep came through the wash.

I have no idea when a flash flood will come through the wash or what kind of rain triggers it. I would have thought a flash flood would have come down on the day Bridget and I did the hike up the Dove Creek Hills, but I checked and none came. I can’t seem to catch flash floods with my trail cam. They never trigger the motion sensor, or their is fog or raindrops on the lens when flash floods come. I’m dying to get some good pictures of flash floods in the wash, but it’s really hard to capture them on camera.

Cattle Guard — Looks like Dove Creek Road is getting a shiny new cattle guard.

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My Fence Came

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m constructing a barbed wire pipe fence at Dove Ranch. I ordered the first set of parts from Hoover Fence online, not because they were cheap, but because they had all the parts I needed in just one location (their web site.)

Pipe Fence Parts — My barbed wire pipe fence has arrived!

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Designing the Barbed Wire Pipe Fence

Dove Ranch sits in the middle of open range land. What that means is that it is my responsibility to keep cattle off my land, not the cattle owner’s responsibility to keep the cattle contained. I’ve determined I want an all metal fence instead of a metal fence with wooden posts, mostly because of the brush fire risk in Utah. Finally, I realized what I wanted for my ranch is a barb wire pipe fence.

Think of a barb wire pipe fence as a hybrid of chainlink fences and barb wire fences. They’re a little pricy, but very sturdy and fire resistant. Barb wire pipe fences aren’t really documented well on the internet. I’ve searched for months for information, and I finally had to just go look at some to figure out how they’re done.

What I really could have used when I started thinking of creating a barb wire pipe fence was a good set of diagrams with part lists. I’m sure someone that works in the industry could have figured this out in less than a minute, but I’m a newb, so it took me months to figure out. When I started looking at them last year, I didn’t even know the metal posts were simply sold as “pipe.” I did mention I was new to this, … right?

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Barbed Wire Pipe Fence

I’ve been torn between doing a traditional barbed wire fence with wooden posts and a barbed wire fence with pipe for posts. Pipe is going to cost a lot more, but if some idiot starts a brushfire up near my ranch, a pipe fence will survive far better than a fence put together with wooden posts.

Brush fires are a real possibility at Dove Ranch, and could easily undo a year or two of fence work in a matter of minutes. Yeah. I’ve talked myself into doing a barbed wire pipe fence. The problem is that even though they’re common in this part of the west, finding documentation on how to do them is not well documented. So, I’ve taken it on myself to put together some documentation on how to do them while putting together my first 100-ft section of barbed wire pipe fence.

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