Happiness and Misadventures

My Anti-Boar Fence

Today we’ve been cherrypicking from our trees, and it was wonderful now that the garden looks a little less like a construction site. I almost finished working on the anti-boar fence, and I think it is pretty good — at least it is as I imagined it.

I wanna do an exercise: write some kind of instructions for the project. I never did anything similar, especially on this blog… but hey, there’s always space for something new. Let’s start from the materials!

I’ve used:

The procedure is quite simple, but repetitive a.f. depending on length of the fence. I wanted to keep it as large as possible, without fencing my whole property — I would have spent three times, and I already spent a lot.

The biggest issue is the terrain inclination: if you have a plain garden, setting up the fence is almost fun. Though, I did half of the work with a very unsympathetic slope, so everything was more difficult. In brief:

Solid Foundation

Since the net and the wires will be in tension, the poles must be underground for at least 30-40 centimeters. Personally, I decided to use a manual drill like this one and dig the holes for all the vertical “T” rods. To get the line straight, I tied a tiny cord on the first pole and, at the end of the trail, I put the little stick in the ground; then, I followed this line to make the holes, about 2 meters apart from each other. I mixed the cement (by hand) with sand and some gravel and poured it in the 40-50-centimeters-deep holes.2 With the spirit level, I assured that the poles were perfectly straight, and let the concrete harden for 48 hours at least.

A slope with some naked trees on the background. Some green vertical poles can be seen in the center.
These are the very first vertical poles I put down (before the cement). You can see the string at their feet.

Then, it was time for the angular poles: in the corners and in any changes of direction, the tension differs, and so the fence needs a strong support. So, we have to dig ~45° holes to insert the “L” poles. Once they touch the vertical one, we have to use a bolt to join them. If we need a hole on a different height than the default one, we can just use the drill with the 8mm bit. Then, we prepare the concrete for these poles, pour it, and let it dry.

Good news: we’re at one third of the work! We can let our drill rest.

The manual drill I used, laying on the ground.
My loyal companion of many holes.

Stretch The Wires

Next, the large wire must be tied at three heights on the vertical poles: on the top, on the bottom, and in the middle. Only on the top it is mandatory to pass it through the built-in hole of the pole: on the slopes and when the inclination varies a lot, I let the middle wire free. It is important to use pincers to tie the wire from the start (e.g. a corner) until the end of the straight segment.

When all the wires are set, they must be brutally cut with the pincers to insert the “stretchers”. Once the two extremities are inserted there, the screw must be turned in order to get the wires in tension — not too high for now. Now, we are ready to…

Release the Kraken Fences

This is by far the worst step, especially for the “floppy” fence. The goal is to extend the fence and tie it to the first pole of a “segment”, one with the “L” pole attached. The main problem is that the fence is 1,80 meters tall, rolled up in 25-meters-long coils, it is heavy, and the floppy one is a literal mess of wires,… It is very easy to get lost!

Solution: this must be done by two people. No easy way out. My dad helped me with this, and I can’t thank him enough.

Once the big roll is started, the goal is to anchor the beginning to the pole with many joints of the light wire. Then, while rolling it out on the whole segment, four of five knots are enough for each pole — the important ones are the first and the last of each sector. Finally, once the net is spread from the beginning to the end of the segment, it is time to:

A series of poles on a slope, with a green fence on their right side.
That is the floppy fence just tied to the vertical rods.

As you can see up here, I also used those rectangular iron poles for a future gate — that will be another mess.

At this point, you should have the fence tied up to the vertical poles, and finally we’re at about 70% of the work!

You Will Hate Wire

Now it is time to knot the grid to:

You have to make the light wire pass through the holes in the net and twist it with the pincers. It is not particularly difficult, but it will take so long! Maybe it’s me that I wanted to overdo, but I two or three-hundred-meters-long skeins of wire just for this step. 🧶 🧶 🧶

Once finished this… You’re done! At least, with a regular fence. Pfft. I wanted an anti-boar fence, so this would be just too easy for such animals to bend with their sweet snouts.

That’s why I added the electro-welded mesh. I cut it in “slices” of 50x200 centimeters, with the “teeth” pointing downward, and hammered it underground next to the fence.

Iron poles in the cement, a fence, and a tension wire at half height. Tall grass all around.
A close-up of a corner. You can see the several knots and the cement at the base.

So the mesh is basically anchored 10 centimeters in the soil. Then, I made other knots to tie it to both the poles and fence — the strongest points are always the double knots on the rods.

And that’s really it, for now. In the next few days, we’ll enjoy a short vacation in Bretagne, then we’ll move in the new house.

The fence is almost finished, but we still miss the gates! We’ll see what we’ll build. 🛠️

🎮 I started the first Ace Attorney on the Miyoo Plus, but I’m just a few minutes in

🎧 A super metal-stoner album from France

📖 Still the same

  1. I also followed this website’s tutorials on how to set up the grid. Obviously, theory is different than practice. ↩︎

  2. I made a different test for two poles: I poured sand and cement powder directly, without water. It was spring, and they hardened anyway… but it took much longer. I think the concrete is better. ↩︎

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