Big Bertha, Free Lumber and Elbow Grease: Garden Fence Building

Sometimes motivation comes naturally and other times you have to get the bait and switch from the tool rental place. Today it was the latter - when the tool rental place told me that the rental price doubled from what it was a couple of days ago I bet you can guess what I told them to do with their power auger! Well, as luck would have it, we had our own auger (Big Bertha) and our own power (muscle power). Add to that a huge pile of the previous tenant's throw-a-way lumber and we had a project in the works!

A fence can go up quick - all you have to do is set the corner posts and then run a strait line from one to the other....

...drive marking stakes every 8 feet  on center....

...auger your holes using the strait line and stakes as guides...

...do this several dozen times down to 30 inches or so...

...set your posts...

...tamp the posts in....

... run stringers on the top row and then cut off the posts to all the same height....

...and you've got a good start on a fence.

Here's a view from above. We spent literally nothing on this fence and got a lot of good exercise to boot! Now we just need to scavenge a bit more wood for the other 2 rows of stringers, attach rabbit fencing about half-way up and we'll be ready to plant!