The frost is on the pumpkins. Tomatoes seemed to have fared fine. Goldenrod is black. Milkweed is black. North home field paddock fencing removed. North Field extension of 2 acres opened. Longson’s pig herd moved to North Field. South field paddock fencing down tomorrow. Fall is here for real.
Outdoors: 52°F/29°F Sunny
Farm House: 66°F/59°F
Tiny Cottage: 60°F/55°F Windows open, cleaning, scaffold up for attic, forming
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
You said in your post that the fencing is coming down. Is that the interior subdivisions done with poly twine? Or are you taking down the perimeter fences for winter??
The perimeter fencing is permanent 12 gauge high tensile steel smooth wire. That stays up for the winter. The interior paddock divisions are currently twisted white polywire on step in posts with 2″ to 3″ wooden post at the corners and ends so it can be stretched tight. For the winter we take down the polywire and the plastic posts because they often break if left in the ground.
Of interest, I have found that the plastic step in posts that have the thick spike with a nail head in their base are far more prone to breaking than the ones with the thinner spikes. This is likely due to the difference in thermal expansion of the plastic and the steel coupled with the plastic getting brittle in the winter cold. I no longer buy the step in posts with the thick spikes since they don’t last as long. I now get this kind or this kind.
The poultry netting, which is great for keeping piglets out of the garden as well as perimeters where you don’t want them roaming from the herd, really should come down in the winter too. We still end up leaving some up since we still aren’t to the point of having permanent fencing all the way around. The snow is a bit hard on it as the pack settles pulling downward on the temporary fencing.
I happened to look up at the Cold Hollow Mts this morning to see them capped with s-s-s-snow. We didn’t have any frost last night but the dog’s water bucket (5 gal white kind) had the smallest amount of ice bridged across the top.