After fencing a third of an acre in for a garden, we are now building out a 30x30 foot enclosure to keep some birds and bees. Keeping the hives inside the enclosure keeps them from getting attacked by bears, and the chickens protect the bees from small hive beetles that can cause massive damage to bee colonies.
The enclosure will attach to my third acre fenced in area, so when they are being supervised they can roam the garden and get more space than what is just in their 30 by 30 foot enclosure.
We run a string to give us a straight line to drive stakes into the ground.
Its hard to see but we leveled the area a little better, doing it by shovel was rough.. Wish I had the skid steer, will get one soon.
We drove in posts that will hold up vertical 7.5 foot poles.
The poles will hold the horizontal supports and then we will attach the fencing.
Some were crooked but we straightened them later.
With the entire 30 by 30 foot area staked out, its time to start building inwards.
Starting with attaching the overhead pipes and connectors, we build a ring around the parameter.
As my farm hand works on the frame I work on building the door we will have to walk through.
I dont know how he does it without sunglasses on, its so bright working up there.
We have to stretch the pipes to fit them in some cases since we did not get the alignment perfect on each post.
But over time we adjust and fix it as we go and soon enough its half way complete. By day two the frame was mostly complete.
On day 3 we take a step back and can really see that frame coming together.
The part we worried about the most is up next, putting the fence up on top of the enclosure. The roll weighs probably 100 pounds, but together we lift it up on the truck.
Next we climb up on the edge of the truck bed and he gets on a tall ladder so we can start rolling the fence out slowly.
Being careful it does not stray to far to one side or the other. We roll it across the entire enclosure.
This will keep predators out like hawks, kestrels, eagles and other birds of prey attacking my birds inside. And will help keep out other ground based predators as well.
We take a break half way through the day, there are wild blueberry bushes flowering all over the property so my farm hand shows me some he noticed recently.
I follow him down the hill and we check out some wild low bush blueberry bushes.
Getting back to work after exploring the woods we roll out more more of the fencing on the roof.
My farm hand says I never get good pictures of myself doing work so he took my camera phone and did some shots of me working.. haha
Rolling the fencing along the walls is hard work. You have to kick the bottom of the fence roll, while letting to fall forward.
We roll the fencing outwards and stake it down to keep anything from borrowing in or out.
Adding rocks later may be a good idea. But its nice we got the enclosure all up now. Next is to start building out the chicken and duck coop, and adding benches and all the gardening beds. Lots of wood work ahead, will post about that soon.