In my continuing quest to keep Prize at home we came up with a strategy. There are two areas where she crawls under the fence. So we moved the wires so they are closer together and added an additional wire in just those areas. We also sprayed the fence line in an attempt to kill enough weeds to electrify lower wires.

I came up with another idea. My ideal fence would be wire mesh. Imagine really heavy duty chicken wire. No way she is crawling under that. But my fence posts are metal. I’ve had fence people out to give quotes and they all say that you can’t put wire mesh on metal posts. They staple it to wooden posts. Now the cost of redoing the whole pasture is once is overwhelming. But yesterday it suddenly occured to me that you could use wire to attach the mesh to a steel post. You’d have to get it really tight to keep the tension up on the mesh but it would be doable. At least I think it would be. If it is doable why am I the only person to come up with it? I’ve specifically asked “experts” if there is a way to attach mesh to a metal post and they all say no. I’m willing to accept that I’m just brillant and have invented something amazing but I’m a bit worried that the plan has a fatal flaw that I haven’t figured out yet. I think we will get a roll of mesh and try it. If it works then we can redo the whole pasture a roll at a time instead of laying out thousands of dollars to tear it up and start over.

I put the beasties out this morning so I could watch them. Prize started to get a bit restless after about 1.5 hours. That’s about when she escaped last time. I brought them in before she could do anything bad. The flies were bothering her alot. I was also worried about Spirit getting heat stroke.

It is Labor Day. You know the ‘very proper ladies’ who say that you can’t wear white after Labor Day? Spirit has his own version of the rule. His says that you must have a winter coat by Labor Day. It is in the high 80s today. We will continue to have hot days for 2 more months. For these 2 months Spirit will suffer and sweat. He has always gotten his coat for Labor Day and by god he’s going to keep growing it. I noticed this because growing up I always showed him on Labor Day and the biggest and more important show of the year for us was the weekend after Labor Day and I had a fuzzy horse. I could body clip him. But there is a long list of things that Spirit Will Not Tolerate. He’s never experienced body clipping but I’m sure if he knew about it it would be on the top of the list.

After all my ideological torment about the Roundup from the last post I don’t think it is working. According to the label plants should wilt in 24 hours. I’ve never seen such healthy looking weeds in my life.