Latestarter's ramblings/musings/gripes and grumbles.

[Wehner Homestead]

I think what GB said is worth a shot! I’ve seen the guys wrestle a post out of the ground at different times. My Papaw is notorious for making harebrained decisions that put everyone in danger in these situations...he’d probably either hook the truck to it with us all standing around watching or stick a chainsaw in the hole to cut it out bit by bit. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good guy, my dad just has to keep him on track safely. It’s a wonder my dad survived his childhood!
Have I mentioned that he always rigged something?! We’d work cattle and the catch mechanism would be oiled too much from him preparing so the first four he caught would walk on out when he let go of the headcatch handle or he’d fail to replace the floor in the chute and not tell Dad and the bull would try to walk off with the whole set-up. One of my “favorite” stories is they had cattle all over three counties at one time “with no fences (there were fences but they weren’t going to keep anything in) and Papaw would drop Dad off at a field with a tractor to bushhog all day. He’d throw Dad a Pepsi while Dad was driving the tractor down the road to the next pasture, as he was passing him!” That would be all Dad got to eat or drink for the day. Papaw also liked to take a passel of nieces and nephews that had never seen cows before to round up a wild bunch. Those relatives can tell some stories too!

Anyway, good luck with the post and I hope you don’t have to dig the whole thing out!

 

[greybeard]

The thing about rotted off posts..........
The usually rot off right at ground level, but below ground they still have a strong core. It won't stand much lateral movement but will withstand a lot of axial stress, meaning the fibers will allow you to pull it straight up.
Biggest problem I've encounter pulling them is the vacuum formed when the ground is wet. It can be a considerable force to overcome. If you can dig a hole down just one side of the old post, you can usually get them out pretty easily.

My forest side fence does nothing of any real substance, since I moved over to the inside of the long drive and put up another fence the entire west side of the property so I don't have to open or close any gates driving in or out. The original fence tho, does mark the property line, and it's the only reason I try to keep it up. My sister tho, up near where the county rd ends, has no interest in keeping her forest side fences up (it ties in to my property line fence) but she drove 1" rebar in at the boundary to permanently mark the line, and that is common in this area. I do the same, and when the surveyors came thru for the original survey, they drove in little steel rods, over which I dropped 1 1/2" galvanized pipe and drove down. Fences are not used or recognized as legal metes and bounds on any Texas survey anyway. (Ironically, trees used to be..My first survey said things like; "from a point 2 varas east of a White Oak tree, thence East 212.5 varas to a big sweetgum tree..."
(The Feds by the way, still just walk along and tack up little yellow signs on trees on their side of the line stating "US National Forest property beyond this point" and go down the line every few years with a can of red paint with which to mark a few trees along the line. They don't bother with a survey plat...they just walk it off and guesstimate.

 

[greybeard]

I think what GB said is worth a shot! I’ve seen the guys wrestle a post out of the ground at different times. My Papaw is notorious for making harebrained decisions that put everyone in danger in these situations...he’d probably either hook the truck to it with us all standing around watching or stick a chainsaw in the hole to cut it out bit by bit. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good guy, my dad just has to keep him on track safely. It’s a wonder my dad survived his childhood!
Have I mentioned that he always rigged something?! We’d work cattle and the catch mechanism would be oiled too much from him preparing so the first four he caught would walk on out when he let go of the headcatch handle or he’d fail to replace the floor in the chute and not tell Dad and the bull would try to walk off with the whole set-up. One of my “favorite” stories is they had cattle all over three counties at one time “with no fences (there were fences but they weren’t going to keep anything in) and Papaw would drop Dad off at a field with a tractor to bushhog all day. He’d throw Dad a Pepsi while Dad was driving the tractor down the road to the next pasture, as he was passing him!” That would be all Dad got to eat or drink for the day. Papaw also liked to take a passel of nieces and nephews that had never seen cows before to round up a wild bunch. Those relatives can tell some stories too!

Anyway, good luck with the post and I hope you don’t have to dig the whole thing out!

That brings back some good (and bad) memories.
Nothing like seeing an old cow walking around a pasture with a wooden headgate still closed on her neck.

Many of the things we (Dad, my brother & I) did back in the 60s would probably get me booted off this board if related in any accuracy at all..back before political correctness was the norm, (which is why I didn't bother with a BYH retro journal I once toyed with in my mind)

For several years, our 'cattle working facility' was a tree, ropes, a couple of (alleged) cow dogs and one old mare. We had raised some eyebrows and no little ire, when we fenced off 124 acres of our property in a county that was still all open range by state law because the previous owners had never fenced it and this bottom land grew some good grass that every cattleman was getting use of. There was some pretty rough cattle running this area and the National Forest at the time...thousands of head. Yearly roundup, sorting, and branding was a sight to behold tho. Dozens of stock and horse trailers lined up along the highway to drive and loadout calves to carry to the sale barn. Arguments and fights were common, trying to decide whose calves were whose, and the domestic hogs that were also run open range were even worse.


We didn't live on the property at the time, (lived 40 miles south of here) and every weekend, first thing we had to do was run out all the cattle that weren't ours, fix the fences that had been cut, or put back up the gates that someone had tied to a truck and drug down so their cattle could get in.

 

[Wehner Homestead]

Wow! Gotta love dishonest people!

 

[Latestarter]

The post is rotted pretty much the entire length down that I've exposed so far. Only the very center core is "solid". I've been breaking outside sections away with the post hole diggers. Nothing really to get the/a chain around that it would get a hold of.

So late this morning I stuck a rack of nicely seasoned St Louis style pork ribs in the oven at 275 for 3 hours. When that part was done I took them out and gave them a nice coating of BBQ sauce and stuck em' right back in for another hour and 20 minutes. They got done in time for me to have a helping before doing goat chores and 2nds when the chores were done (after washing hands...). Fall off the bone tender. So I have ~1/2 a rack to warm back up for lunch tomorrow (unless I cave and eat them later tonight ). And I wonder why I can't lose weight...

No word from my sister... No idea where she is or when/if she'll be in this area. Not that this was totally unanticipated... She is a bit of a free spirit and doesn't follow schedules too well... even her own. But she has a great heart and is all about helping everyone else but herself. So who knows... she'll either stop here or not. Only time will tell.

 

[Wehner Homestead]

Maybe she’ll show up in the next few days...on her own schedule.

 

[Latestarter]

oh... forgot... pics or it never happened.

 

[greybeard]

Wow! Gotta love dishonest people!

Well, you gotta understand, this was open range, and this property was probably 'open' for at least a couple of decades before my father bought it.
For anyone that hasn't lived in an open range state, all this may seem a bit strange, but that's just the way it was. We were bucking history and we knew it wasn't going to be easy.
When a county enacts a stock law (ours did in the very early 70s) livestock owners are required to keep their livestock contained..the wording just says "not permitted to run at large" .
Even today, State Law only specifies the kind of fence or fence standard required to keep OTHER people's stock out of your place, not keep your stock in.
This is THE State of Texas Statute on fences:
Section 143.028 provides the following guidelines: (a) A person is not required to fence against animals that are not permitted to run at large. Except as otherwise provided by this section, a fence is sufficient for purposes of this chapter if it is sufficient to keep out ordinary livestock permitted to run at large. (b) In order to be sufficient, a fence must be at least four feet high and comply with the following requirements:
1. A barbed wire fence must consist of three wires on posts no more than 30 feet apart, with one or more stays between every two posts;
2. A picket fence must consist of pickets that are not more than six inches apart;
3. A board fence must consist of three boards not less than five inches wide and one inch thick; and
4. A rail fence must consist of four rails.18
State statute does however tell row croppers what kind of fence they are required to build to keep animals out of their crops:



Sec. 143.001. SUFFICIENT FENCE REQUIRED. Except as provided by this chapter for an area in which a local option stock law has been adopted, each gardener or farmer shall make a sufficient fence around cleared land in cultivation that is at least five feet high and will prevent hogs from passing through.
Does that mean I can let my cattle run loose?
NO! We have a county wide stock law, but nowhere in either county or State statute does it say how or what kind of fence I have to have..only that I am not allowed to "knowingly" allow livestock to roam freely.

The whole thing is here:
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/AG/htm/AG.143.htm

 

[Wehner Homestead]

Gotta love lawmakers!

 

[CntryBoy777]

oh... forgot... pics or it never happened.
View attachment 45449

Yeh....and just think....if ya'd invited me to eat with ya ya wouldn't have had any leftovers....