A bigger paddock, a bridge, and my first gate
The sheep kept eating out their little paddock in days, so we built them a proper one, across the drain, through my first gate hang, and past a couple of unscheduled escapes.
When the sheep arrived we built them a small paddock, and for about a week it looked like plenty. Then they ate it. Sheep, it turns out, treat a small paddock less like a home and more like a plate.
What followed was a long stretch of temporary everything, standards and reels of electric fencing shuffled around the block, a new makeshift break every time they grazed the last one down to carpet. Temporary fencing is fine as a tool. As a lifestyle, it wears thin. Every shift is an hour you didn't plan to spend, and the sheep watch you do it with an expression that says they'll have this one finished by Thursday too.
So this winter we finally did the real job: expanded the original paddock into the ground next to it. Enough grass that they can stay put and the pasture gets a fair chance to recover before they come back around. That's the theory, anyway.
The bridge nobody asked for
There was one complication. Between the old paddock and the new section runs a drain, not huge, but not something you want sheep scrambling through either. So I built them a bridge.
I'd pictured them trotting across it, single file, between the old ground and the new. What they actually do is stand on it and butt heads. The bridge is apparently not infrastructure; it's an arena. Two of them square off in the middle, have a gentle crack at each other, swap ends, and go again. If you build one thing for your sheep this year, make it a stage.
First gate, first stays
This project had a few firsts in it. The big one: I hung my first gate. There is a very specific satisfaction in a gate that swings true and clicks shut, you'll find reasons to walk through it for days afterwards. I did.
Two of the posts also needed stays, the diagonal braces that stop a strainer post leaning over once the wire comes on tight. Genuinely interesting work: cutting the angle, seating the stay so the load runs down it properly. Also genuinely slow. Nobody warns you that the two braced posts will take longer than the rest of the line put together.
And in the spirit of honest field notes: my wire tie-offs are still hit or miss. Some of them look like they came out of a fencing manual. Others look like the wire won the argument. It's the next skill on the list to actually get right, rather than get away with.
The scoreboard so far
We fenced the whole thing in mesh, because our sheep are gifted escapologists and plain wire would be an invitation. Even so: sheep two, fence nil. They've been out twice since the expansion opened, both times through spots that clearly need more persuasion.
The fix is battens, extra timber laced between the posts to stiffen the mesh and close down the gaps where a determined sheep can work its head in and lever the rest through. That's the next job.
Calling it done, honestly
Here's the part where the farm and the software overlap. The expansion job has been sitting in Rove for weeks, and I'm marking it done, because it is done. The paddock is bigger, the gate swings, the bridge hosts its tournaments. Done doesn't mean perfect.
The battens go in as a brand-new task instead. That's the habit Rove has quietly taught us: finish the project, and let the follow-up be its own job with its own line on the list, not a reason to keep a finished one hanging open, and not a loose thought rattling around my head at 2am. The fence is built. The tweaks have a task. And the sheep, for now, are exactly where we left them, which around here counts as a result.
