The Fence

I redid the fence on the south field last autumn. Three hundred metres. Posts out, posts in, wire tensioned. Three days' work, if you're doing it alone.

My father put that fence in in 1989. I know that because he told me. Once. About twenty years ago, when I was helping him straighten a post that had gone crooked. He said: I put that one in the year you were born. And that was the end of that.

So in October I pulled out the first post and thought: that's done now.

That sounds like nothing. But it felt strange.

A post isn't an heirloom. A post is a post. It had rotted, the wire was rusty, in two places the grazing cattle had pushed through. The fence needed replacing. That wasn't a decision, it was a fact.

Still, on the first day I went inside after two hours and made coffee, even though I didn't want any. My wife looked at me. She doesn't ask much anymore, she just looks. That's usually enough.

I said: I'll get back to it in a minute.

She nodded.

Here's the thing. When you take over a farm, you take over the buildings, the animals, the machinery, the debts. All of that's in the paperwork. What isn't: you also take over the way your father drives a nail. The places where he cut corners and the places where he didn't. The decisions he made thirty years ago that you're now tearing down or building on or somehow trying to make sense of.

The fence had been his decision. Wooden posts, not metal. Cheaper back then. He did it that way and it lasted thirty years, so it wasn't a bad decision. I'm doing it with metal posts now. They last longer, cost more, but I don't want to have to do it again.

My father hasn't commented on it. He glances over sometimes when he passes by the farm. He doesn't say anything. It's been like that since the handover. I don't know whether he nods or whether I'm imagining it.

On the second day my son helped me. He's seven. He can't drive a post yet, but he can hold the wire and he does it seriously. He doesn't ask if he can. He just comes over and gets stuck in. He didn't learn that from me, I think. Or maybe he did. I don't know.

I looked at him and thought: in thirty years you might be pulling all this out.

I didn't say it.

That's the kind of thing that sounds meaningful but doesn't do any good. He's seven. He's holding the wire.

On the third day I was done. I walked the length of it, three hundred metres, and looked at the posts. Straight. Spacing right. Wire sitting properly.

I didn't think: good job. I thought: it'll hold.

Then I put the tools away and went inside.

My wife asked how it went. I said: done.

She looked at me again with that look.

I did say something after all. I said: it's strange, taking down things he built. Even when they're finished.

She said: yes.

No advice. No but-you-had-to. Just: yes. Sometimes that's exactly right.

My father built the farm up in a time before I existed. He put in fences, built barns, made decisions that I'm living inside now. I'll never fully know all of that. There's no inventory of it.

I do my things now. Some better, some differently, some probably worse. You'll be able to tell in thirty years.

The new fence is up. It's not pretty. It'll hold.

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