I have been fascinated by living fences my entire life. Growing up in southern Missouri and Kansas there were plenty of Osage Orange or as we called them Hedge apple trees. I am sure many of these were descendants of former working hedge fences, but I didn’t know of one purpose built living fence, although I knew of a couple fence lines that were such a tangle they almost acted like one.

I was planning on building a living fence along the road at the sawmill. One of the problems we have with that property are the power lines running along the road and on the west fence line. Our new property however is wide open with nothing that needs to be worked around.

I was going to order my trees from the Missouri Department of Conservation, but they had a bad season and didn’t have enough trees for my project. After an exhaustive search on the internet the best deal I could find was Musser Forest. For future work on our living fence we will be starting our own trees, but I wanted a jump start, as the fence takes long enough to become established anyway.

Our first part of the living fence will be built along our western property boundary. We planted 330′ starting at the corner of our property. This area has the worst fence on the place and is also in the open where the trees will be able to establish themselves.

Before I began work on the fence I had to make sure it was okay with my neighbor, as I wanted the fence right on the boundary along the current fence line. I am sure he thought I was some weird hippy but he gave me the go ahead. I assured him that if the fence didn’t work I would remove it to make way for a conventional fence, as I need a working fence.

I removed what was left of the old fence, rolling the old barbed wire up for possible future re-use. The fence was slightly overgrown and the brush was cleared with a chainsaw and the old fence posts were pulled out by the backhoe to be next years firewood.

Along this stretch of fence there were two trees that were left standing. One was a locust that will work just fine for part of the fence, the next was a big oak. A tree that old has nothing to fear from me.

After the grunt work was done we brought in the tractors to till up the ground. There were plenty of roots, so the job was far from perfect, but a better starting point none the less.

 

We spaced the trees about 14″ apart working from the south end to the north. We hand planted every tree. It took several days worth of work but we hopefully have a good start to our living fence. Through the summer we will be putting down cardboard and topping it with compost to keep down the competition.

The plan for my fence is very similar to the plan out lined in an article by mother earth news about living fences awhile back. Although I cannot find anyone who has actually done as the article suggests.

Link To Mother Earth News Living Fence Article

After an exhaustive search of the web I cannot find anyone with a purpose built osage orange living fence. Most information on hedge rows and fencing is from the UK where most of those fences are located. Those fences usually are a mix of tree species and very few are using the perfect tree for the job in the US, the Osage Orange.

When the hedge row is established I will be planting other species in front, but being able to hold my cattle in is job one. A few of the species of trees and shrubs I am considering planting in addition to regular fruit trees are:

Hedge Apple
Washington Hawthorne
wild plum
hazelnut
crab apple
Locust

Siberian Pea Shrub

Farm Updates:

I finished harvesting the last of the Cereal Rye yesterday. As expected the field at the farm had a very good yield.

And the BIG news is we have our first register-able heifer calf. She is a cutie from our #2 Dexter. This makes Arod officially a Bull.

 

 

Website Updates

Books Added to the Free Books Page:

Army Welding Manual
Basic Book of Organic Gardening
Foxfire 4
A Technical Study of the Growth of White Leghorn Chickens
Breeding Rearing and Fattening all kinds of Poultry 1819
Care and Incubation of Hatching Eggs
Commercial Poultry Raising
Common Sense on Poultry Raising
Constructing a Plywood Incubator
Controlling Newcastle Disease in Village Chickens
Duckweed
Egg Quality
Economic Aspects of Retailing Chicken Meat
Housing for Layer Production
Incubating and Hatching Eggs
Progressive Poultry Raising
Raising Chicks Artificially
Science Applied to Poultry Raising
Succesful Poultry Raising
Sustainable Chicken Production
The Chicken Broiler Industry
The Chicken Business in California
The Kellerstrass Way of Raising Chickens
The Minorca Fowl

The Structure of the Fowl
The Sussex Fowl